Sustained Investigation #5

In my art, you can clearly see my point of view of looking up at trees and raindrops are on my glasses. I didn't create two squares to make it look like glasses because with glasses you don't see two squares you see exactly as my image looks up above, one square. The story told is all of the times I've gone for a walk in the woods behind my house and decided to observe nature. This image was how I imagined what it would look if I was to lay down and look up at the trees while raindrops sprinkled onto my glasses. I chose to make this because I like nature and I thought this was a very cool, unique perspective. This relates to my life because it's my point of view since I wear glasses and whenever it rains this is what I see. I also really enjoy creating different pieces that show the beauty of the earth and experimenting with what materials are easy and which are difficult to achieve.

My work was made by first creating a border and then the outlines of the trees and three water drops. I then went in with watercolored pencils that were pink, yellow, and blue to create the sky and blended with water. I used different shades of brown and pushed hard, adding multiple layers, to create the trees. I then went in with light and dark green watercolored pencils for the tops of the trees. I used a light grey and a tiny bit of blue watercolored pencils for the raindrops. I used a white oil pastel to add highlights to the water drops. After all the colors were layered the way I desired I then went in with water and a small paintbrush to blend everything together. I tried to not blend the treetops too much in order to still keep the textured swirls. I cleaned up the border by brush water up against the line so it was white again. I then went in with scissors and rounded the border so it resembled the shape of glasses.

The process of creating my art was difficult since every watercolored pencil I used I had to push down hard and layer lots of colors throughout before blending with water. I spent more than 4 hours on this piece and my hand cramping just showed how hard I was pushing with the pencils. My project evolved because I kept building up colors on and around the trees. At first, I wasn't going to add tree branches to the trees but once I started to I think it added more detail. My next steps could be to add in more color from the trees into the raindrops. Since the raindrops don't look realistic I will have to go back in and add more of a reflection. My favorite part of this project is how unique the point of view looks. I also wanted to go back in and use a pen to add even more details such as the small lines on the bark of the tree.