Project sketches from my sketchbook. In the end, I chose the idea of "burning out.," as seen on the first paper sketchbook page. 

Start shading by using more pink as it's closer to the flame

Mixing mainly purple to express the depth and value of the pose

As some may notice, the title for this piece is, "La Danse Brûlée." As this piece consist of contemporary ballet dance poses and a somewhat process/storytelling element, I wanted to make a connection how this is all one big performance. As this is a topic of being burned out, I called it, "The burnt dance." The reason why it is in french is because most ballet dance choreography names are in french, hence, the title for this project is also in french. 

The dance poses are expressing melting candles. As I felt like the idea of burning out was like candles melting, I decided to express it with dance poses. I wanted to personify the candles to portray the universal feeling of burning out that people can experience. 

Personally, doing ballet and contemporary was when I felt the most amount of burning out (which ultimately ended with me quitting dance in general). So I wanted to include my experience as a dancer in my artwork. Thus, I looked up reference photos of contemporary dance poses as they tend to be very expressive and symbolic. I chose the poses which I felt like I could express a candle like melting. 

The coloring process was the most tedious part in this project. Having to blend the different colors took several layers of colors. Simply just blending would've also sufficed, but that would mean that all of the textures would be gone. I felt like the texture acting helps with the value and creates a wax effect, so I only blended by using a low opacity pen. Also I think that having to see the textures actually livens up the artwork, as it doesn't look too artificial (everything looking too smooth and glossy). 

Even if we were given almost 6 weeks to complete this project, for me, this piece took me a week to complete. Was it because I was procrastinating? No, simply all my progress file got deleted. So my 5 week of progress had all disappeared. The only part that I had still remaining were the sketches that I've saved beforehand. With such little time left, I had decided that I would choose a different theme/guiding question since I believed that I would be able to finish a smaller scaled project within a week. That is why there are two different types of planning & experimentation on this site.

From this project, I was able to learn and improve my shading techniques. Usually, I tend to avoid a lot of coloring and shading process in art since it's very time consuming. But since this piece was mainly coloring and shading, it really taught me how to be patient with the process and learn from the experience (similar to the color pencil projects). 

What I'm not satisfied with this project is the details of these pieces. While I did try to keep the shading realistic, some parts of the shading looks unfinished or possibly added more details in shading. However, with the time limit, it was very difficult to try to complete all three pieces. 

But in the end, I'm just glad I was able to complete this.