Sustained Investigation #5

Fire

15" x 10"

Digital

I started the sketch of this idea during the Australian wildfires almost a year ago. I liked the idea of showing the tiny fire ant beside the giant foot with the even more momentous fire behind it all. My investigation this year is on the limits of humanity through nature and technology, and I wanted to use this one to show how humanity can lack an understanding of scale. This relates to my life because I can get stuck on small things and lose the big picture or get stuck on the big picture and lose track of the small things. Additionally, I was challenging myself to use a color palette that I might not normally use for this. I use a lime green, purple, and red, for the most part.

I made this using procreate on my tablet. I used both the brush I normally use and the watercolor brush for texture.

I used lines to create the shapes of the trees and grass. I used value and color to turn those shapes into 3d forms with texture. I tried to use repetition in the trees and lines to illicit emotions. As you can see in the process video, this started as a sketch of the ant with the trees and the fire. As I built onto it, I realized that there was more I wanted to add, so I increased the size of the composition. For a while I was working on the sneaker, and I didn't noticed the size of the ant compared to the sneaker. Once I adjusted it, I felt pretty much content with it as a whole. If I were to add onto this, I would do more to bring attention to the ant, since I spent a long time creating details.