Sustained Investigation 12

Capitol Riot

9x12

Watercolor

This is my 12th Sustained Investigation where I decided to paint a scene from the Capitol Riot from January 7, 2021. I used watercolor for this whole piece as well as going in with some pens. I wanted to incorporate more collage like I did with my last Sustained Investigations, so I used two article titles from that day as well as four quotes from important figures (Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Mike Pence). Going into this project, I knew I wanted to incorporate the real building into the painting so I first started out with outlining the building in a simplistic way. I've noticed with my art that I don't put a lot of detail into certain figures (such as faces on people on minor details on buildings) and I like that I do that because I want to get the basic structure down, without having to go in with all the detail. After outlining the building, I took some time to look at photos from that day. I saw many rioters outside the capitol with flags and signs. Almost all the photos had a mob of people in them, so I decided to do the same for my painting. This was also inspired by my first sustained investigation where I also painted a "mob" and I got my technique from that. If I could revise this or spend more time, I would definitely try to clean up the edges more. Watercolor to me is very messy to work with and It was hard to keep all the colors together.