Art History Inspired Project.

Artist's statement.

This work of art was inspired by Kehinde Wiley and Jacob Lawrence. Specifically, Kehinde Wiley’s Obama portrait. He used a jungle pattern and brought the background to the foreground, which I found very intriguing, and wanted to carry this over into my artwork. I was inspired by Jacob Lawrence’s sharp lines and the way he drew people a bit abstractly. The faces were the main inspiration from his work.

As for myself, rock climbing is something I love and I thought it would be cool to incorporate it into this. I knew I wanted the background to be a jungle, and I thought having another aspect of nature; the rock; would mesh well. 

I used charcoal and gouache paint. I used two different kinds of paper; watercolor paper and mixed media paper. 

To start, I used charcoal stumps and pencils to create a cliff landscape. I used charcoal because I was familiar with it and knew that I could create detail, such as the sharp edges and highlights of the rocks on the cliff. I also used this material to draw the person, rock climbing. Then I chose to cut these out and glue them onto the watercolor paper. The reasoning for this was that the charcoal blends and “sticks” better to the charcoal paper, and the materials wouldn't mesh well if I used them on the same paper. Then I began using the paint to create the vines and background. I used gouache because it is a good balance and medium between watercolor and acrylic and has a wide range of colors which I thought would be good for mixing. It also can be painted over charcoal; allowing me to bring the background forward. The main issue I ran into during this project was that the glue from sticking the charcoal elements onto the watercolor paper ended up mixing with my paint and spreading across the surface of the paper. I think I may have put too much glue on and this is what caused the issue. It made it difficult for the paint to pigment the paper and/or spread. This is why there is a difference in the color of the background around the elements compared to the bottom or corners of the paper.