Donate Life

For this project, we were assigned to create a piece for an organ and tissue donation competition. There were certain requirements that we had to meet, such as having a 1 inch border and including the phrase "organ and tissue donation." We were allowed to do whatever we want, we just had to include that phrase. My first idea was to write "be the light in someone's darkness with organ and tissue donation." I was going to have a black background with the moon or the sun as well. Soon after, I realized that this phrase was sort of dark, so I changed it to "be the light in someone's life with organ and tissue donation." I began by writing this on canvas with pencil in block letters. We did an in-process critique, and I was told it would be easier if I painted the background black first so that I wouldn't have to paint around the letters. It was also recommended that I use yellow to make the letters stand out from the background. After the critique, I painted the whole paper black. I had to do a few coats to make sure it was solid. I then carefully painted the letters with white paint because I knew that the yellow paint would be very opaque. I made the dots on the i's little stars as well. When I was done making the letters, I decided to use gold paint instead of yellow like I planned. I did 2 coats of the gold because it was very opaque. I decided to add little stars and hearts to fill up the empty space. I painted over the stars with gold to match my phrase. Now that the project is done, I wish I had gone over the white with a few more coats because you can kind of see through it. Overall I am proud of this project because I think it is really meaningful.