Sustained Investigation III

For this assignment, we were asked to create a third work that represents our inquiry question for our sustained investigation. For this piece, I wanted to convey a specific type of mental illness—anxiety. Visually, the random, swirling pattern with many overwhelming colors is meant to represent the randomness of anxiety/panic, and this pattern is shrouding the portrait of the girl to represent her anxiety and how it effects her life day to day. This message relates to my life because I have dealt with extreme anxiety and panic for many years of my life.

My process for this project changed multiple times. I started by using soft pastels on toned paper, but I quickly realized that the lack of detail and sharp edges from soft pastels was not the style I was looking for with this piece. So, I decided to use gouache paint on the same toned paper. I sketched out a portrait from a reference photo of myself, then mixed colors of the same color palette and blocked out areas to make the shadows and highlights clear without blending. Once the portrait was done, I made a swirling design with a variety of shapes and sizes. I filled in each section with a bright color to contrast the neutral tones of the portrait, then outlined each shape with black pen. Through this technique, I believe that I conveyed the message of anxiety well.

If I could go back and revise my work, I think I would try to make the portrait of the girl with more emotion to convey the message of anxiety even more, rather than just painting her with a stone cold face. Other ways I could improve this piece would be to do a few more layers on each color so that they were more saturated and the lines would be more clean.