WhatchamaDRAWit

Artist Statement

For my first assignment of the year, I began by choosing a 'WhatchamaDRAWit' prompt to re-create. I chose the “penguin playing hockey with a donkey” and began sketching out a few ideas. Because it is a fun and creative assignment, I decided to pay less attention to small detail, which is not how I usually go about most of my work, and instead went with a more childish, cartoonish theme. As I began my sketch, I realized I knew very little about the sport of ice hockey or how I would go about drawing it. Instead, I made a penguin and a donkey playing field hockey, a sport I have played since I was little. My drawing was drawn from an eye-level perspective and takes place on a grass field. It was suggested that we add a background, so I also added a sky and trees, and a field hockey goal.

For this project, we were allowed to choose the type of material we wanted to use, select the size we wanted our drawing, and any surface we wanted. We were also allowed to use as little or as much detail and time as we wanted. I used regular printer paper and red, yellow, green, blue, brown, and black colored pencils for pops of color. I decided on colored pencils because I wanted to shade lightly and they allow usually a greater amount of control than other materials.

I used a few different processes while creating my artwork. First, I researched various cartoons for reference to help me make the donkey and penguin. I also experimented with a tiny bit of shading and depth using colored pencils, which can be seen in the clouds, the donkey's fur, and in the shadows they cast on the grass. I also had to make a few revisions throughout the piece to give the animals more character. I had to redo the positioning of the legs and flippers to make it look like they were actually in motion and playing hockey, as well as the eyes to give their faces a more cartoonish expression. Overall, this was a quick and easy drawing, and I feel like everything turned out as planned for this assignment.