Blind Contour

In the beginning, there was no real story to this piece. Rather, just blindly drawn lines on the page. However, as I forced myself to add to the lines different things started to form. After going back and watching a bell ringer of Basquiat's look I was inspired enough to try to make one specific section of my piece (the portrait) similar or at least slightly inspired by his work. I liked the abstract feel, and just his overall style. In the end the thing I had planned in my mind to fix this after already believing I’d messed up didn’t really look the way I had imagined it to. I didn’t like the end product, but nonetheless, the slight story I was trying to tell was that of an art museum but a very abstract one at that. Making a section of the piece inside of a frame to seem as if it was being displayed. I chose to make what I made after watching the Basquiat bell ringer due to the fact that I loved his style and it just seemed really cool to me. Although in the end I was unhappy with the result, I still like the style and plan to try it again sometime in another piece of artwork.

For this project, I used the sharpie pen given for the beginning of the blind contour, as well as a mechanical pencil and some colored pencil from home. I began with just the pen, the moved to the pencil to sort of fill in and smudge some areas. Another material I used more towards the beginning was a red pen I had with me just in an attempt to bring color to the piece before I decided to use colored pencils as well. Honestly, in the end I regret using the colored pencils, I preferred how the piece looked without them (or simply just with LESS on the page) and have learned to think more carefully about the materials I use in the future. The colored pencil just gave the piece a look that I didn’t particularly enjoy, and so I may be hesitant to just grab them without thinking in the future. I like using pen and pencil mainly, and I’m not too good when it comes to adding color to my artwork.

During this project I did a lot of experimenting, I started out safe with things I was familiar with such as just sticking with the pen and smudging some pencil where I wanted. Although I liked the piece a lot better BEFORE I began to experiment with colored pencil and different shapes, I’m still glad that I began to experiment in the first place so that I can learn from these mistakes and try to make my art better without making them. At first the only real color the piece had other than the gray/black from the pencil and pen was the red from the other pen that I had. It was simple, and I liked it, but we needed to fill up the page and I was finding myself coming up empty when it came to doing that with the materials that I had and wanted to use. And so, I resorted to colored pencil, but at that point I still had no clue on what I wanted to do. This was when I watched the Basquiat video on his abstract artwork, at which it inspired me a bit and my piece began to evolve, even if I didn’t like the outcome. Looking forward to the future I would think more carefully about the materials I decide to use as well as plan out my work rather than rushing in and experimenting. Experimenting can be good, it can lead to growth and even sometimes turn out exactly how you planned, but overall I’m just not satisfied with how it looks so in the future planning would be the better option.