Artist statement:

This project was based on an art competition. The competition goal was to create an advertisement for organ and tissue donation. The first thing that I thought of as an organ was the heart. I decided that for part of my project I wanted to draw a realistic version of the human heart. I then also wanted to add my artistic side on how to make it my own. Since organ and tissue donation is almost about recycling body parts I thought that adding flowers to the image could add some meaning. Once the heart was out of the human body it gave a place for the flowers to bloom. I think that organ and tissue donation is really important for people especially ones in need.

Some materials that I used for this project were colored pencils, graphite, and pen. The colored pencils I used were softer than normal because I wanted richer tones. I used red and pink colored pencils to complete the look of the blood running through the veins. I used the black pen to illustrate the flowers because I think if they were colored it would almost be too much.

I think that if I were to do this again I wouldn't use colored pencils to illustrate/color the heart. I think maybe using ink or something a little less bright would have been better. I also think I needed to make it so that the veins were blue and purple as well as red because in real life they have all of the red, blue, and purple colors. I also definitely used layering as a revision process. I layered first with graphite, then colored pencil, then the pen and final touches.