End Of The World As We Know ItSize: 10cm x 10cm
Medium: Charcoal and graphite on thick drawing paper Darkened and edited in Photoshop Date: April 2020 Exhibition textThe Current way the world is being treated, the ways the resources are being exploited and the ways that the world is coming to a feasible end with how it is being taken care of by its inhabitants, created the imagery within this piece. I was inspired by classic WW2 industrial machinery, and the work of Kathe Kollowitz within the German Expressionism Movement
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Planning/Concepts
Inspiration
My inspiration for this piece started with my love for the industrial look of the 1930-50's the black and white gritty and war like scenery of WW2 always drew my attention, and I've always wanted to create a piece that reflected the style of it greatly. WW2 was an extremely dark and horrible time for the entire planet, and I feel that the use of this style and idea would reflect the message of the end of the world and the corruption of our world extremely well in the grand scheme of things. I used the creature within the piece to give the innocent yet corrupted vibe, which was achieved with a bird like creature, I felt that with the sovereignty and the loved image of a dove, if I modified it and corrupted it into a horrible amalgamation of Bio-mechanical gore it would bring my corrupted beauty message to the surface. The other source for my inspiration is the dark and gritty style of German Expressionism (Ironic that both inspirations come from the same country), and how it can express so much color, with only 2 of them. The use of black and white, and value of course brings another element to the work, making the color almost suppressed as a second meaning to the art and making it harder to fully understand at one given moment, making the viewer look into the work more than once. Kathe Kollowitz, is arguably one of my favorite German Expressionism artists ever, with her very realistic and depressing meanings behind her work, which gives the vibe that I feel German expressionism is the best medium at expressing, and that feeling is helplessness and pain. I wanted to contribute my art to the movement as I feel that it captures the kind of content and the kind of message I wanted to reveal and to show off to the viewer, to give powerful emotion strings to the viewer as they look at the work I have created
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Planning Sketches
This was the first concept for the monster I wanted to use to show the struggle of the Bio mechanical beast within the landscape I created, yet I found it to be way too disturbing and not at all able to be sympathized with which was not going to work with my intentions for the art piece. So this sketch wouldn't do, at least for a character sketch. so I had to change it up to be more appealing to the viewer.
I figured that this design was too organic but had the more soft and sympathetic vibe that I wanted to so I had to bring in the more mechanical aspects of the character that I want. So i was pretty happy with the actual design but I needed to add the semi futuristic WW2 aesthetic to it
While not the final design, it still was the closest to the final product and I was fairly complacent with the Bio-Mechanical bird creature that I wanted to show the entire purpose of the art that I wanted to get across.
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Process
Experimentation
I experimented with the idea of trying to cause a smoke effect, by first making the dark and light contrasts within the piece, centralized around the flower not on top of it, so the eye would be drawn directly to the focal point which was made by the movement in the pieces, starting from the flower, and then going up the beak to the bird which is in contrast black to the flowers white. My experimentation was mostly around how I wanted to represent the message I was trying to show. I wanted to show the struggles of an essential worker and what it feels like to work within an environment where you should be in control but are actually just the pawn. So I wanted to represent the feeling of anguish and almost desensitization to something so awful, which is why I was experimenting with how I wanted to represent the evil within the piece. my first idea was to just have the Covid virus floating around my head and making that the "evil" within the message. This however wasn't satisfactory to what I wanted to fully represent which was the customers. So I drew in two screaming non binary people (as to leave it inconspicuous) and have them without masks, as I dealt with mask less people on a daily basis who spout angrily when I refuse them service.
Now from a technical standpoint My experimentation went mostly into how I went about shading, I wanted to see how charcoal worked, but it made too dark of a mark and didn't mix well enough seeing as the paper I was using and the graphite I used previous just didn't work together. So I opted to use a very dark B6 pencil to make thick lines and smudge them with my fingers or a mixing stick to spread it around and create a shadow to give dynamic lighting to the scene. |
Process
My process was quite simple, I created a thumbnail sketch to try and understand what exactly I wanted to draw, layout, and what the message was. After cementing my idea I remade the sketch into a better version of it, which actually ended up being the final piece just with extreme added detail. I first made a rough outline of all the figures, being just circles at the beginning, and a base for their neck and body so I could ad general shapes then move onto actual anatomy. I used references for both of the figures on the left and right and of course used the reference to my self for my figure in the middle. After finishing the final sketch I then went back in and added all the small details that being where I wanted the shading to be, and how dark and light it would be based on where I marked and sectioning it off with a number system, 1 being dark 5 being very light shading. I then made cross hatching lines with varying darkness and used my smudging tool to mix the graphite around and give it a natural shadow. I used this method over charcoal as I had already done a charcoal piece, but I also wanted to use it so I can give a sense of depth easier and use movement and especially contrast and saturation to my benefit. There is also an alternate version where there are some pieces like the girls hair is longer, and there is a vignette around the edges to give a very saturated and centralized look to it.