So Hot You Could Fry an Egg
7 X 14
Watercolor and Colored Pencil on Illustration Board
sketches
more eggs in the sky
the original egg in the sky piece
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.