Sustained Investigation #6

The Unknown

5.5" X 6"

Watercolor

The story behind this artwork is that I wanted to represent what it's like to learn new information/be exposed to new things in a conceptual abstract way. The character, who almost seems alien in the environment, is able to see things from a new perspective in bright glowing color, even though it's dark out. Although it was not intended to be obvious, while I painted it, I pictured the gold marks in the sky to be formed by fireflies and glowing bugs coming together in patterns. Rather than being in a wide open space, this is within a hollow overturned tree trunk. The green, which appears to be grass, is instead likin growing on bumps in the wood. This relates to my own life because I find learning new things about almost any topic really enjoyable and I wanted to try to show that. Perhaps fittingly, I choose to do this in watercolor, a medium that I'm still exploring and not very practiced in.

I made this using primarily watercolor. Then, I added black pen to the character, outlined specific things with a white gel pen to make them stand out in their dark environment, I used a red pentel marker to give the glow a red tint, and lastly I created patterns in the sky with a gold pen.

When painting this, I used color to create different values. I decided that I wanted to try to give it extra depth by using a dark purple for the majority of the shadows rather than black, which can make shading seem flat. This also added a significant amount of contrast to it. I used the value to create texture throughout the painting. I wanted to create pattern in the sky to show the surreal nature of this while making both the foreground, midground, and background intriguing. My project started as a rough sketch I found in one of my old notebooks. I drew a new composition on the paper with graphite and added watercolor. Then, I touched up the painting using several other mediums. I'm not sure what next steps will be considering the paper is very overworked already. I would like to have spent more time coming up with a better background.