Sustained Investigation #2

8.5"x11"

For the second sustained investigation, of my inquiry question, "why are dogs a mans best friend?" I decided to use a picture that I had on my camera roll and graph and draw from there. In this picture as you can see above, it is me and my friends dog, murphy. I chose this photo because I feel as if it expresses the relationship I have with him. I seem him all the time and have built a strong love and connection with this dog. My ideas are visually evident in this because as you can see, I am hugging murphy, showing the connection we have.

The materials I used for this was graphite. I decided to use graphite because I like the shading effect it gives and I thought it would be a good idea to use for this particular image. I started my project by carefully drawing what I saw in each box of the graph that I drew. After I got most of it, I went back in with an eraser to erase the graph lines so it looked more like an actually drawing. For shading, I used a tortillion and also my fingers to add more effect to it. For the most part, I did everything the same as the photograph, except for the background. In the original picture there are trees in the background, but I just decided to make it a clear sky. Plus, I like that it is different from the original.

Overall, I do like the end result of my project, and am surprised because it turned out better than I had thought it would. One thing I struggled with during the process of the project was drawing my face. Even though there are boxes to go by, it was still somewhat difficult to get the right shading and line detailing.