Donate Life

Artist Statement:

When brainstorming ideas for this piece I had quite a few and it was hard choosing which one I wanted to do. I ended up choosing this idea where two hands are touching and one is draining its color into the other representing someone giving new life to somebody else. Not only are the hands representing the transfer of color, or life, the background is also following the same type of theme. The right side is more drained of color, whereas the left is more vibrant representing the transfer .of vitality from one being to the next. When coming up with the idea of how the hands should be portrayed, I ended up using this infrared design which I ended up really liking, I also accented it in the knuckles of the second had to show that it too once had the same color.

The materials I used for this piece were watercolors, graphite pencils, and colored pencils on bristol board. I used bristol board because it is thicker than normal paper and it can hold some water, but it is smoother they watercolor paper making it easier to use pencils on it. I used both graphite and colored pencils for the hands because I wanted to have the most control when filling in the hands. I knew I wanted to paint the background because there is a lot of space to full. At first, I was going to use acrylic paint, but at the last minute, I chose to use watercolor because I could get that very vibrant pigmented color I wanted as well as more of the washed-out color. At the very end, I found a funky font that I then printed and glues on top leaving it black and white to provide a good contrast to the colorful background.

For this project, we were assigned to come up with a creative visual piece to help spread awareness of organ and tissue donation. During this project, I learned that this was something that you can sign up for when you get your license and I didn't know that before. when coming up with the ideas for this piece we not only had to come up with a visual piece, we also needed a saying as well. In the end, I really liked how this piece turned out. I'm really pleased with how the paint dried and how the font adds to the piece, it definitely gives me some 70s vibes.