Beautiful Oops

The idea behind this project, which is called "Beautiful Oops" is to take a piece of paper with just a droplet of india ink on it, and turn it into something beautiful, without hiding, the droplet, but also making it look ot out of place. I decided that I kind of looked like the pupil of an eye, and also I have been drawing little squiggly people with heads of this shape a lot recently so I thought I could incorporate that into this project.  I wondered though why the entire pupil would be black, and also there was a slight drip so I wanted to make that significant in the piece. I though having someone with a black eye would be kind of fun to paint, and might also give the viewer something to think about. I considered having a little angry guy in the corner, looking like he had just punched someone, but I figured it would be more fun to leave it up to the viewer to decide what had happened to this character, and why he has a black eye.

I started with a pencil, just sketching out the eye across from the dot, and then I sketched the eye around the dot, making it a bit bigger to give the illusion of it being swollen. I then went over everything in pen, and I did it in micron pen because I knew that I wanted to watercolor over it. I started with the eyes and then I made the shape of the head. After drawing in all the details, I colored everything in with watercolor. I wanted it to have a fluid look to it, where the colors kind of mixed together seamlessly, but also there were some noticeble lines. I also wanted the pen marks to show through clearly. Once I was done with that, I felt like it was kind of empty so I reinforced some of the basic lines, shapes, and colors with the embroidery thread, by stitching through the paper.

I began with the dot of ink. I stared at the dot of ink for maybe half an hour before I had any idea what to do with it. At first it kind of looked like george washington's head, but I didn't want to make a character so mall I didn't know what tp do with the rest of the space, so I kep thinking. I realized that because it was almost just a circles, I could do virtually anything I wanted with it. Since I had been doodling these kinds of heads on characters lately, I decided to use that, and since the ink was dripping, I'd make a black eye. I had to look up people who had a black eye to get the colors right, and I tell you, some people got in some big fights before they posted that photo online. I then drew out the details with pen. I started with basics, of the eyes and nose and mouth, but I decided to add the teeth and the forehead wrinkels because it just gave the character more character. I then sticthed through the add more emphasis on the deep colors of the important spots like the eye and the cheeks, but I also used it to strengthen the shapes and lines like on the forehead and the cheeks.