Existential #3

Sustained Investigation #3

Oil Pastel

11 x 9 In

This piece was made under the inquiry, "How can I explore crisis/existential thinking using mixed media art?" My intention with this piece was to play with the contrast between the background and foreground of the work. I intentionally created a colorful, bold, and upbeat background, then added the black ghosts to represent dark thoughts clouding up the joyful background. By creating this contrast and exploring different ways crisis can present itself I intend to develop a deeper understanding of emotion through art.

This piece was made entirely with oil pastel, I had trouble getting the black on the ghosts as bold and saturated as I wanted but I actually kinda like the shadowy black I was left with. I used a tortillon in order to help me blend the background of the work and also used it to blend the layers of black on the ghosts.

I first filled the ghosts in with sharpie but it was not going over the oil pastel well and was barely showing up. Because of this I decided to make them out of oil pastel and went over all the sharpie I had done with oil pastel, it still didn't seem saturated enough so I did another layer of oil pastel and used the tortillon to blend the layers. I used a charcoal pencil to create the black lines and I'm happy with the way the charcoal was able to go over the oil pastel background. I'm thinking of adding some white highlights to this piece or possibly other aspects to make the ghosts pop more.