Circle Project

Artist Statment

For this project, I began with three thumbnail drawings where I included circles as my main composition for each sketch. In my first drawing, I created a school of different types of fish and air bubbles, all swimming in a circle. For my second, I drew pumpkins sitting on a hay bail under a crescent moon. I did not feel either of these drawings particularly stood out or spoke to me, so I decided to continue with the themes I have been using throughout many of my works this year, taking inspiration from nature. My grape vines at home have grown beautiful green leave and are finally producing big bundles of purple grapes ready for harvest, so I decided to zoom in on a single cluster and draw a basic outline. On my summative, I took my thumbnail sketch a step further by zooming back out and adding more leaves, squiggly lines for the vines, and more grapes around the border of my artwork to balance it, filling in most of the negative space until the foliage created an empty circle of sky close to the center of the paper. Inside this circle, I painted a little bird holding a grape in its beak, perched on a vine branch. For this piece of art, I went for a more realistic feel but still wanted to continue with the circle themes. To add more variety of shapes rather than just grape bunches, I incorporated small circles into some of the leaves, as well as the squiggly vines. On the bird, circles are visible in the patterns of feathers on its chest, wings, and eye.

For this project, we planned out the materials we wanted to use for each of our thumbnail drawings ahead of time. For my artwork, I measured out an 8x8 inch square piece of watercolor paper, as well as my own watercolors, paint brushes, a paint mixing tray, mixing tools, and tape for a border. I sketched out my drawing lightly with a 2b pencil first, then went back in with five combined shades of purple and blue for the grapes, three shades of green for the leaves, a yellow and three shades of brown for the bird's feathers and the vines, and a light blue-ish gray color for the background/sky. I decided to keep the color palate relatively light and opaque in color in order to create emphasis on the more saturated grapes and vines.

I used a few different processes while creating my final art piece. Before beginning this project, I had originally planned on experimenting with new materials, such as oil pastels, colored pencils or markers, and possibly even gouache. However, as I was sketching out an outline in pencil, I decided I wanted to lean towards a more ‘vintage’ feel in this artwork, and watercolor would help me achieve that goal. I also used watercolor because I wanted to be able to make my own shades of dark and light purples and greens that would contrast each other, and I wanted to be able to choose the saturation and where I could layer the colors to add depth and texture and make the drawing more realistic. I also attempted to create new values and mix new colors that I have not yet experimented with or used in any of my other artwork yet. I began with the original secondary color purple that was already premixed and created two shades out of it, a darker, more saturated purple, and a more watered-down lighter purple. I also created a violet-red shade by adding a small amount of red, and different amounts of blue to make the purpley blue colors. Before applying each color to my artwork, I made sure to test them out on a separate piece of paper to ensure it was the shade I wanted. The second process I experimented with was using photography to help me create my drawings. It would have been difficult for me to physically sit on the grass in front of my grape vines and draw what I saw, so I resorted to the camera on my phone, taking multiple photos from different angles and distances. I was later able to study these photos closely, the lines and patterns of each leaf, and try to replicate them as best I could onto my paper. I found that using the close-up photos of the inside of the grapevine, the grape bundles, and the leaves, helped me the most. Finally, the last process I experienced was working with a smaller scale piece of paper, and adding 1-inch borders. This required me to use thinner paintbrushes in order to add fine detail. Overall, I really like how my project came out, but I do want to try and challenge myself to use new materials in my future works.