Space

Artist Statement:

In both the hand project and the leaves project we use the skill we recently learned which is how to draw with negative space. Basically, we draw so that no lines or details are inside of the object (in this case the leaves.) Instead we leave only a border. . In the leaf project, I wanted to make sure you could still tell that the white parts of the drawing were leaves and not just blobs even if I couldn’t add any details to the inside. Fall is my favorite season and whenever I think of leaves I think of fall so when choosing watercolors I made sure to choose colors that reminded me of fall. (Red, Orange, & Yellow) When drawing the 2 negative space hand drawings It was hard because I always try to add as much detail as possible and not being allowed to draw with in the lines is hard. For the negative space leaves drawing we were supposed to fill the background with something. I chose watercolors but you also could have used zentangles which we learned about when making the zentangle strip.

For the leave project I used bristle paper which is a medium thickness. It’s not as thick as watercolor paper but not as thin as printer paper. I also used a 2b pencil because I did not want the pencil to dent the paper. I started with lighter pencils and slowly worked my way up to darker pencils so that I could refine and see the certain lines better. After I was sure I liked it I went in with sharpie so that the lines were darker and stood out. When the sharpie process was over I went in with my watercolors for the background mixing them with water so that they weren’t just blobs. I used red, yellow, & orange water colors. For the negative space hand projects I just used a 2B pencil because they were both sketches. For the zentangles strip I used a pen. For the zentangles project I wanted to make sure I couldn’t erase it or start over because zentangles are doodles and aren’t supposed to be perfect. Therefore, I didn’t use pencil just pen.

I experimented with watercolors to see how I could blend the colors together. I didn’t want the colors to just be blobs I wanted them to all blend together. I found out that putting a little water on the paper before add the water colors helps it blend all together. When doing the negative space hand drawing projects I was able to experiment with different kinds of pencils and papers. Whether I was using thicker paper such as water color paper of using thinner paper such as just printer paper I was able to decide which ones work best for different projects. I was able to layer in some way in all of the projects except for the zentangle one (where I just used pen). Starting with pencil and working my way up until I get to the final piece is pretty cool. My next steps would be tp learn now to make things more realistic even if we are drawing with just negative space. I think if I learned to make things more realistic my artwork could be much better.