Sustained Investigation #4

For my fourth sustained investigation, I decided to use a picture I had from my camera roll of me and a puppy, Duck, I had in the past. I decided to use this picture because there is a back story to it, and I felt as if it meant something to me. This picture was taken the day before I had gotten rid of my dog, so that day was full of lots of emotion. It reminded me of the appreciation I had for Duck and how at times dogs like him are there the most.

The materials I used for this project was acrylic paint on canvas paper. I decided to use acrylic paint because I wanted to be able to be stronger with it and learn how to shade paint. In this project I feel like I demonstrated that and was able to show more depth in the walls and especially Duck. My ideas are visually evident in this piece because I am giving my dog a comforting hug before he goes to a new owner. For this piece, I started by sketching out everything to get the main idea of how I wanted it to look. I then went in with mainly black white and brown paints and mixed them to paint. I used darker and lighter browns as well as blacks to do shading and create depth. The only thing I really struggled with during this project was the mouth, but it was an easy resolution. This is because I figured out how to shade and add highlights.

Overall, I am very fascinated with the way my art piece came out because I feel as if when I usually use acrylic paint, there is no depth and it looks so plain. However, with this project, I felt like I stepped out of that and was able to challenge myself with mixing colors and shading and being better at seeing what it should actually look like versus what I think it should look like. Something I would look furthermore into is to do more research on my inquiry question to be able to create a deeper meaning behind my artwork.