Sustained Investigation #6

Bison

11x6

marker

For this project I wanted to find something that I cared about more than my other projects, so I started looking at projects that I had done as a kid and I found this project on bisons that I did. I read over my 5th grade project and found that I actually was really interesting, so I began to do some research and I learned that the population of the American Bison is only 20,504 left, this is due to the fact that during western expansion they were hunted to almost extinction and sense then they have been coming back but struggling because they don't have the land that they need to thrive and go their population. I found that I was really interesting and something that I really cared about. So I was looking at the pictures of bison and I saw a cool areal map and this is where I got the idea for the background.

I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do to show my idea of the bison and bringing awareness so I decided to do some blind contour and draw some bison. and then I went around the background looking like the areal maps, so the the lines that are closure together are the lower places and then the lines away from each other are the higher altitudes. I thought that this idea was super cool, so I kept it going and played around with some of the line thicknesses. I also wanted to show the human impact of the bison so I drew some blind contour faces as well and then added lines around them too. I did the people around the outside of the image almost like they are moving in and cutting off the bison from there habitats. after I went in and added some color, Im still waiting on some art materials that are coming in the mail so I haven't finished adding details and color to this image yet.

Overall I liked my idea for this project, I differently dont think its my strongest piece but I really liked my process of this image, I feel like I really cared about what I was doing and I think that this was really important because although my art wasn't that strong I think that the way I approached this project was much better and I have in the past. I think that I will continued to approach my projects like this because I think it makes them more meaningful and important and I think that it will push my art to be even better if I care about what I am doing. This project isnt done but I will keep working and update this when it is done.