Sustained Investigation #13

Artist Statement

The main idea that guided this artwork was a teddy bear standing out from a group of real bears. At first it was going to be adult bears but then I thought it would make more sense with bear cubs because the teddy bear could be a similar size to them but it is a stuffed animal so it stands out. I have also done a lot of pieces where there are three subjects and two are the same while the other stands out so for this piece I added a third bear cub to make it a little different.

I used pencil, ballpoint pen, and colored pencils for this piece. I used ballpoint pen because I wanted to try something different but I feel like it turned out looking a little messier than I wanted because I wasn't used to drawing with a ballpoint pen. I used colored pencil for the bear because I wanted it to stand out from the environment by being more colorful. I wanted to color in the background but I thought if I used ballpoint pen then the foreground would blend in too much so I just used a graphite pencil.

I did research by looking at reference images of bear cubs and practicing drawing them in my sketchbook in both pencil and pen. I think I should have done a few more practice sketches because the final bears' faces look a little off to me. I also tested out how I wanted to use colored pencils on the teddy bear. I tried to change the bear cubs' poses when I was doing the pencil layer on the final drawing but I ended up going back to the original poses because I think they make the composition stronger. I might go over the teddy bear digitally because I don't think the colored pencil looks very good or makes it stand out enough.