Sustained Investigation #5

For my fifth sustained investigation of my inquiry questions being "why are dogs a mans best friend?" I decided to create a dog sitting and begging while looking up at its owner. I thought I needed to dig deeper into and somehow evoke emotion into my question. I made the dog sitting down looking up at its owner imagining puppy eyes, almost like it waiting for something.

The materials I used for this piece were colored pencils and oil pastels. I decided to use these materials for this piece specifically because I like the way colored pencils and oil pastels look and I feel like I am getting stronger at using them. My ideas are visually evident in this piece because the dog is sitting down, facing his owner and begging. It shows how dogs feel and act when they want something from their owner, because they are used to being by themselves all day, so they like the attention. I started off this project by sketching out the dog facing its owner. I wanted to try my best getting a dogs point of view but it wasn't working the way I wanted it to so I decided to draw from the back. Once I had my sketch the way I wanted it, I went in with colored pencil and then added oil pastel later on, to help the blending.

Overall, I am pleased with the way my project turned out, and I think my strongest part of it all was the dog's body. I am also happy with the different perspective I played with, and the way I made the person standing so it really shows how the dog is looking up at him. However, I feel like the background isn't the strongest and while using the oil pastel, some colors got mixed in by accident which made me less confident in my work. Sometime in the future, I might want to move onto a comic type of piece to really dig and show what a dog feels towards its owner.