05. Creative Color Animal

Artist Statement:

For this project we were tasked with choosing an animal figure and reimagining it on paper with more creative colors then it's natural ones; the figure that I choose being a standing brown bear. Starting out with just some basic light pencil sketches of the bear on a piece of watercolor paper I then went over these sketches with my first layer of watercolor paint. Building up and getting a basic structure of what I wanted both the bear and the background to be like, I then just went back in with more watercolor to give shape and depth to my chosen forms. After I finished building up this depth I want back in to bring out the finer details with colored pencils.

I was having a lot of problems with brainstorming ideas for this project. Though I knew that I wanted to stick with my chosen figure of the bear, I was having troubles imaging colors and scenes around it. Originally I wanted the bear to be the only figure in the piece, but after playing back and forth with a few ideas I decided to ditch what I’d originally constructed. Choosing my color pallet to be of a few select colors inside of the multiples that I was intending to use, I then structured a whole scene around my bear; cutting off problem areas that I didn't like.

As I furthered my progress on this piece I feel like I really jumped into the whole feeling of ‘fairytale book’. Creating this whole little dining scene in the room of what I suppose is the bear's house, the colors also give it this whimsical look; as pink bears are something that you would only find in the picture books. Picture books have always been a fond memory for me, and with a childhood filled with them, I find it kinda nostalgic to go back and revisit memories of said books with this piece. Overall I’m pretty happy with how this piece turned out. I like the colors that I choose and the overall atmosphere of the scene, so much so that I wish I added more objects to the scene or just extended on the scene as a whole. So I think if I did decide to go back and revise that piece I would choose between doing either of the two listed above.