Sustained Investigation #1

My sustained investigation question is how do humans interact with nature, so my first idea was to have vines wrapped around some hands. I chose to make this because I had been wanting to paint hands and I had an idea for how to make that work with my question.

The materials that I used were watercolor, colored pencil, and gouache. I started by sketching the design in pencil and then painting the background with watercolor. I layered the watercolors to make some leaves darker and create depth. Then to add details to the leaves and darken the background even more I used colored pencil. For the hands I used gouache and I started with white and then added layers of pink, purple, and tan that I blended together. I also outlined and added details with a darker color. The last thing I did was add vines wrapping around the hands and then paint two yellow flowers. I chose yellow because I wanted to use a color that I hadn't included yet.

When I was drawing the thumbnails I made sure the design was balanced. To do this I put one hand on each side of the paper. I used thin lines to make vines that connected the hands and create unity. When I was coloring the leaves I made some really light green and then others varying values of green until I got to the darkest green which was the background. This created contrast between the light top leaves and the dark background. My project evolved when I was painting the hands and adding more layers of color and details. My next steps could be to make thumbnails for my next project using my inquiry question.