Artist Statement

The main Idea that guided my artwork was my inquiry— How can I convey the Human body in different ways? For this piece, I decided to do individual pieces of the body in different ways and perspectives. Since my last piece was also very colorful I wanted to use just black and white for this to show that the body can also be somber and emotionless. I liked the idea of having different hands and feet floating on the page. I also knew that I wanted these to stick out so I wanted a subtle background. I also wanted to show no gender roles. This was supposed to be anyone's body parts, not showing race, age, gender, stereotypes, or anything else that puts a category on the body areas. This was supposed to be relatable to anyone and also show many perspectives.

The original materials I was planning on using were a graphite pencil, pastel paper, and charcoal. I wanted to use these because there are no colors or expressions but you can still show a mood and different tones. I could do this through the amount of contrast I show and my negative spaces. I then discovered the Carbon pencil. This is similar to a charcoal pencil but smoother and darker which brings out more contrasts which were what I was looking for. This was extremely useful in the creases of hands and feet. The paper that I used charcoal, carbon, and graphite was pastel paper. Once my piece had started to come together I used a tortillon to blend areas of my hands and feet to create grey areas. This shows shadowed areas which makes it more realistic. For my background, I used a charcoal pencil and scribbled in random directions in the open spaces between each figure. I then went in with the tortillon and blended the areas to create a lighter less harsh grey. I found this to still be too dark so I took my black eraser to take off the top layer of material to reveal a lighter grey that was still present but not as dark.

I started by sketching an outline with graphite of each hand and foot. I then took a reference photo and drew a grid on top of the reference and a separate grid that had a similar ratio to my rough sketch. I cleaned up my sketch by moving from box to box to create the hand or foot I wanted. For this method, you need a ruler and printed-out image. Create a gride on top of this with equal ratios to your regular drawing. and transfer what you see in one box to the correlating box on your sketch. This method was not new to me because I had used this in foundations of art and found it very helpful to create realistic drawings. I then used Carbon to go over this and create the contrast I was talking about. For the background, I just used charcoal and blended this, and used an eraser to get the right amount of grey that I wanted. Overall I am extremely happy with the outcome. This was very similar to what I wanted to create.