Beautiful Oops

The assignment for this project was to use a blank sheet of paper with spilled ink on it and turn the ink spill into a piece of art. I created a lizard in a rocky, mountainous area and used watercolor for my media.

To create this piece, I first sketched the lizard's body in pencil, then filled in the colors of the lizard with watercolor, using online resources for reference. I then used watercolor for the rocks all around the lizard, for the mountains, and for the sky. Two important composition rules incorporated in the piece are selective focus and high horizon line. I intended for the lizard to appear clearer than the rocks and mountains in the background to establish selective focus and did this by making background colors more uniform. I made the horizon line high to show that lizard is low to the ground. Contrast was the element of design that I struggled most with in this piece. When I added the yellow-orange rock behind the lizard, it was too bright and strayed focus away from the focal point (the lizard). To remedy this, I added brown to the rock to dampen the color and added additional green the the lizard's head to build contrast and I think I was successful.

When I originally saw the spilled ink on the paper, I thought of the back of a dragon and was going to create something like that. However, as I began sketching outlines, my drawing looked more like a lizard and so I did that instead and used online sources for reference in order to create realism. This piece relates to my life in that I find lizards of all kinds interesting but have never travelled to a climate where they live naturally, such as the habitat I have depicted here. The most challenging part of this piece was correcting mistakes I made on the lizard's body. I started out using large brush strokes which looked messy and so I later went over them and tried to blend the colors of the body more. I think the piece could be stronger if the hind leg appeared to be more realistically attached to the body. Because the ink forms a line over where the leg would attach, I had to depict the leg as if it was positioned more under the lizard which ended up looking less realistic than I would like. In this piece I am most proud of the coloration on the head which I think not only looks realistic but is also intriguing. This piece illustrates my strength as an artist in creativity, skills with watercolor, and with foreground and background. It shows weakness in lack of realism in some places.