For this project, I chose the first idea that came to mind even after thinking of other things to do for this contest. In the end it was the thing that I found I wanted to do the most, so it was the idea that I stuck with throughout this project. Many times before actually STARTING this project, I wasn’t sure if I was going to stick with it, or if I was actually up to doing this because I knew that this would be the more difficult option out of the two that I had come up with. To me, the other option was a lot easier because the design was more simple, but on the day of doing the project I stuck with the idea I liked the most regardless of how difficult I thought it may be. It wasn’t as difficult as I first imagined, the hand was of course the thing that took the longest but came easier than expected. In the end i was satisfied with the whole piece which was surprising because for me that doesn’t tend to happen a lot. I also knew that I wanted to use watercolor for the piece, and sort of create a more messy look with the watercolor. I believe that I achieved that through the background and the watercolor drips that I added to the piece. The story behind this is that this was the idea that I wanted to do. It was the first idea that I came up with, and the one that I stuck with in the end. I used all of my original ideas to create this project, including the watercolor, therefore it relates to ME.

For the paper in this project I used bristol, because I knew that any material would work on it and I wanted to use pen and watercolor for this. I wanted the pen lines to not be textured with the watercolor paper, so I chose bristol instead and in the end was happy with my choice because every material seemed to work how I wanted it to. I did the initial sketch of what I wanted to do in a 2H pencil, and then after the sketch was finished I went over those pencil lines with a pen. With the pen, I purposely wanted to make the lines of the hand more sketchy because I knew that I would like how that looked. After I outlined everything with a pen, I began the watercolor with the hand and continued from there. I hadn’t used watercolor much in the past, but I was super happy with how it turned out and also super happy with how fast the process was.

The first step was the sketch, I attempted to make this as accurate to both my initial idea sketch and the idea I had in my head as possible. This was probably the longest step in the progress just because it was the stage where I was trying to get EVERYTHING to a point where I was satisfied with it. After that I moved onto the pen to create solid lines so that I could use watercolor to paint and still be able to clearly see the lines. I began with the hand, then moved on to the heart and the words before starting on the background. I didn’t want the background to just be flat, instead I wanted it to be darker/lighter in different places to give it texture. I did this by adding more or less water depending on how dark I wanted certain areas to be. After this dried I began to make the watercolor drip with color in the certain places that I wanted. I began the heart, then moved on to just having it drip in the background as well to bring more life to it. During this step I also added some pink to the fingertips just because I knew I would like how that looked. My project evolved from just the idea in my mind, to the version on paper which I was actually satisfied with and quite happy with the end result. My next steps could be to continue working with watercolor just because I enjoy it so much and enjoyed it with this project.