"When Planets Collide - Satan v Michael"
For Christmas I received two new art tools that I am very excited to have gotten. I asked for a Uni Ball Signo White Gel-pen and the Pentel Brush-pen. I asked for these two specifically because almost all of the artists I watch on YouTube have these in their toolkit to make beautiful art. Plus, I really wanted a brush-pen to work on the line quality of my art. I decided to sketch a scene from Milton's
Paradise Lost (that we read in English class) where Satan and Michael are fighting "like planets colliding." So I sketched them fighting, lined the art with the Pentel brush-pen, water colored everything, and then used the gel-pen for details such as the stars, highlights, and giving a border around the two figures. I have to say I am proud of how this piece turned out in the end, but while I was outlining with the brush-pen I thought I was making a terrible mistake. The brush-pen was obviously not used to the best of its ability in my hands, but I hope to get better at using it. I think the first mistake I made was deciding to use it on such a small piece--brush-pens are good for larger, organic pieces. But now that I have attempted using it, I have learned how to use it better for next time and that's what matters.
"Gemini"
This is the last piece I did for my Astrological Signs series. I will continue it again sometime, but my interests have shifted to a different theme I will elaborate upon later. For Gemini, first of all I sketched the grils without a reference, and I needed that idea of balance due to Gemini's twins always balancing each other out. Therefore, I made them like a mirror image to each other, formally balanced, and I incorporated a reversed and complementary color palette to show how they are related but different (but also a mix of each other because I am reversing their wing color, to show you need a bit of both). I am incorporating experimentation with how I am mixing my paints to create the color scheme I want. I did same techniques with acrylic paints like I did the last couple of pieces I finished--I used spray paint, acrylics, and my white uni ball Signo white gel pen. Overall I am happy with the end result.
"Background No.001"
"Background No.002"
(Sketches before the final product)
Now that I kind of tired myself out from the Astrological Signs series, I realized I wanted a more serious topic that actually affects me, that I have to deal with. The past two years have been really hard on me, and one reason is due to physical injury. Summer of 2015 I tore my ACL, had surgery, and am still not even up to my level of fitness/health I was before. I did not really realize how much it also impacted me mentally until I sprained my ankle about a month ago. I was training for my black belt, trying to get back up to my level of ability I was two summers ago, and then injured myself again. It was then something almost
broke in my mind. It reminded me how, while I may look fine, I may not be--I'm
not. The first day I tried walking without my brace from my ACL surgery, people would run into me in the hallways, my gym teachers for some reason didn't seem to understand that
I'm still fragile and couldn't participate in gym just yet--it was supposed to be more than a year recovery and they knew that!--and so many more things. It surprised me that people would look at me and
assume that I was healthy, and then for some reason decided to run into me or jostle me when people normally take special care not to hurt a
visibly hurt person who has crutches/a cast/a brace/etc. The thing was--I was hurt too.
So that whole long introduction brings me to these sister pieces "Background No.001" and "Background No.002". For these, I wanted to show that, while that girl looks the same, you don't know what's going on in her mind or what her
background might be. You don't know what she may be struggling with. So for the first piece, I made her in a galaxy cloud that makes the girl look like she's creatively thinking and content, calm (while trapped in isolation as shown with her empty surroundings). In contrast, the second piece has a horrific creature looming over her and she's literally
in a box. She's trapped with her monsters.
All of these are basically following the theme "Assuming Makes An A** Out of You and Me" that I want to pursue.
To create these pieces, I sketched a girl and copied it onto two pieces of paper, lined them with a Pentel Brushpen, painted them with water colors, and then used my Signo white uniball gel pen to go in with details. I made the creatures using black ink. I cut the first piece out and glued it to a larger textured piece of paper, and for the second I constructed a box with a peeling-paint texture on it and am using wires for her to sit up in the box. I also made a wire "shadow" that I am attaching to the top of the box--it emphasizes their shared shapes and curves making it unified and covers up some of the box's empty space to balance it out.
These pieces have taken me a long time, and I am still not finished, but they feel significant to me know that they represent something that I believe is a true problem (everyone should be treated the same, no matter what people may see on the outside).
Wrap-Up:
I am pursuing a more relevant-to-my-life theme that I would like to deem "Assuming Makes An A** Out of You and Me". Next marking period, I already have another piece to show this theme and I am excited to start.
