Sustained Investigation 3

"Yellow Finn"

Cardboard, hotglue, newspaper, modpodge, acrylic paint

This project was kind of a fun expirament in painting. I have never painted something like this before (in a realistic style) and I think for a first attempt with a concussion and a mjor time crunch it turned out pretty good. I wanted to take another stab at painting a fish because I had scrapped that idea for the first project. I like how this turned out and a lot of people like this one the best but it is probably my least favorite of my sub-par, fishing sustained investigation. However I really like the shaping abilities of paper mache from "Plight of the Ocean," and I wanted to create a real fish.

I started this process by drawing a tuna on carboard, as a stencil and then creating 3 other tuna cutouts all slightly bigger than the last. Then I used the original stencil again and cutout 3 more tuna shapes each slightly smaller than the last. I glued the tuna shapes together with small carboard dividers inbetween to give the tuna some girth. After I had a cardboard base I covered it in two layers of newspaper and modpodge and left it to dry. I then started painting and this process went fairly quick yet it was rather tedious, and halfway through the painting step I realised my Yellowfin had no yellow fin. So I made another one very similarly to the fins I built on the fish in "Plight of the Ocean," with cardboard, newspaper and this time I used super glue instead of tacks. I attached the fin to the fish and completed painting it.

This project like I said certainly isn't my favorite of the series because to me it looks kind of JV. A lot of the viewers of this project like it the best because one can easily grasp what it is and because it looks only semi-realistic, the tuna has a comic and friednly quality to it. This project also felt kind of rushed as the whole sustained investigation process did and I was dealing with trying to catch up in school after my concussion. I don't dislike this project but realism painting is definatly a struggle to me and that is clear. Overall the only real thing I would change would be to try and make the tuna more smooth.