artist statement

Natalie Ogando

06/12/2021

The Good and The Bad

I decided to make two of the panels show the negative part of quarantine and two of the panels show the positive part of quarantine. The top left panel is supposed to show how quarantine affected my school life. I lost a lot of motivation during the start of quarantine and I stopped doing a lot of my schoolwork. I wanted to show this by having the word “missing” coming from the laptop. The panel at the top right is supposed to show how I had to cancel a lot of plans because of quarantine. Quarantine started before my birthday so I had to cancel a lot of plans that month which was sad because I was looking forward to those plans. I tried to show this by drawing a calendar and then adding scribble marks on some of the days to make it look like I had to cross off plans.

On the bottom right square I wanted to show the more positive sides of quarantine by drawing a cookbook and some baking tools. During quarantine I had a lot of time which allowed me to explore more hobbies and I ended up enjoying baking and cooking. On the bottom left side I drew a tv and couch to show how I was able to bond with family. Since me and my brother had a lot of free time we were able to watch tv shows and movies together which was fun. Before quarantine we rarely hung out so it was nice to be able to hang out together.

Next year, I hope that I continue to keep up with my school and I hope that I don’t lose motivation again. I feel okay about my artwork. I like how the panels look and I think I did an okay job at making the top two panels look more gloomy and the bottom two panels look more lively and happy. Next time I think I would plan my drawing out more since I ended up making a few last minute decisions. Originally I wasn’t going to put any color but I thought that adding color might make it easier to see how the bottom was supposed to be happy and positive but because I made that choice last minute a lot of parts that I colored already had pen over it and I think that made some parts look weird. If I had planned better then I think I could have avoided some parts looking weird.