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 wanted to create a piece that would show muscular definition and how interior mechanisms show no specific gender. I knew I wanted to create a piece that would fit into a typical male stereotype with muscles. The muscles would be shown in the legs(calves and thighs) and the biceps/triceps, forearm, shoulder, and chest. This is often where men are able to build muscle easily and is typical for men to want to have this muscle. I also wanted to show that it's not just men who can have this muscle through the legs. Women also have an easier ability to build muscle in their legs than anywhere else because their center of gravity is lower. The anatomy of the knee shows how this doesn't have to be for men or women but just conveys the human body overall.

This piece was mixed media. I included various amounts of material such as Graphite, Pen, Pastel Paper, Gouache, Collage, Sketching Paper, White Thick Pen, and Compressed Chalk. At first, I thought that I just wanted to experiment with pastel paper, compressed chalk, and graphite but as I went through the process I found myself picking up other materials such as gouache to convey other moods as well such as the blue background. This gives me a medical perspective almost. Blue reminds me of the color of nursing scrubs and surgery therefore that's why I chose this color. I used the pen to create more detail and define a few lines since the compressed chalk only gave a very pale and light color which is what I wanted to convert at first, but as I went on I wanted it to be more like my first work where I leaned toward boldness and a statement.

The first thing I did was sketch out my ideas on a spare piece of white pastel paper. I like the sketches so I cut them up and added them to my actual artwork once I had added more body parts to my cream pastel paper. I like the idea of having these different collages of slight difference colored paper but still looking similar. This also gives the page a little bit of depth when you look at the work and help you differentiate different areas of the work. When I was transferring some of my sketches from the white to cream paper I used the grid method again— similar to sustain investigation #2. This gives it a more realistic look and allows me to pay attention to the ratio of the different parts of the body. For example the shoulder vs the forearm. After I had my collage and sketches done I wanted to add this background. I used blue gouache and added some water to make it look a little bit like watercolor. I like the gradient of going from like to dark throughout the entirety of the page. This gives different moods to different parts of the body. Once this had dried it was suggested to me that I go in with a pen. I used this to define my lines and create more detail throughout the work. I also used a white thick runny marker and this allowed me to touch up parts that I wanted to be darker.