Artist Statement

The first thing that was given to us was the prompt of red white and blue. We were instructed to keep our pallet strictly to these American Flag influenced colors. We were also allowed to use black since this is a good base color for art. There is no true reason why I chose a sunflower it was just an imaginative thing that came to mind. I know I wanted to have something happy and also represent a little bit of bloodshed which is why I made this completely red and detailed. I also wanted to have a stars and stripes background because this relates a lot to the prompt. However, instead of of the typical red and white stripes, I substituted the red for black and added blue stars on top of the white stripes to create more patterns.

I started by sketching out this piece with graphite pencil to get a general overview of placement, shape, and size. I used graphite because it's easy to erase and get a feel for this layout. I then started with the centerpiece, the sunflower. I liked that the sunflower's proportions were exact to a normal wild sunflower in nature. This was good for me because it got me to think of petal size, leaf size, steam, and all the other parts of the sunflower. I took my red chalk pastel and started to go over the general lines and outline the flower. I then back in with the same chalk pastel and worked on shading to make it look more realistic even though that was not what I was going for. I then got a red marker and went over the darkest part of the flowers to enhance the contrast. For the center between the petals, I continued to go over this area with many layers of red and grey markers.

Finally, I did the stars and stripes. I used a ruler to create diagonal lines and did this with a graphite pencil. I then took a blue chalk pastel and shaded it in the middle of the star, the pentagon. I then shaded in the outer triangles of the stars darker for a dramatic effect. I then filled in the other stripes with a black marker. I left the parts around the stars white because I like this negative space and keep it recognizable to the prompt. I then took a blue gel pen and outlined the stars to clean up the edges and tried to erase the smudge marks. I also went back in with another red marker to clean up the flower and create more depth. Overall If I were to do this again I would want more time to create the exact detail and shading I wanted.