Sustained Investigation #3

Sad Skeleton

Marker, fine tip sharpie and colored pencil

9 x 12 in

This is my Sustained Investigation #3, for this project I wanted to push my ideas of contrast to make them pop more which is why I made the plain black and sad looking skeleton. I wanted to pull in a bit of the Day of the Dead style with the roses and bright colors. I wanted the skeleton to be depicted as sad with lots of bright life all around him, he's on his knees to show his despair and the orange dots around the skeleton are supposed to be like the life and spirit all around him that he isn't embodying.

I started this work off by doing a sketch in graphite of the flowers, skeleton, and vine things then I went in and went over the skeleton with a fine point sharpie and drew some little curvy lines to fill in the blank space. I then went in with the color and used markers to outline the roses and leaves and filled it in with colored pencils. I added lots of little dots with markers because it was something I saw on a lot of Day of the Dead themed pictures I was looking at.

Overall, I am happy with this work and it evolved a lot as I was creating it because I wasn't to sure where I was going with it the whole time. I am glad I decided to push the idea of contrast in this work because I like how the colors pop a lot. I'm not sure what my next steps on this piece would be but I was considering shading in the background with light blue or something just so it isn't plain white but I chose not to.