Drawing Together: Students React to Coronavirus

In my art, you can clearly see a girl bending down touching the water as she looks at nature's reflection. The story told is that this represents me going out into the woods behind my house and finding comfort in the outdoors during the quarantine. I chose to make this because I have been going outside lately, it's like a natural therapy for me. I want others to know that they can seek comfort in the outdoors where there are peace and quiet. In the outdoors you don't have to stress, just relax and live in the moment. These are the very things I do when I go outside. And the best part of all you don't interact with people so you don't have to worry about being sick. This relates to my life because nature is a huge part of my life. I'm inspired by the natural beauty in the outdoors to create my art and I'd like others to be inspired as well.

My work was made by creating a sketch of the placement of trees, water, reflection, and person. I created the sketch using colored pencils and pens. I went in adding darker shades of brown to the trees in the back. Then I looked back at my last few pieces of artwork. I realized I love to paint birch trees, they add more life to every piece. So after adding brown to certain trees, I went over some with white acrylic paint. I then darkened the trees in the front (and corresponding in the pond) with a brown watered down acrylic paint. I lightened the background with shades of green. It was challenging to match the reflection perfectly. I wanted to make sure the person's reflection was somewhat accurate so I used a then piece of transparent paper and traced the girl and then made marks of where I wanted her placed in the water. This is a technique I'll remember for future pieces with reflections. For this piece, I created these vibrant colors with watered down acrylic paint since I currently don't have access to some watercolor paints. My favorite and final touch to this piece was the flowers. Flowers are so bright and colorful and always tie my art pieces together, bring it to life.

The process of creating my art had a lot more layering of colors. The most layering of colors was in the pond water. Water is difficult for me to draw a reflection in. Every time I would add a darker color I had to paint a watered-down blue over it to make it look blended. My project evolved the most once I added in different shaded trees, grass, and flowers. I noticed the little details are what really bring my art to life. My next steps could be to play with the perspective again. In this piece, the perspective isn't as fun as it could be. But I did enjoy the challenge of creating a water reflection. Overall, I thought this piece was a great learning experience. I am not used to drawing people so it was interesting trying to learn. I am also not used to drawing reflections in water so I know the next time I do I will see improvement.