Sustained Investigation 13

BLM

9 x 12

Colored Pencil

This is my 13th Sustained Investigation where I painted a scene of a Black Lives Matter Protest. I made a store on the left followed by a crowd/protest on the right. I used colored pencil for this piece because in the past years, I used to use a lot of colored pencil in my artwork and I felt like taking a break from painting and going back to an old material. I have been wanting to make a sustained investigation on this topic for awhile now, and I don't think this will be the last. This movement is something that should not be mellowed and I would love to continue making more art around this topic. I had no idea how to approach this idea. I knew I wanted to have some sort of crowd with signs (and I've done this with a few other sustained investigations in the past) but I wanted more than just the crowd. Thats when I decided to incorporate a building to show the aftermath of looting, and I made the windows broken as well as added spray painted words. I didn't want the crowd to be staring at nothing, so I added a cop car because cops have a lot to do with this movement (ex. police brutality, defunding the police, acab) and I felt like adding some sort of vision of the lights would look cool too. The signs I made were inspired by real signs from the protests as well. To be honest, I kind of wish I did paint this piece instead of using colored pencil because I believe thats my strongest suit, but I thought about trying a different material and I've now seen that I much rather prefer acrylic paint.