Post Election Response

The prompt for this artwork was, "Mr. President elect, please..." My wish is for the president, and any future president, to know that everyone is equal, no matter who they are. In this piece I have a person spray painting graffiti onto a brick wall, and the graffiti is in an outline of the United States. I have thing on there important to me and a lot of other people such as equality for all (racial, LGBTQ, religious, etc.), women's rights, education, and the environment. These are ideas the people of our country should protect, because we all deserve to be who we want to be. In this piece I used pencil at first and then went over everything with colored sharpies and markers. One element I used was color. I used the bright red on the wall and specific colors on the writing to make it pop out, so it's noticeable. A principle of design I used was Emphasis. I used emphasis by leaving the U.S. white so the colored writing would really stand out.

One composition rule and technique I used was sharp focus. I used sharp focus by making everything detailed, big, and easy to read. This was used to make the image really draw in the viewer's attention, and also to clearly get my message across. Another composition rule and technique I used was Formal balance. I incorporated this by making all the words spread out so there wasn't too much blank white space, and so each message was easy to read. This project evolved because I first thought I would color in the U.S. and leave the wall in the back grey or black, but then I decided it would be better to make the wall red, and the U.S. white so the writing would stand out from the white. I also decided to add a few random designs to make it so there wasn't as much blank space.

The meaning of this is that our country needs to treat everyone equally and accept them for who they are. Even though it is very unlikely our next president will uphold most of these things, it is still important to get the message out that many of us accept others for who they are and try our best to believe in equality. This relates to my life because it sickens me to think that people judge each other and treat each other badly based upon things like skin color, or religion when they don't do anything wrong. I hear so many terrible stories, so I wanted to get the message across that I want our president, who should be a role model to all of us, should protect these beliefs and ideas. If I could revise this I would probably outline some of the writing with black to make it stand out more. The most challenging part of this was making the writing look like graffiti. I'm proud of how I was able to convey my message in an original way. This shows my strengths and weaknesses as a learner because I learned to make my drawing style look more like graffiti.