Donate Life Design

"I Donatori De Organi" means "The Organ Donors" in Italian and that was the general aesthetic I was going for. I really had quite a bit of fun working on this piece, I have been wanting to something like this painting for a bit, like a dark NYC mob scene. It was quite inspire by Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas, and other mobster movies as well as Gary Larson's "Far Side" comics. It took a long time and I had originally set out to make two different comic like things to submit for the Organ Donor assignment, however I ended up only making one and instead of a comic I made a painting which took much longer than anticipated. It is quite small only 7x6"s and it is on canvas, I used acrylic paint as well as a little bit of Sharpie felt pen for some minute detail. Then I took a picture of the piece and the rest digitally on photoshop. I wanted it to look like something you might see in an NYC subway so that's why I used simple Helvetica font, with the black boarder and the simple red heart.

I am really quite pleased with how this came out although I'm not sure how much I like how the digital and canvas look together, even though they both look good by themselves. I feel like I crossed a line and it needs to be entirely canvas or entirely digital and honestly I might redo it to make it all digital before Ms. Medsker turns them in. I feel like this piece does represent me because I quite like the city of New York as well as most mobster movies and that Italian American vibe. I also think that being an organ donor is somewhat of a civic duty and on a more casual note; your dead, like why do you need organs.

There wasn't too many challenges in this piece and nothing I felt like I still need to overcome. The biggest thing was how time consuming it was, I really wasn't expecting this but truly took hours probably around 6 for just such a small painting. The other thing was drawing and painting people, this was awful and I have never done it realistically before. I'm not too good at it and the mobsters as well as the deceased character's legs went through several iterations. Overall I'm quite proud of this piece and I think it is the best painting I have ever made.