WhatchamaDRAWit

Artist Statement

When I chose the project idea, “Silly spaceship,” my first thought was a colorful spaceship with random horns and patterns and just abstract features. Then as I thought more about it, I decided to make a party spaceship overrun by aliens. I am not entirely sure how I thought of this, but I’ve always loved designing things like this, and I was very excited to start drawing this. This idea includes a slide wrapped around the spaceship, a poolroom with a view of all the galaxies, and a disco room for the aliens to party their hearts out. The idea of a spaceship with holes in its walls and slides on the outside does not make sense at all, which is probably my favorite part of the whole idea.

To make this drawing, I first taped off the sides of my work so that I could use a smaller space. I used my 2H pencil to sketch my ideas lightly. Then I went in with watercolor, which was harder than I thought it would be. The watercolor is more pigmented in some places than others, which is unfortunate, but I didn’t know what would happen if I added more water to dilute the color, so I just let it be. After that, I went over lines and details with a black pen, just so things would stand out more. All of this was done on watercolor paper.

To make this piece I did not need to research, but I did sketch, practice, and experiment. First, I lightly sketched out my ideas on the paper before making my final drawing. The thing I had to practice drawing the most was the slide. It is the object that has the most dimension in the piece, and it was hard to give the illusion of it wrapping around the spaceship. It was also hard to draw the railing on the slide, and that also took a lot of experimenting. Drawing the poolroom was also difficult, and I experimented with making the pool above ground or below ground, and ultimately chose below ground.