Landscape Investigation 13

This piece combines two of my favorite things to draw, deserts and eggs. I wanted this piece to radiate fun more than my last few pieces have, and I as I planned this piece out I found myself having more fun in the process. Furthermore, I wanted to connect the materials I used to the subject I drew, so I chose to use warm colors to draw a warm place, the desert. The eggs in the sky take the saying " so hot you could fry an egg" literally, and add a fantasy aspect to this piece that the other works I have done recently lack. This piece made me enjoy making art again, which made me really, really happy.

I experimented with using watercolor on illustration board in this piece, because I know that illustrator Chris Van Dusen uses gouache on illustration board, which is also a water-based paint. Although there was some curling, I was very satisfied with the result, because I was able to get good color with the watercolor without having to sacrifice a smooth surface to draw on after. As a result of the underpainting, I could focus more on lines than making sure there wasn't any white space with my colored pencils, and as a result this piece has a very different look and feel than my previous ones. The materials I chose, watercolor, colored pencils, and illustration board work really well together.

This piece can from a long series of drawings I have been doing since freshman year of the desert, and experimenting with drawing food within my compositions. While this may be inspired by the childrens book Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, I also like the juxtaposition of food in a barren, dry landscape. The fantastic aspect of placing food in a desert also connects with the hallucinations many people who are lost in the desert often experience. I like the idea of making works that suggest the moments that our minds play tricks on us.