Designing Abstraction

Artist Statement

The main idea that guided this work was taking inspiration from my design matrix chart. I was supposed to choose one design out of the 49 I did to make it into a full abstract piece. I chose my movement texture one which was a sort of twisted spiral design. With this work, I was trying to show a face abstractly. The face blends into the background because I also wanted to play with positive and negative space and see how I could incorporate that along with texture and movement. The spiral design is seen along the outlines of the face, which I colored in each semi-circle the spiral created when they intertwined. I did this because I also wanted to incorporate color too.

This work was made with a marker, sharpie, and colored pens on bristol paper. I first sketched it all out in pencil and then went over it with a solid sharpie line. I then filled in the upper left corner of the face with a yellow marker and the other half of the face with a green marker. I then used colored pens to fill in the spaces created by the overlapping sharpie lines. I did all of this on bristol paper because it was a good size and thickness.

For this work, I didn't do a lot of research as it was abstract and I didn't want to copy anyone else's art. I was however inspired by messy art in general. For me, when I see a face drawn in sort of a messy abstract way it reminds me a lot more about the emotion behind the face. For this piece, I mentioned earlier how I colored all the little intersections, and I chose to make the ones under the left eye blue to represent a teardrop. The way pieces of the face are missing and blend into the background along with the teardrop show how the face is feeling sad or lost. I then chose to use bright colors to contradict this sadness because bright colors aren't always connected to sad drawings and I wanted to show a lot of variety in this piece.