Within this assignment I attempted to make my piece fit within those of the jazz inspired pieces that Faith Ringgold created. She was the artist that I was assigned, and at first I wasn’t exactly certain how I would make my piece inspired by hers but after I found out about this certain collection of paintings I knew what I wanted to do. I was drawn to the fact that they revolved around music, playing instruments such as saxophone, as well as the general style. I enjoyed and was drawn to the simplistic lines as well as the color palette chosen for each painting. I decided that I would use that style and a very similar color palette within my project. I’d also always loved Keith Haring's style of art, and decided to draw figures on the piano inspired by him. This project impacts my life because it relates to music which plays a huge role in my life and has for a long time. This is why I really wanted to do a piece inspired by these certain paintings.

I made most of this piece using chalk pastels. I enjoyed using them, and even when it kept smudging I found it easy to fix the mistakes that had occurred. Another material that I attempted to experiment with was the white charcoal pencil, I saw the black background I had created and wanted to draw something on top of that so I used the pencil to draw the music notes as well as the figures on the piano. Believing that this would lead to more of the lines I wanted because of how skinny and precise the pencil was. I knew that Faith Ringgold had used paint in her piece, but that wasn’t an are I was familiar with and wasn’t necessarily willing to experiment with it for this project. I hadn’t used pastels MUCH but I had used them before and knew I enjoyed using them so I chose pastels.

Within this piece I simply attempted to keep everything from smudging so I tried to move slowly and not mix the background with the lines of the piece, especially since I had used a lot of black. i wanted to make it appear like I was drawing on top of the black background even if I wasn’t and in the end I’m satisfied with the result. My project evolved through how I changed my ideas DURING the piece, although the concept stayed the same I chose to modify things such as the hair as I got new ideas for the piece. and I liked the modifications that I had made. In some cases, it was me realizing it might be difficult to do what I wanted to do originally with the materials I had and in others it was me getting new ideas that I liked better. Part of me wishes I had used paint, but I did find using chalk pastels to be quite easy. My next steps could be to try something else with pastels while also try and experiment with paint more and maybe make more music inspired pieces.