The Old vs The New #9

Sustained Investigation #9

7 x 5

Gouache

This is my 9th Sustained Investigation where I painted my living room using Gouache. My inquiry question is, "How can I use color and texture to concentrate on the emotions of landscapes?" For this project, I wanted to highlight the significant change both physically and emotionally in my living room by contrasting colors. I split the paper in half diagonally for this effect, and the top portion represents the "old." My living room used to have yellow walls, brown couches, and lots of plants as decor. The colors I use to represent how this room looked physically about 10 years ago, and I was originally going to make these colors super bright and saturated to match with a positive nostalgic tone/emotion, but I later decided that I wanted this to look accurate and the bright colors may make the painting look too artificial and I did not want that. The other side of the painting is black and white, which is very dull and bland to the eye. I wanted to create this illusion that all those emotions and feelings do not exist anymore, and now my living room feels very dreary. My siblings have moved out, my parents started to work more, and they eventually started the process of a divorce. Although this side does not represent how my living room looks now physically, it does portray how it feels emotionally which is lifeless in a sense compared to ten years ago. I believe the contrast in colors signifies change clearly which is exactly what I wanted to happen. Originally, the painting on the right side of the paper was going to be accurate as it is a flower painting in real life, but I decided that to match with the dreary dull side, it had to be a bland painting. I was also planning on somehow drawing a line through the two sides to make them more clear and neat, but decided last minute not to because I thought it still looked clean without it, and would possibly look cooler without it because in a way one side transitions into the other and a line through this would just separate one side from the other. Overall, I am really happy with how this project turned out because it came out how I wanted it to, and I believe I was able to represent the emotions I was trying to portray clearly with my colors. I also am happy I played with a different point of view/perspective because I was hoping to start doing that this semester.