Music #10

Sound Waves

18" x 24"

Micron Pen on Drawing Paper

The idea behind this work was to be inspired by my doodles, especially the face shape, as I have been working on doing art that makes me happy and that I enjoy making in the entire process. I wanted to play with the head shape and big ears, as I feel like that emphasizes the importance of listening and draws attention to the music side of the piece. I also made the whole thing out of these squiggled lines, in hopes that they would represent sound waves. The piece as a whole is meant to show how the music is inside of me and shapes me. I showed that through the sound wave pattern dictating the shape of the face.

I started out by sketching my major points and shapes with a graphite pencil so that I could make sure everything was to scale. I'm really glad I did this because I definitely had to erase a lot and go back and fix some proportions. I wanted to use a thin pen because I feel like it could get me the detail that I wanted. I also have multiple colors of pens that I know would work well together. I also really wanted to experiment more with corsshatching since I think it looks really cool, but I haven't experimented with it at all.

I had really enjoyed leaning into the kind of distorted and squiggly style of SI #8 and exploring where what had just been doodles before could become a more polished piece of art. I wanted to continue down that line, but I wasn't quite sure where I wanted to go with it. I had thought for many past projects that doing something with sound waves and sound wave patterns could be cool, as I really like exploring patterns. As I was sketching, I planned on having the waves outside of the figure and just making the features follow the pattern, but as I got to drawing the large version, inside the figure felt really empty, so I decided to put the sound wave pattern inside the figure rather than out around it.