Donate Life

Artist Statement

For this project we were prompted to make art for a contest. This contest's purpose is to inspire Mainers to become organ donors and save the lives of many people awaiting transplants. The only rules for this project were that we needed a 1" border, it needed to be bigger than 9x12, and also had to have the phrase "organ and tissue donation.

The materials I used for my project were painter's tape, gouache, pencil, pen, reference photos, and my sketches. The first step in my process was to pick the sketch I wanted to build on. I chose the one with hands because I thought it was more original, and creative. My next step was to use a pencil and my reference photos to create what was going to be my final piece. I then painted my sketch with gouache, and finally outlined everything in pen before adding text with photoshop.

The idea behind my message was that organ donation brings life, which is represented by the reintroduction of color to the hand being given a heart. The white shows how the hand is almost drained of life, but with the gift of an organ one still has a chance to thrive.