New York Life

This series I created using charcoal and water color. For the project "New York Life" the prop was about grievance and dealing with death. I decided I wanted to start my concentration of mythological creatures and gods. I drew the grime reaper because he has an association with death. I used the charcoal to draw an out line of the grime reaper and then went in and added a silhouette and details. After I had my outline and basic idea, I went back in to get a deeper black. I added shading to the outlines and cloak of the grime reaper. I also shaded the shear and other areas of the body. In order to use up the blank space in front I added people who were on their knees. This shows them supposedly begging for their lives in front of death. Then behind him I drew graves to symbolize that as the grime reaper paces the people they die. For my second piece I wanted to go more mythical so I drew what's called a cerberus. This creature is a three-headed dog and the pet to the god Hades. Hades is the god of the underworld and the dead. I again decided to draw and outline for the main head and then drew the other head and snout for the other two dogs. After shading these all in the same way as the grime reaper, I added white charcoal this time instead of water color and found that it worked better. I then added blood and bloody finger prints by using red ink.

In this project I really tried to highlight the value of both piece because I wanted to et a strong dark piece. Line is also important to my pieces by being the highlights of my pieces and showing the configuration of each thing. I liked the contrast between the charcoal and the tinted paper because even thought the paper wasn't stark white, it still has a feel of light to dark. Both pieces showcase informal balance as nether side is even with the other. The second piece uses rule of thirds with the right side being and empty space with no charcoal. I might end up adding more to my second piece in order to make my message more clear.