SI #4

Artist Statement:

For this sustained investigation project I chose to do an Ichthyocentaur. These creatures are from Greek mythology, having the upper body of a man, the front legs and chest of a horse, and the tail of a fish. In myths there are only two: Aphros and Bythos. I did not do any one character in particular, just a more abstract version of their general figure. There are many interpretations of these creatures, one being where the chest of the horse is nonexistent and the front legs of the horse are simply connected to the hips of the man. I did not care for this version, frankly it looked a little awkward, so I did a version with the chest . I just imagined what a centaur wound look like, then added a tail in place of the back end. I chose to do an Ichthyocentaur because my favorite types of creatures are half-human, half-horse, and aquatic, and this creature combines all three.

The materials I used for this project were pretty simple: sketch paper, a black gel pen, and four colored pencils.

I started this project out by researching different interpretations of this creature done by other artists, and formed a picture in my mind of what I wanted it to look like. Then I drew a sketch and lined it with the gel pen. I knew I wanted to color in the tail because I wanted it to stand out as part of my inquiry question, so I chose four different shades of blue colored pencils to color it in. I was able to use four different colored pencil colors for the tail and layer them into an ombré effect. I was also able to layer the lightest color over all of the other colors to burnish and get rid of the white dots of the paper showing through. This was helpful because I did not have to use the dark colors to burnish and make it look too dark, which would ruin the ombré. My project evolved because I decided to add some bubbles in the background because it looked so empty. My next steps could be to add color to the hair and do some grey-scale shading on the man's body. I could also add some sort of a background so it doesn't look to plain and empty.