Sustained Investigation 8

"Bring Back Manly Men"

10x14

Acrylic Paint

This is my 8th Sustained Investigation where I decided to paint singer Harry Styles in the dress her wore in his Vogue fashion shoot that was seen in the magazine later on. The reason I decided to chose this event is that It was something pretty controversial on social media, especially with the right side expressing that the femininity being taught isn't right for our society because we need strong men to survive. Candance Owens, an American Conservative Activist, and Author were one of the biggest criticizers of Harry Styles which is why I decided to include a few of her many tweets surrounding men wearing dresses. I used acrylic paint for this whole project which I was not planning on doing at first considering all my past sustained investigations have been made with watercolor, but I thought that it would be best to use acrylic paint for a stronger finish and also to get in more details with the dress. I knew that I didn't want to get full on detailed and actually try to paint Harry Styles himself, just the silhouette of him with the dress being the biggest focus which I think I executed well since the figure is the biggest part of the painting. I knew for semester 2, I wanted to add more composition to my artwork which is why I decided to add a collage. I didn't know how I was going to incorporate the tweets with the painting, and then I decided, why not just stick them to the painting itself? I feel like the amount I added was perfect because there aren't so many that they are cluttered but the background isn't super empty. I finished off the painting by writing "Bring Back Manly Men" at the bottom since that's what Candace Owens has been going on about. I really like how I am able to express myself with my sustained investigations with the events I choose and how I execute them. This event has been on my mind always because I think It's really crazy how such a controversy was built solely on the fact than a boy wore a dress.