Sustained Investigation #2

In this drawing I addressed my inquiry question (how do humans interact with nature?) by creating this character with birds in her hair. When people have lots of tangles in their hair they often compare it to a bird's nest so I decided to put actual birds in this person's hair. I also included nest earrings to make the character into sort of a bird lady.

I made this drawing digitally using an iPad and an apple pencil. The app that I made it in is called Procreate. When I first got the idea I drew out the design in my sketchbook in pencil and then I redrew it digitally and added more details. I drew the lines with the dry ink brush, then I used the round brush for the flat colors. Then I added highlights and shadows with the airbrush and details in the hair with the dry ink.

I experimented with how I draw people digitally by trying to make the line art less noticeable. I did this by turning down the opacity of it and going over parts of it with different colors that would blend in. The design of the girl is very balanced because her face and the birds in her hair are pretty symmetrical. This creates contrast with the wires in the background because they are not symmetrical at all. In the hair I created texture using lots of small lines in lighter and darker values to make highlights and shadows. I used a lot of different blues in this drawing to unite everything with the birds which are a grey blue color. There is also emphasis on the middle bird in her hair because her eyes are looking up at it. My project evolved as I added more details like the bird's nest earrings and the birds on the wires in the background to add to the bird theme even more. My next steps could be to do portraits of people that include other types of animals.