S.I. #3

My third Sustained Investigation artwork is a representation of me and my passion for/relationship with the ocean. I'm depicted here as though I am about to kiss a fish and behind me is a wall of trash building up that I am essentially keeping from spilling into the ocean. This represents my umbrella goal in life of finding new ways to sustain marine health and keep plastic pollution out of the ocean to protect all life. I chose to create this self-portrait because I have been thinking particularly a lot about my dreams and future goals, so I thought this would be a more cutesy way to represent myself and my values.

To create this artwork, I used bristol board, Prismacolor colored pencil, a black Sharpie gel pen, and a white gel pen. I chose bristol because it allows smooth application of material with strong color quality, and is a great surface for easy brandishing of the colored pencils. I specifically chose Prismacolors because I wanted to experiment with layering and creating a more realistic caucasian skin color by using different shades to create a range of tones. These pencils have high pigment that lays down strong, vibrant colors that I love to incorporate into my artwork, especially when representing something such as a passion. This type of subject goes hand in hand with the intensity of vibrancy. I used the Sharpie gel pen to go over my pencil lines, increase the black point of the value scale, and make my lines more bold and crisp to help my features stand out. The white gel pen was used to make the highlights pop.

I began by creating my border, keeping the idea of scaling down my portrait in mind. I tend to scale up when I'm drawing from a photograph which can cause features to become distorted, especially if it's on a small screen such as my phone. Because I typically scale up, I wanted to try the opposite to see if my proportions would be more accurate— I feel this proved to be true. I concluded that it's easier to observe the negative space and understand what the shape should look like on paper on a smaller scale. After determining the scale, I started sketching out my side-profile, looking off of a photo of me kissing my mom on the cheek— but I replaced her with a fish. I templated the fish off of a garden decoration I found being sold online on eBay. After the main subjects were drawn in, I added a seafloor background and the trash building up behind me. I then added color starting with the ocean background, then added more muted tones to the pile of trash with thinner lines. I moved on to give my side profile portrait color. Shading and building tone were major components to coloring my figure because I am aiming for a mostly realistic style. I created highlights and shadows while to capture the movement of my shirt fabric. Paying attention to form and movement was vital in drawing my hair because there is a lot of movement involved with something as light as hair, so I made my lines quick and soft to capture this. I experimented with overlapping different shades and blending different colors to create a more realistic caucasian skin color with different tones. The fish was colored next using many of the same colors that were used in the ocean background to create unity between the two. I finished by outlining all of my pencil lines and finally adding highlights. I wanted to portray the idea that the garbage in the background is filling up and starting to spill over, so I drew the objects all topsy turvy to portray movement– including a bottle peeking out from behind my head, suggesting that it's spilling over into the ocean. Because the "kiss" is centered, it draws awareness to the relationship and sparks questions from the viewer. As this work evolved, I made the decision to keep the background trash in a softer style because I didn't want it to seem as though my figure was bringing the trash in with me or connected to the trash. I felt that bold lines in the background would connect with the bold lines of my figure which I wanted to avoid. I aimed to represent it as though it is behind me and that I'm keeping back. My next steps for this project could be to expand and show other pressures threatening our ocean and/or tools to help.