WhatchamaDRAWit

Reflection

What Do You Think? was made with the full intention to be crazy and weird. I started with the prompt: draw an alien firefighter who fights fires with his toes. Naturally, there are many ways that this could go, but for me, the idea of an alien activity fighting martian fires came to mind quickly. I was also inspired by the "bell-ringer" video that we had watched in class about creativity. It inspired me to take the weird and "out there" ideas that are often in the back of my mind and to try and create with them. The alien in my drawing does have a form that sort of resembles a human-ish figure, which was on purpose, but mostly because I wasn't sure how else to make it. If one main idea for the piece had to be chosen, it would be about using the creative, wacky, evolving ideas that are way in the back of your mind, to make something interesting. And, having the pressure to be creative be overpowered by enjoying the process of doing whatever you want with art.

For this project, I used watercolor paints, markers, and a ballpoint pen. The background is all watercolor with the exception of the mushrooms, which are both pen and marker. The alien was originally drawn just in pen, but because he blended into the background too much, I then went over him in purple marker. The watercolor was all done first, followed by the ballpoint pen (blue ink), and then the marker.

When I first started, I was very excited to dive right in and draw the alien first. But then I realized that that would be a lot harder to do because I would have to draw the background second. So I started with the background. The watercolor was very fun to use, especially with experimenting with how it moved on the page. I didn't do anything very crazy with this part, and just left it as sort of rolling hills. I had my page horizontally at first and hadn't thought about turning it vertically, but once the watercolor dried, I saw that it looked a little like the walls of a canyon. This prompted me to add the footholds for the alien -which are the mushrooms- and turn him into a canyon firefighting alien. When starting to draw him, I started with the toes, because they are what is mentioned in the prompt. Once I completed his body, felt like he was looking too human, so I added the eyes above his head, in hopes that that would help make him wackier. He defiantly evolved a lot throughout the time I started the project and finished it. If I were to work on this further, I would defiantly work more on making the mushrooms, and background more of an "alien environment."