Sustained Investigation #11

The main idea that guided this artwork was to expand upon the background done in SI2 of a graffiti UFO one of the main characters AJ drew. This piece is a bit more representational of the story instead of being a literal character or location. It represents the fact that AJ, who channels her dreams of space and getting far far away through art, has her artpice come to life as aliens turned out to be real is the story. I have been thinking about doing a traditional piece for a while, and I choose "transparency" as an element of design to use in this piece. Originally I thought about painting on glass and propping the pieces up, but that seemed a little risky given I would have to move it between my house and school to work on it. Istead I used plastic sheets, perfect for drawing on with sharpie and paints to create a layered work that can easily be moved around to create depth and detail.

The piece is a variety of painted layers stacked ontop of eachother. I like this effect because it allows for a lot of detail and experimentation on a given layer that can be fitted together smoothly with the others, creating crisp lines and an almost 3D effect when separated a bit. The material synthesis for this one is that I was designing graffiti tags for the first layer, using bright paints to color them in, something that connects to the subject matter and also the story. For the actual process I started by sketching elements like the graffiti tags and UFO on a piece of paper then tracing then onto the plastic with sharpie on the front side of the plastic, then I turned it around and colored in the linework. 

  Originally I wanted to do this with glass, but that seemed a little risky if I wanted to do a big piece. I had a variety of ideas for layers, and I could still go back and make an alternative space background or a foreground with the characters. Ultimately I focused on the graffiti aspects of the piece and story. I mixed a bit of the same yellow paint into every paint color I used just to give the piece a more consistent color pallet. I went through a few iterations of the UFO effect, it became more lively as I kept working, originally it was just the darker green swirl, then I tried to add lines behind it but that didn't work. Istead I addedadditnonal light green lines to the top with some dots, this lead me to do a background layer for the effect with a lot of dots.