Beautiful Oops

Artist Statement

For this assignment, we were given a sheet of paper with a random blob of black ink out which we should create a piece of art. My blob was a small, simple, rounded shape, so I had a variety of options on what I wanted to create. I chose to draw a crocodile because I figured it would be an interesting subject to draw. I enjoy working with pen and using pointillism, and I wanted to further practice drawing a more realistic subject using this technique. My idea while drawing was to have the crocodiles limbs out of proportion and forming a sort of frame around itself. I was thinking of this idea of being kept in captivity, tight and packed into a little box. I wish I would've expanded on this idea, however the scale on which I started to draw did not permit me to change much once I had put pen to paper.

After briefly sketching a rough idea of what I wanted, I jumped right in with a black micron pen. I soon realized that this piece was much bigger than for example my WatchamaDRAWit assignment. I quickly changed to a black brush tip pen, which allowed me to cover more space and fill in more dots at a time. Essentially, my process with pointillism is blocking off sections of the subject. In this instance, when I drew the open jaws, I first covered the entire mouth in somewhat similarly spaced dots. Next, I went in with the brush tip pen and added the darkest of shadows, and then used the micron pen once more to blend the two together. The process was mostly trial and error, yet with my past experience of this technique I was able to finish it fairly quickly.

I tried a couple of different things with the composition of this piece, first wanting the forelegs to stretch up toward the mouth, then wanting them to tuck into the negative space, and finally thinking of adding smaller crocodiles in the negative space. After experimenting with these possibilities, I chose one and got to work, testing out shadows and dots on the nose where I started. Reviewing this piece now, I wish I had done more with the negative space. I think I may go back and add a background, however I was afraid that a background would overpower the main subject. I think it may be interesting to add some light texture to the background, nothing specific, just to pull the whole piece together.