Sustained Investigation #7

Artist Statement:

The specific question driving this investigation was "How do people indirectly interact with animals?" To show this, I created an image of a person walking through a birch forest, with little animal prints here and there. This was inspired by my own experiences when I was little and would walk through the snowy woods with my grandfather, looking for and identifying animal prints as a way of interacting with them. For this piece, I also focused a lot on background, as this was some big feedback for me in the past. 

I used primarily birch bark for my materials. I used it as the base/surface for the rest of the piece, as well as the trees and the cutouts for the snow layers and the person. Not only was this a means of material synthesis, but it also created the most accurate texture for the trees. To create the smoothness of the snow and the pawprints, I used acrylic paint on top of the bark. 

I most of my experimentation for this process was with the birch bark. As seen in one of my process photos, I experimented with many different materials on top of the birch bark. I chose acrylic because it went on very smoothly. For the background, I used a large piece of birch bark, which I gessoed to create a washed and faded look. Then, I cut up strips of birch bark for the "trees," varying them in width so as to create the illusion of depth when putting it all together. Then, I painted the layers of snow with acrylic and glued them on. To create the person, I did a rough sketch of an online photo that I transferred onto bark and then cut out. Finally, I added in the pawprints with acrylic on top of everything.