Connection #4

The idea behind this piece was to show human connection. I wanted to show how it impacts me in varius ways, especially specific interactions. This particular work is meant to focus on how a hug can feel, this one is meant to represent a moment when something really hard happened and so this hug with my mom comforted me. I used a variety of colors and textures and patterns outside the black lines to represent chaos and the swirling emotions that make up somebody's mind or body. The smooth and warm texture and color of the inside is meant to show the calm and the simplicity of the space between us when my mom gave me a hug that one time but also many times before.

I used oil pastel to make the black outlines so that it didn't smudge so much because it's a little bit less wild than the oil paint sticks. I then used the oil paint sticks to make all the colors on the outside. I used these because I wanted this piece to be really vibrant as well as very busy. I also know from prior use and experimentation, that the oil paint sticks are really thick so you can make marks in it by scratching the paint off. I did do that at the end after finishing my drawing I want in with a butter knife and scratched certain patterns and designs into the painting. I used oil pastel on the inside space because I wanted it to be a little bit more contained, and also I wanted it to be very light colored (white, yellow, pink) and I didn't have several of those lighter colors in the oil paint sticks.

I started with a brainstorm sketch and I wanted to try something more abstract. I had tried to do something more realistic last project and I really didn't love making it, or how it turned out so I wanted to not have to deal with realism. I have done a fair amount of distorted images in the past (especially last year), but I haven't done a lot of total abstraction so I wanted to see how I could represent an idea without making it obvious to the viewer. I started with the idea of a hug, I wanted to show the warmth that it can bring to a person when things outside are feeling chaotic. I showed this through shapes and colors, with the harsher shapes with pointy lines and sharp corners on the outside, and warm blended colors on the inside. I started with the black lines, and then I went in with the outside colors and shapes, blending as I went.