Sustained Investigation #4

In my art, you can clearly see waterfalls flowing smoothly off of mossy rocks into the water-filled with rocks. The story told is the peaceful place where earth provides us with a unique, beautiful sight of water flowing. I chose to make this because I realized I like to work with art materials to create places on the earth. I specifically have started working with water on the earth and the different movements of water. This relates to my life because I find what the earth holds to be so fascinating. I want to be able to portray the beauty on our earth using different art materials. Some materials are easier to portray the smooth flow of water since, for example, watercolored pencils blend well. Other materials, such as pen, don't blend as well to changing the view of the water from flowing to focusing on a single drop works well.

My work was made by measuring a border and then sketching out the placement of the waterfalls and rocks with graphite. I then went in with light and dark green watercolored pencils around the placement of the waterfalls. I went in with a darker watercolor of brown mixed with green to create more value amongst the rocks. I went in with white, brown, and blue watercolored pencils then blended with water to create the smooth flow of the waterfalls. I chose to blend with water not only to blend but also because water is in my art piece so I am actually working with that material. I then went into the grass and moss areas and created small pen swirls to give the work more texture and patterns. The water with the brown, black, and grey rocks took a lot of build-up of watercolor and watercolored pencils in order to get a variety of value. I didn't want a bunch of white space in the water so I filled that in by adding in more rocks in different shapes and sizes. To make the water a little more colorful I added water reflections, from the grass, that was light and dark green. I went in and added a layer of white watercolored pencil over the water with rocks to blend it more. Lastly, I took water on a paintbrush and blended any part of the piece that needed more blending.

The process of creating my art was long since I had to keep building up colors. With watercolored pencil to get more vibrant colors, I had to push down harder which hurt my hand a little. My project evolved by the amount of color I added and the materials used. Instead of just using one material I used multiple materials to help my project have more little details, such as the small pen marks on the grass/moss. My next steps could be to add in more shadows and highlights using a fine point pen. The pen would make the rocks look less smooth and more textured with jagged points. The waterfalls and water would look more realistic if I added in little detail such as tiny water drops at the end of the waterfall where it splashes into the rocks below. I also want to add rocks around the edge of the body of water so that it doesn't look perfect because nature has flaws. The placement of nature's flaws is what makes the earth so beautiful. Update: I have added all of the revisions that I originally wanted to add and stated above. My favorite part of these revisions is the white pen marks to create the waterfall splashes.