Sustained Investigation #1

In my art, you can clearly see two leaves, interpreted as either floating on top of the water or in the rain. The story told is two different types of leaves are together in the same beautiful environment as it rains down. I chose to make this because I thought that the composition, color choice, and material choice was a great combination. This relates to my life because I love art and the earth. So I made my inquiry question, "How does the beauty in art relate to the beauty on the earth?" to incorporate those two factors. Throughout each sustained investigation project, I want to experiment with new beautiful, unique art materials to show the beauty of the earth. I accomplished this in my first sustained investigation project by working with encaustics, a unique challenging art style with worthwhile results.

My work was made by cutting up National Geographic magazines to make a collage onto the wood piece I was working with. I glued the blue and green paper with glue sticks into the desired spots that the rain and leaves would eventually be placed onto. Letting the metal platform for the wax heat up ahead of time, I prepared my station at the beginning of every class. I started by painting on the encaustic medium, appearing as colorless wax, building up layers with a paintbrush. Since the wax dried so quickly, I used a heat gun, holding it in my left hand, to heat up the wax as I moved it into the desired position. Once the layers were built to how I wanted them to, I went in and added one layer of dark and light blue, and white wax to the background, and green to the leaves. The heat gun helped to blend the background colors together. I went in with oil pastels to add more color to the leaves. I also carved veins into the leaves and added ink to the veins to make them stand out more.

The process of creating my art was difficult since the wax layers from the leaves kept melting into the background. This caused the blues and greens to mix when I didn't want them to. My project evolved by how I kept building layers, carving away spots, and never giving up. To clean up the green leaf marks melted into the background, I carved the green out and added encaustic medium on top (between each leaf) and then blue wax on top of that. I then carefully melted those colors to get closer to my original idea. I believe that the imperfect melting fits perfectly with my inquiry question. This is because of how there are imperfections in both art and on the earth, and this shows how flaws are beautiful in both art and in nature. My next steps could be to take my time with all of my pieces. I don't want to rush anything so I need to plan ahead with every piece.