Sustained investigation #3

Horse

10x6

Pen & pencil

This is my third sustained investigation, for this I wanted to go back to the idea of motion in a piece. So I worked with pen and wanted to have the lines show the power and idea of movement. I also wanted to put some light color into this piece because I felt that it would add some nice touches, so I used color pencil to add some small highlights. I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do for this project so I just began with closing my eyes and using a pencil to make a shape. When I don't know what to do in a project this is how I often start. Once I have drawn a few lines I open my eyes and look at the image and the first thing that comes to my mind on what it looks like I go for that. For this piece I knew that I wanted to do something with horses so when I was looking at the few lines that I had drawn I focused on trying to make a horse fit. I like doing this because it makes my mind to think of ways to turn the lines into something rather than just looking at a blank piece of paper without any ideas.

Once I had the idea in my head I moved on to using a pen to move quickly over the lines that I wanted to cover. I liked to use pen because it makes it so you can not erase what you have drawn and it forces you to work with what is there, I struggle with this as an artist but using pen helps. I also used toned paper for this project because I knew that I didn't want to have a background but didn't want it to be white. Once I had the outline of the horse done in pen I went in to add detail to the face by adding some shading in places like the nose and the veins of the face. Once that was done I wanted to add some color but I dint want a ton nor did I know where to add it. So I used some simple colors and just went around and added some light color to places that I thought it would add some highlights too or draw the attention of the audience.

I think this is one of my weaker investigations. I still haven't really figured out if I want to keep my question sense I don't really feel super connected to it and have been having a hard time thinking of things to create that are different, I feel as though all my projects are way to close together subject wise. I did enjoy exploring the use of pen and think that I had a super good process in this piece, I really didn't want to keep going on it because I didn't like it but I pushed on because that is something that I have been working on recently. I think that although this isn't my strongest piece I think that I learned a lot and had a good process in creating it.