Inclusion Design

SNOW DAY

JAN. 8, 2018 — digital illustration

As an entry for the annual Maine Inclusion Awards, we were tasked to create an image of what the total inclusion of people with developmental disabilities looked like to us.

Initially, I thought that I would just draw a city scene or something like that; however, that seemed kind of boring to me, so I started thinking about other topics, and eventually my mind drifted to snow. Snow days were something that I loved as a child and continue to love today, so I decided that I would draw children using their snow day to build a snowman. I initially sketched it out on paper and attempted to color it using watercolor, but that didn't work out like I'd hoped, and so I scanned the image and redrew it digitally. After making the outlines, I colored everything in, added some color to the sky in the background, squeezed in some clouds, and then I spent a lot of time shading. Once that was finally done, the image still felt sort of empty, so I decided to add some snow to the piece as well. Thus, it was done.

I'm not a fan of drawing people, mostly because I don't know how, but I feel like this didn't come out as terribly as I thought it would. My favorite part is probably the sky, since I like the colors that I chose and I think that the clouds have good texture and shading (although I'm not sure how I achieved that). I also think that my overall shading is pretty good—I would hope so, since I spent a lot of time debating on where the light source should be and how having the light source in said position would cause shadows to be cast. Although there are some things that I don't like (most of which pertain to my inability to draw humans), I feel as though this piece could definitely have been worse, so I guess that I'm okay with it.