WhatchamaDRAWit

Artist Statement

For this assignment, we were given a variety of WhatchamaDRAWit prompts to re-create. I chose the "Pirate Pig and Royal Shrimp on a Seasaw" and immediately began sketching out my idea. Because it is intended to be a fun assignment where you are encouraged to use your imagination, a more childish, cartoon theme seemed the most fitting with my animals rather than a realistic sketch.  I went for a beach theme with this piece. I knew I didn't want the foreground to be too busy, so I added pom trees, sand, and sky. I aimed to make people smile or laugh when they looked at my finished piece, so I added a very small shrimp being boosted into the air by the pig who had a guilty expression on his face. 

For this project, we were given the choice to use any materials we wanted. I began by sketching my idea out with a pencil on regular print paper. After my sketch was finished, I went in with pink, blue, red, orange, brown, black, and green colored pencils. I chose pencil because it is a material I want to get more familiar with this year. However, knowing that I had a lot of space on my paper to shade in, I decided to color lightly. After everything was colored in, I went back in and added more detail and depth with my pencil. 

I went through a few different processes while creating my final piece. I had only experimented with cartoon characters one other time in my first WhatchamaDRAWit sophomore year, so I once again looked up various cartoon and book characters for reference. This really helped when creating the expressions, such as the eyes on my animal's faces. Drawing the shrimp, surprisingly proved to be my biggest challenge and I had to erase it numerous times. I found that I knew very little about what a live shrimp looks like, so I also looked up reference pictures of shrimp to direct my drawing.  Another challenge I was faced with once I was done with my project was an orange juice spill. Luckily it was only on the very top of my drawing, and I easily improvised by cutting the top off. I ended up liking how it looked better because it reminded me more of a panel in a comic book. Overall, this was a fun and easy assignment, and I was very happy with the end result.