Donate Life

Artist Statement

Artist Statement

The message in this work is really just the idea of jazz in relation to organ and tissue donation. Jazz, to me, represents energy, happiness, and rhythm. I thought it fit nicely with the idea of life and the happiness it can bring. The blue and purple accents represent how music can spread love and how love can influence music.

I used watercolors, markers, and a pencil to create this piece. I used color to create an emphasis on the heart and people as well as movement with the purple and blue swirls. I used form to create a variety with the comparisons of the hands, heart, piano, and trumpet. I used value to create a pattern with the highlights and shadows of the people. Finally, I used lines to create unity throughout the peice (I outlined everything with a small-pointed black marker).

I thought about my idea for a while. There were many ideas that came to my mind. I'm noticing lately in my art that the brainstorming portion takes me the longest. I think this is because I would usually try to just wing it and hope that it would turn out well, without doing any sketches. This can work for me sometimes, however, it's not guaranteed that my work will just turn out great. Yes, I'm still winging a few things and coming up with new ideas as I go along, but having at least something to go off of can really help with the whole evolution of my projects. So, with that, after thinking for a while I finally came up with the general idea of music. At first, I wanted to draw a big organ piano, isn't that funny haha (because it's an actual type of piano). I was going to have actual organs coming out of the pipes on the piano. When sketching this out, it just wasn't working, so I scratched that idea and kind of went for a more modernized look. The piano is still abstracted and placed at a cool angle. Once, done with that I constructed the set of hands playing the piano and this is where the project started to evolve. After I made the boy who played the trumpet, I had used a lot of space but not enough. I had planned to incorporate a heart in my sketches, so I found a spot and it fit nicely. I went very slow as I made the art and drew lightly so I didn't have to revise much. Overall, this is one of my favorite pieces and I don't have anything to critique besides the fact that I should add a little more purple and blue accents.