17. Concentration #2

Artist Statement

The first piece in my lead up to the AP Studio portfolio that I'll be submitting at the end of the year, I've taken inspiration from I piece I did earlier this year. Following the prompt "What's in the woods...?", my theme revolves around lore, my own childhood memories of the woods, and the overall unknown. Guaranteed recurring figures being the black shadowy creatures that you see at the forefront of this piece and the one before it.

For this piece, I kept my materials limited and only used watercolor paint and ink. The outlines and figures are the only ones I completely used ink for, watercolor makes up the bulk of this piece. Quite an experience since I haven't used watercolor to shade and add depth in a while (I usually use colored pencils), even though I had to relearn some techniques, I really like the patterns and shading that I was able to achieve.

As I mentioned above, something that I did struggle with was using watercolor as my main medium. And because of that, I had to go back and relearn some techniques. The thing that I struggled with the most on this piece though, was the bark on the trees. I knew I didn't just want to keep them plain and shade them, I wanted more texture. Looking at references and seeing how they would work on a signal base layer, I decided to use the style that you see above. The barks vein-like branching shapes standing out even with the decorated leaves and solid figures, I'm happy I made this choice.

Overall I think this piece came out pretty good. I like the overall color palette, my use of the figures in the background (and as I said) the shading. Some forms in this piece could use some more details, (But because I've already added multiple layers of watercolor to the piece) I'm wary to go back in and add more because I don't want to fray the paper. So its unlikely I'll be revisiting this piece anytime in the future.