Stars & Stripes reDESIGN

Distributing the Weight of Stars and Stripes

Blue Pen and Red Pen

42" x 5.5"

For this project, the basis was the American flag, along with its key elements and colors of red and blue, and stars and stripes. I decided to use the traditional American flag as the focus of my drawing, and added several people of different ages and genders holding the flag. This piece is supposed to represent the strength of the American people when they come together, the unity that comes. when you don't see color or age, and how each individual adds their strength to hold up the flag. With everything going on in our country right now, all the disputes and inequalities, I wanted to create a piece of what America is supposed to represent, and what is lacking at this very moment. I chose the long format because our country is big and it holds many different citizens from all different backgrounds and lifestyles. By incorporating elements of family, children, seniors and more, I was trying to express the diversity America can offer, and that when we come together as one, we hold up and show off our American flag and the unity of our people.

For this piece, I wanted to achieve a more realistic look, however not too detailed as the scale is fairly small and it is difficult to draw many random and imaginary people realistically. I chose to use a red pen for the stripes on the flag, and a blue pen for everything else, as we had to stick to the original colors of our flag. For paper, I used a long stripe of what I think is multi media paper that has a rough, torn edge, not legible in the photograph. I used the method of cross hatching to create value and make the people more realistic, and created more 'sketchy' lines for the stripes on the flag. I wanted to add movement to the flag and make it look more textured to I layered the red pen in those areas of shadows.

To create this piece, I did quite a bit of planning and sketching to achieve the final outcome. First, I had several ideas for who and what should be holding the flag up before I finally settled on a number of random people of random ages. One early idea I had was to use historic and influential people throughout American history as the 'holders of the flag.' However, this idea was complicated in many ways, first and foremost, it would be difficult to draw those people realistically enough that the viewer can recognize them. Also, I wanted more diversity in age and gender, to express that a country is strong by all of its people. Once I had a basic idea of who and what I was going to draw, I sketched out a simple long rectangle for the flag. I mostly randomly added movement along the flag, keeping in mind that the endpoints or corners of the flag would be held, so the creasing of the fabric would be more visible. Once I had measured and sketched in the stripes, I began to color it in with the red pen. Before I moved to drawing the stars, I sketched in all of the people, keeping in mind a certain balance by using different and similar heights at varying intervals, and to keep the unity of the piece, I drew all of the people in blue pen. The process of trying to add texture and life to the people was evolving as I went, I constantly found new ways to add shadow, how hard to press the tip of the pen, and what direction to cross hatch. The final step of this piece was simply to draw in the stars and color the background blue, not a solid blue however because I wanted to keep the unity of the piece to more of a 'sketchy' look. Overall, I am fairly happy with the way this piece turned out, it had an experimental aspect to it for me, as I don't tend to draw in only so few colors, unless I am using black, and the focus of the subject was also a new experience.