Sustained Investigation #3

#savetheturtles

8 1/4'' x 11''

There is a popular hashtag out right now called "#savetheturtles". Many sea turtles are endangered now because of straws and other plastics. I wanted to try a new style, so I decided to make the whole image out of words. I've seen a few examples of this, but I have never tried it. I used a variation of shades of graphite pencils (6H, 4H, 2H, 2B, 4B, 6B) because I needed to show the depth and variation in shading of the turtle.

I needed to have the value of colors using only the graphite, so that meant I needed to experiment with different shades of pencil, which I don't normally do. There is a visible contrast between the different areas on the turtle, so I think I did a decent job. If I had to do something over again, I would try using pens with different widths (possibly Microns with .05, .1, .3., .5, and .8) so it could be a little more visible. Originally I wanted to leave the background blank, but the world likes backgrounds, so I decided I had to add one. Since plastic and straws (specifically plastic straws) are endangering turtles, I repeated those two words in the background. About 8.3 billion plastic straws have been found (and there's definitely more out there), so that was put in as well, along with 8 million tons of plastic. My next steps would/will probably be going back to the background and erasing it, then using the ruler to make the words not slanting downward.