Circle Project

Artist Statment:

The subject of this piece is the octopus, and the setting is in the ocean. To create this piece, I used canvas, and on that I used graphite pencil to sketch out the basic shapes and border, and then taped the border to keep it clean. I used acrylic paint to paint the whole thing. I chose to create this specific piece because I love creating pieces with animals in them, and I thought it would be cool to make the octopus fill the whole circle. In this piece, I used the elements and principles of shape when I cut the canvas into a circle, and created the shapes of the octopus and the background. I also used color because there is many colors in this piece. I think I also used movement because the way the octopus is moving it's tentacles, and there are bubbles around it that accentuate the movement.

In this piece, I think I used the composition rule/technique of framing, because the circle kind of frames the octopus in a way. For this project, I was originally going to create a realistic fox out of ink on paper, with it's nose being the circular aspect, but then I was thinking about different options, and I thought about a trip to an aquarium I took over the summer, where there was an octopus, and I felt like that would be a fun and interesting thing to create, so that's what I did.

This artwork has meaning because I love animals, and they are one of my favorite things to create. If this piece could be stronger, I would redo the eyes to make them more realistic, add more bubbles, and do something with the border, so it isn't so white and boring.