Sustained Investigation #15

In my art, you can clearly see a brook flowing around the corner of a forest. The story told is I went for an adventure out into the woods behind my house and decided to take a picture of this view I always pass. On this same adventure, I collected moss and leaves from these very woods in the photo. I then based my painting off of the photo I took but changed certain features to look more appealing. I chose to make this because this brook holds many memories over the years so I wanted to capture one of these moments through my art. This relates to my life because it is the very spot I pass whenever going onto the trail in my woods. I know this brook so well I could most likely just draw it from memory. The scenery that I decided to paint is one of my favorite views in the woods.

My work was made by using the photo I took as a reference so I knew the basics of where I should place the land, water, and trees. I then went in with a large leaf and glued it to the bottom to add texture to the land. I also glued moss around wherever I wanted the grass to be present. Once I liked the placement of the moss, leaves, and sketches I decided to water down some acrylic paint before starting. I watered down the acrylic paint and I also used watercolor paper all in order to have the paint blend smoother. I first painted the water and added shadows and ripples. I then went in and added random trees to the background and had them get smaller the farther down the brook they went. I added birch trees scattered around because I find them to be very beautiful and fun to paint. I added a small tree in the front to show the same baby tree like the one around my brook. I went in and touched up the details of scattered green leaves to the background. I used a fanned out brush to paint the green treetops in the background in order to get the non-perfect yet beautiful effect nature has. After I had all the basic details I went in and just saturated the colors and exaggerated some details. This is my favorite art creation so far and I think it partially because it's beautiful and partially because it's a real place that's close to my heart.

The process of creating my art mostly involved layering materials. The moss was more difficult to layer because each strand has to be glued down and not sticking up. My project evolved the most when I layered different colors over the moss and leaves. This completely changed the look of my pieces to have far more depth and realistic detail. Another part that changed my pieces completely was adding shadows and highlights. At first, my image looked quite bright compared to what real life would be life. So I went in and wherever there were trees I added shadows. I also added highlights and created ripples in the water which really brought this piece to life and even added the appearance of movement. My next steps could be to continue adding shadows and highlights where they should realistically be. I also want to create another scene from the area behind my house that way these art pieces have more meaning and memories to them.