Sustained Investigation #9

Along my many journeys at Alzar, we had expedition blocks that lasted for two weeks straight in the wilderness. While in Parque Patagonia in Chile, we came across a large water fall that was probably close to 60 feet tall. After running our 10K they allowed us to venture up to the bottom of the waterfall and cool off as a sort of celebration for completing it. This experience of standing under the waterfall is something I will never forget as it slammed down onto my back. Seeing this, I took the opportunity to express my investigation and link this experience with skateboarding. I chose to make this art because this experience was one that stuck with me from my trip.

This was made by cutting the shape of the skateboard out of a piece of poplar wood, from a new design that I made myself by adjusting the shape from my 8th sustained investigation adding a split fish tail. Then I began to sand it to refine the shape and bevel the edges of the board all around. Using skateboard trucks I lined them up on the board and centered them to the center line, and proceeded to drill the holes making sure to counter sink for the bolts. Then I started painting with a light blue wash to show the grain through and began to build up the layers with different tones and highlights off of my memory of what the waterfall looked like. I went from the back with the rocks and bushes and got all of those in place, then I shaped how the water fell over them. Doing this allowed me make the water more life like and I spent a lot of time trying to do it. To finish it off and make it look more clean, I added a black border all around and signed the bottom of it.

In this artwork, I used color in all of the colors I mixed together to get the image I was looking for and value in all of the different values of the colors I made to get shadows and highlights. I used texture and form a lot in the way I made the trees and the rocks as well as the waves and mist that come off of the water fall since I wanted to make it look transparent. My project evolved because although I knew how I was going to mainly set up the artwork, I didn't sketch it out, so there are things the didn't turn out how I thought. Next time, I could try to add more detail into the pieces, or make them more realistic looking.