Extended Blind Contour

Artist Statment

The idea that guided my artwork was the ocean and the environment. I also knew I wanted this to be abstract in some way, so I tried to do that with the ocean. The materials I used were a Sharpie marker, 9''x12'' art paper, and oil pastels. I started this piece by doing the blind contour drawing. I drew my hand, my water bottle, and a person. I wasn't sure what to draw at first, but after some thinking, I came up with an ocean scene. I started this by coloring in the different shapes I saw in the original drawing (with oil pastels), but once I was done with that I realized instead of trying to draw a realistic ocean, I would make the rest of the ocean with the blocks of color. I saw some shapes within the original drawing that reminded me of fish, so I also added a few ocean creatures and some plants. Once the ocean was done I wasn't satisfied as there was still a lot of white, so I decided to add color to the sky. I was planning on doing a black sky with stars to represent the night sky, but then I thought a sunset would bring out the color of the fish more. I used 4 colors to create an ombré effect, however, when I was done there were still black dots where I was going to draw the night sky, so, I decided to cover it by adding some birds. Lastly, I scratched away some of the color off of the ocean to create a wave effect.