Beautiful Oops

Artist Statement

For this project I was given a piece of watercolor with some ink randomly dropped on it. The idea was to turn the ink into something so I looked at the paper in every direction and then drew a couple thumbnails of what I though it looked like. At first I thought it could be a monster's eyes, but I didn't like how those sketches looked. Then I thought it looked like one of those old bikes where one wheel is a lot smaller than the other so I drew a frog riding a bike with the ink spots as the wheels. There were a few smaller dots going across the page so I turned those into flowers flying out of the basket on the front of the bike. From there I built a scene with a dirt path, a fence, and a little mushroom home where the frog might live. I thought that it could be interpreted as a story, like maybe the frog has just left his house with some flowers and it bringing them somewhere on his bike. This connects to my life because when I was done, the painting sort of reminded me of the Frog and Toad books that I read when I was little.

I started this painting by drawing everything out in pencil. Then I colored it in with multiple layers of watercolor, darkening it and adding some details with each layer. Then I had to use gouache for the frog because watercolor wouldn't show up on top of the ink and I wanted one of his legs to be visible in front of the wheel of the bike. I used some more gouache for other details I wanted to show up better like the yellow flowers and the red on the mushroom house and the bike. Then I went over all the lines and details with a black pen because I always really like how that looks with watercolor paintings.

I experimented with the combination of gouache and watercolor because I had never used them together before even though they can create similar effects. I liked how it turned out because the gouache makes colors more solid so the places where I used it stood out more. My project evolved as I added more elements to the frog's surroundings. At first I only knew when the areas around the ink were going to look like, but once I had drawn those, I had to make up an environment for the frog and his flowers to be in. My next steps could be to continue combining watercolor and ink because I like how the two look together. I could also try using those materials with a more realistic painting because this one was in more of a cartoon style.