Sustained Investigation #3

In my art, you can clearly see water drops gliding off of pedals and splashing down into the water. The story told is a quick moment captured of nature's simple ways. I chose to make this piece because I believe water is easy to be creative with since it comes in many forms and shapes. Water flows beautifully and smoothly making it fun to experiment with different materials to see how I can portray the water uniquely. This relates to my life because nature has grown to become a larger part of my life. I think water pollution is a major issue, along with many other environmental issues, and so I like showing the beautiful side left of nature through art. Also, the colors in nature can be vibrant or dull and bland which makes it easier to make a variety of different pieces with lots of value.

My work was made by creating a border. I actually created lots of sketches similar to this before choosing this specific piece. I started out using a pencil to create the outline of the flowers and water. I then went in with a fine point pen in different shades of pink, purple, and yellow on the flowers adding more detail as I went along. I then started to add in a dark blue to the curves of the water ripples. Adding in different shades of blue helped the water in my project evolve. I used multiple references to see where the highlights and shadows appear on the water. I accomplished this by making more pen strokes and lines for the darker areas and I used a white pen for the highlighted areas. My background was a plain light green, I painted with watercolor, so I went in with water pens in different shades of green and grey to add more detail.

The process of creating my art was tedious and difficult. This is because in I had to make tiny pen marks throughout the work. Then in the middle, since I couldn't decide how to create my background, I used gentle green water pens that way it didn't take away from the water and flowers. I like how the background turned out since it gives the piece more of a natural setting. My project evolved from adding in small pen lines to the water and the flowers and the white pen added highlights (which took a lot of layers). I gradually added in different colors to make the flower and water drops/ripples pop out more. My next steps could be adding in even more detail to the flowers so they match the detail of the water since they aren't the desired look I imagined originally. I could possibly add in colors from the water pens to blend the water ripples and flower petals, but I know I like the style of the pen streaks being shown.