Zoomed Shoe

Artist's statement:

Right off the bat, I will say that this project was extremely entertaining for me. I wanted to relate the shoelaces of the second picture to organs of a body.  That worked for the eye, veins, muscle, braid, and intestines, however there was a clump of white space left in between. A DNA spiral came to mind so I painted that, however the space still looked a little bland to me. My solution was to take some paint dots of red and black, and make tiny viruses hanging out with the DNA, but one got left behind. 

For this piece, I used pencil to sketch out the lines, gouache and colored pencil to add color, paint dots to add expression, and a black and white ink pen to add detail.

Sketching out the base lines was a breeze, however the challenge came quickly when I realized I didn't have an actual plan. I kinda started out by painting the two bottom shapes with reds, blue, and black to resemble muscle. I was planning on making the center line one giant vein however I wanted to add more to it because it looked a little bland. I made it flesh with veins. the quarter of an eye was a little difficult to make clear because of the fact that there was no pupil, but I think it turned out okay. The brain and intestine in the top left corner was simple to make as well, just adding a base color and detail. And to finish, my favorite part, the DNA ladder. That one was really fun to make because I was just going with the flow. whatever came to mind, I put it there. The black viruses have killed the red ones, and are now destroying the DNA. One drank too much blood, one is strangely happy, and one is left behind.