Landscape Investigation 14

This piece was an exploration into pattern and color, while drawing the subject matter that makes me the happiest. I feel a stronger connection to pieces that depict the outdoors, but I seek variety and to push myself within those parameters. I had been playing around with patterns like the one that ended up in the sky for a while, and the original inspirations for those marks come from topographic maps. I see the two pieces I did for the Designing Abstraction project last year as precursors to the sky pattern in this work and in the last one.

I chose to use color pencils without sketching with graphite first as a way to push myself out of my comfort zone and to think in color blocks in addition to lines. I struggle to paint because I conceptualize art using mainly lines rather than whole shapes, so blocking in large areas of color is something I struggle with. In this piece, I focused on building up a lighter underlayer and using darker colors on top to create the linework. The work is drawn on bristol board.

In this piece I tried to detach myself from planning, because I often get caught in the trap that if I put a lot of time and effort into planning out a piece it has to be perfect. When I let myself relax, and just draw what I feel like drawing I end up with pieces I am far happier with. This piece was an outcome of all the little doodles I had been doing at the time, checkerboards, squiggles, and piled stones. In a way, I think this piece is kind of connected to the old zentangle-style drawings I did in elementary school. Just like a zentangle this piece has layered sections with different designs in them, and incorporates that relaxed, draw what you feel aspect of a zentangle.