Mental Illness #1

The Reality of Depression

Colored Pencils & Fine-Liner Pens

6" x 5 1/2"

For this project, my inquiry question that will be guiding my work for our sustain investigations is, "how can I bring awareness to what specific mental illnesses can feel like?" The mental illness I am displaying in this artwork is depression.

The materials I used were colored pencils and fine-liner pens, I like to outline my work with the fine liner pens and then color the spaces in with colored pencils. I purposefully used brighter colors as my "base" and then incorporated darker colors over the "happy" colors.

I wanted to display the feeling of depression where everything around you can be so happy, bright, fun, but your world doesn't feel like that; which I tried to represent with the flower being held by the stick figure dying, while other flowers are alive. The black lines coming out of the stick figure is representing the physical weight that you can feel if you suffer from depression. I like doing minimalistic drawings because I feel like they are easier for people to relate to.

**I do not suffer from depression myself and my view of this can 100% be different for somebody else, I'm speaking from the people around me who do suffer from this.**