Who Am I?

For this lesson we reflected more on the theme of "Who am I?" and drew visual language based on emotions I had during my happiest and worst moments in my life. Both my happiest and saddest moments happened recently and close together.

My happiest moment

My happiest moment in my life was around August this year. I felt carefree, excited, childish, entertained, ecstatic and stress free for 2 weeks. It was at the sea side, which in the day was joyful and fun and bustling with people. At night, it was a beautiful array of different coloured lights and pictures which glowed in the dark. The buildings had eye-catching and lovely lights to watch and you also had arcades to entertain yourself with.

My saddest moment

My worst time in my life was when I had to go through exams around July-August this year. Going through my exams I felt stressed, anxious, nauseous and nervous for trying to get the best grades I can. I had overworked, when I was in the dead silent hall I felt panic and my mind was in a jumble despite the silent atmosphere meant for concentration. I had doubts like I could not achieve anything and I was broken.

The sorts of things that make me happy are peace and quiet for drawing, achievements, compliments to my artwork, finishing tasks, music, watching my favourite YouTubers, and making someone else happy.

However, the things that make me unhappy are upset friends and family, doing nothing productive, stress and losing somebody.

For my first exercise, I drew 2 pieces of abstract art to represent both the happiest and saddest moments.

Happy:

For my happiest, I decided to use wallpaper as a textured background with oil pastel and graphite to capture the texture.  I tried to add various tones and shades of both black and white with lines going upwards to symbolise growth and accomplishment.

Sad:

 

For my saddest, I decided to use emulsion paint on brown paper because of the lined texture it gives when you use oil pastel, charcoal and graphite effectively. I used a monochrome tone to give the viewer a negative emotion based on the colours. I used a broken heart shaped object in the middle very faintly to represent the broken feeling, with the black oil pastel representing rain.

Afterwards, I redid my negative emotion to be a more free piece of artwork. It is much more abstract and you cannot tell what exactly it is by looking.

Finally, I used my artist Ian Liddle as well as the negative emotion to create this piece of artwork. My artist influenced me by the rough sketch like lines and the continuous like along with block colouring in the piece. I have used many different techniques in order to get this result. For example, I used thread to create a 3D effect in the work and added layering in several different areas to add more depth of tone in the piece. I also practiced a new technique with cello tape, which I find challenging but a unique way of layering drawings onto the piece to make it more eye-catching. Finally I used materials such as ink to drip down, graphite, thread, biro, oil pastel and charcoal. In order to improve, I can add further layers with cello tape and gloss paint on top of the flat black ink.