What My Hands Hold was the first assignment of the year entering Visual Arts II. I was nervous to be getting back into the art zone. Also, this project was about identity, one of the hardest topics for me. One would think that it's pretty simple to know who you are and what you love, but that was not the case for me. It was difficult for me to generate any ideas at first, but as the days wore on I began to look at my life, get in touch with my inner self: who I really am and who I want to be. My sketch basically just had a bunch of objects that were close to me, but that is not how I imagined my final piece to look like.
I started to think about ways that I could make people think deeper about who I am. After a lengthy thought process, I came up with the idea of using ropes to represent how complicated of a person I am. The ropes made circles for the objects that represented me. Another thing they symbolized were roads showing all the different paths I want to take and things I want to do in life. I left some circles blank to get people thinking of other qualities, traits, and objects that symbolized the kind of person I am. During this time, I had to do a lot of research about techniques and ways to draw certain objects. I discovered certain things worked for me, while others did not. For example, I used the tracing paper at first, but didn't find it effective to draw the whole piece on there. I only drew certain objects and experimented with ways to categorize and organize those objects. This was a great project to bring me back to the zone and remind me all about art. I also found that I worked best when alone and my thoughts tended to flow smoothly that way. The best way to get productive work done is to work in a quiet space without interruptions or distractions.
This was the beginning and start of my final piece when I drew the ropes and roads.
Resources
This was a video I used to help me with my idea of drawing ropes/roads.
This was when I grouped together certain objects on tracing paper, to see how they would look, before redrawing on my final piece.
This was when I finished drawing objects inside of my rouds and ropes, I finished drawing all my objects in pencil. My next step is to figure out if I will add color, where I will add it, and how I will add it.
This is my final piece after the addition of color to my piece.
After receiving feedback from my peers suggesting it would be wise to add color to my piece, I decided I would. Other people's feedback is really essential because it can help an art piece com to life and improve it in different ways. That is because sometimes people are able to see your work in a different light and from a different perspective. I always try to apply useful criticism that I receive. It took me time to figure out what colors I would incorporate into my drawing. I chose the "skin color" marker for the roads. I liked how it was a simple and subdued color in contrast to the bright shades that I would use all over the rest of the piece. I used marker for the roads, color pencil for the objects or things inside them, and an ultra-fine point sharpie for some things that needed outlining.
In the end, I settled on the name "Navigating Through Life," for my art piece. It described my journey through all the roads of my life that was portrayed in my drawing. My art piece also had question marks to show that I, myself did not yet know all the roads I would travel. Overall, I was very happy with the outcome of this project as it was the first one of the year and I was getting back into the feel of the artistic vibe.