Sustained Investigation #4

Artist Statement

The idea behind this piece is that the robot is out of place in the environment because he is not used to being in nature and he is sitting in water which is causing the little lightening bolts around him. I used color and materials to show that the robot it out of place because the environment is more colorful and done in gouache while the robot is painted with grey watercolor and lined with black ink. I was partially inspired by a picture I took a few years ago on a hike which had a similar perspective of the mountains and I thought it would be cool to insert a giant robot into the image. I tried to play with lighting by having the sun behind the mountains and putting some yellow highlights on everything but I still need to practice with showing lighting in paintings.

The materials I used were gouache, ink, and watercolor. I started with some thinner layers of gouache and then built them up on the mountains, the sky, and the river. I also added some thin layers of green to the river to try and show the reflection of the mountains. For the robot I used gray watercolor and some yellow watercolor to show the sun lighting everything up from behind the mountains. Then I went over the pencil lines with black ink.

I used a lot of values of green in the mountains to add some texture because I wasn't sure how to make them look more realistic. I tried to used the materials to create contrast between the robot and the environment. By adding a mountain in the foreground on the side opposite of the robot I balanced the image a little more. There is emphasis on the robot because he is more detailed and less colorful than the environment but I feel like he could stand out more. Maybe if I had used watercolor for the background and gouache for the robot there would be more focus on him. My project evolved as I tried to figure out what the robot would look like and added more details to him. There are a couple different versions in my sketchbook that I ended up improving on in the final piece. The pose was also difficult to figure out at first. My next steps could be trying to find a better material combination to support my sustained investigation.