Stars and Stripes reDESIGN

This piece, Fire in the Valley is in part inspired by images of things that are currently happening within our country, fires are consuming forests up and down the West coast, homes have been destroyed, and we can't seem to agree on why they are caused. Our president called for better forest management, while scientists have agreed that the effects of climate change have and will create more extreme weather and natural disasters. This piece comes from the anger of seeing our president deny science, and his failure to the nation as a whole. While this piece was created in the narrow confines created by the assignment, the color palate fit nearly perfectly. The color Red represents rage, as well as often used as the color for 'hot' and is the color of our stop signals. The color of the mountains are perfect, it represents anger, heat and the need to stop.

I am by no means an expert with watercolor, but I chose to challenge myself this time, to try to broaden my horizons a little bit. With watercolor you do not have the same amount of control as you do with colored pencil, the medium I often work with. I wanted to try something new. To begin, I sketched with a graphite pencil, then jumping in with technical pens to do the linework. I then focused on the night sky, trying to use a salt-resist to create a milky-way effect. This didn't work, but I like the way it looks anyway, and I learned something from it. For the stars I used a white gel-pen, trying to make sure to keep them small and scattered. To finish the sky I had intentionally left the side closest to the smoke with a very light wash, covering it with a smoky gray haze. Next came the mountains, which were easy, red, and a big brush. The burned trees were accomplished with black and brown pen, and I cheated, using orange for the fire. The smoke took a few tries, but I eventually laid down some black, and blended it into the sky with water.

This was a good first pass at watercolors.