Sustained Investigation #1

Artist Statement

For my inquiry projects, I chose to explore the human impact on wildlife in different environments. For my first piece, I decided to focus on the negative effects that harmful human activities have on polar bears in the arctic. I decided to begin by splitting the page down the middle, and on one side, focusing on a healthy polar bear in a thriving environment to demonstrate what they looked like before human activity. The sky depicts a beautiful day, there are birds in the sky, huge glaciers, and the ground is covered in snow and ice. On the other side, I contrasted the right side by creating a skull of a dead polar bear impacted by climate change and offshore oil and gas drilling. The glaciers are significantly smaller on the left side, and the sky is gray because it is representative of air pollution, the once snowy, icy land is melted. There is an oil and gas drilling machine far off in the background, which has contributed to climate change, and have caused devastating effects on ecosystems and wildlife, including oil spills, pollution, noise and other forms of disturbances. I chose to explore this theme because I have always been passionate about endangered species and issues such as climate change, so I decided to combine the two subjects.

For this project, we were allowed to choose whatever theme we wanted for our sustained investigations, meaning we were also given our own choice of materials. I decided to use gouache for this piece, because it allowed me to add add both opaque and saturated details. I used different values of blue for the glaciers. On top of this I dotted white paint to create the illusion of snow, and white for the polar bear. I went over the bears features with gray pencil to add depth and shading. On the left side of the paper, I used darker colors, including gray for the sky, dark blue for the Atlantic ocean. After letting the paint dry, I went over lines and details that had been lost with light blue colored pencil. For the skull, I used a light tan color, and black for the oil and gas drill to give it the illusion that it is farther away in the background.

I went through a few processes while creating this piece. I began my project by creating a mind map. I had originally wanted to focus only on endangered species, but this topic was broad, so I decided to do a more specific and interesting subject that included some of my original plans. After finishing my map, I narrowed down my project to polar bears, and did research before creating my sketches. I researched polar bear anatomy so I would create an accurate representation of a bear skull. I researched pictures of the arctic, including images of the glaciers years ago compared to now. Next, I moved on to creating sketches. I created a few polar bear faces at different angles, and with different expressions. I practiced creating a few shapes of glaciers that stood out to me. Finally, I moved on to the final project. I had to make sure my borders and measurements were accurate when splitting the drawing down the middle. Lightly sketching everything out was perhaps the most tedious part, and I found myself erasing and adding many small details, and playing with shape, space, and layering paints to add texture. I also played with figure and ground relationships, making the bear the center of the drawing, with the background surrounding the face to add emphasis.