Drawing 440: Final Project

For our Final project we were challenged to to create a a concept piece with the subject matter being our choice. To add an extra level of difficulty the size of our paper was required to be no smaller than 3ftx3ft. The thought of creating a drawing at this scale was a little daunting at first, as I typically do not create very large pieces of work, due to the fact that I enjoy creating very intricate detailed work. Per usual trying to come up with what I wanted to draw took a little longer than I would have liked. At this point in the semester I was feeling pretty exhausted and dead and was just looking forward to enjoying a weekend at Derby that was quickly approaching. I decided to kind of run with this idea. I typically like to create kind of creepy pieces of art, so I thought like a "dead Derby" concept could be cool. At first I looked to inspiration from Derby murals that I've seen all my life in Louisville. I had originally thought of doing a scene with multiple elements including a skeleton derby goer, a skeleton horse, dead roses, and the twin spires looking all creepy. However, with my track record of taking kind of a long time to complete projects, Prof Dedas and I decided a more condensed version of this would be better. I settled on a skeleton horse on the track, with the twin spires in the background. This way I was still getting my idea across without over-comitting. In order to create large strokes on this piece I knew I had to choose a material that was loose and moved across the paper with ease. I chose to use india ink and charcoal. At first I just started in with the charcoal on the ribs of the skeleton, but quickly got caught up in small details as I tend to do. One of my flaws when it comes to creating pieces is getting to focused on small details up close, instead of stepping back and looking at it as a whole. Once I started blocking in more parts of solid black I think this piece starting really coming together. To achieve the look of the clouds and the racetrack I used a dry brush technique. I used an oil paint brush, because they have firmer bristles, and would  dip my brush into the ink and then pat off the majority of the ink leaving a remainder on the brush to achieve the look I wanted.   I am very please at how this final piece turned out, and glad I was pushed to create something I never had before. I've learned so much over the past few years in my drawing courses, and glad I had such an amazing instructor along the way. S/O to Prof Brent Dedas for being the bomb.com, your classes are amazing and I'm going to miss them!

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