Extended Blind Contour

Artist's Statement: 

So the project really started with these blind contours that we did in class. The idea was to then extrapolate on them, and extended them in some way. One of my goals was to have not a lot of white space, something that I can find hard sometimes. the big idea I had was to play with color, and later on shape, to accentuate the strange shapes that the blind contour had made. I also wanted to play with value, accentuating certain lines and shapes. 

 With my materials I decided to stick to oil and chalk pastel, because I wanted to maintain a bit of consistency in the texture. I focused particularly on choosing colors that I thought would go well with the forms I made blindly. I encountered some troubles with the chalk pastel, because of the way the it didn't have the same texture as the oil pastel, but in the end I found a way to make it work. I think that oil pastels can be quite freeing, because they require you to really interact with the material, and in this way really interact with the artwork. I liked this aspect, even if I had some trouble with it.

I originally thought that I would simply color all the shapes with a white background. I then asked my teacher for some advice on composition, and she sugested having a background. I ended up choosing a dark green-blue, adding more contrast, and some playful details. I brought some of the background into the foreground, to make it so that some of the white was filled up. I did this to create a sense of balance in the piece, which I think was achieved.