Swim Free, Not
Project 4
INQUIRY: In what ways are humans impacting the environment?
Size: 28.4(w) x 37.9(h) inches
​
Date of Completion: Nov 12, 2021
​
​
​
Ideas: metaphorically visualize the effects of oil spills on turtles
​
Materials: Made on the iPad with an apple pencil, used Adobe Fresco
​
Process: uses value and foreshortening to form an illusion of a turtle
​
​
Inspiration
Daniel Arsham
Daniel Arsham is a contemporary artist based in New York City and I would say that he's extremely versatile. I first saw his work on Instagram of a Pikachu sculpture he made using crystals and volcanic ash. Looking more into his sculptures, which range from every day objects to remakes of classic sculptures, I came to notice how he has this signature aesthetic of making figures appear old and broken, or "an aesthetic of fictional archaeology"as he calls it . Not only does it make his work unique, but it breaks the expectation of art having to be in perfect condition since he's intentionally making them seem aged and destroyed, which really resonated with me.
"Eroded Pikachu"
"Unknown"
My main inspiration from him for my fourth piece is from a series of sculptures he made by manipulating the surface of the walls in order to form an illusion of a figure. He does this by closely studying and replicating the physics of fabric in his solid 3D work in order to correctly create a figure of a person. Applying this to 2D is a bit more complex since the illusion has to come from depth and an immense amount of details in highlights and shadows.
"Bound Figure"
"Draped Figure"
The
Planning
For the fourth project, I wanted to illustrate on the topic of oil spills as it was broad enough to brainstorm a variety of ideas, yet specific enough to narrow them down to a small amount. However, before starting on my sketching, I started doing some research in order to educate myself more on the topic of oil spills since I believe that knowing more on the issue will help me generate more ideas. From reading articles to watching videos, I gathered the information and compiled it into a cause and effect chart. From there, I started sketching what I had in mind of literal scenes from a hypothetical oil spill and some ironic images.
Choosing the sketch, I found the one with the seals to have potential due to the underlying meaning it has. Obviously the oil polluting the water was done by the works of humans, but so is the buoy that the seals seek refuge on which is a man made creation. The whole piece is meant to represent how although we're the problem, we're also the solution in helping solve and prevent these issues. However, I realized that people might take it in a more literal sense as pointed out by Ms. Shamburek, which lead me to scratch my piece.
Trying to come up with an artwork that holds deeper meaning, I recalled reading that turtles can become trapped in the oil when they rise up to the surface to breathe. I tried putting myself in their shoes to truly visualize the feeling and what I imagine was a feeling of claustrophobia. Though turtles are able to swim underwater for a prolong period, they must eventually breathe air and I see the polluted oil as a layer that traps them from freedom.
Seals Rough Draft
Using the inspiration from Daniel Arsham's works, I sketched an aerial angle of a turtle that's trying to reach open water, but is being trapped by a sheet of fabric like oil. The main emotion I want to convey in this piece is the feeling of suffocation and helplessness and I plan achieve this through colors and depth. In order to help viewers recognize that the turtle is trapped, I will paint the center and a corner of the image with an ugly brown (oil) to juxtapose the negative spaces of a shade of turquoise (water) that shows other marine life swimming away from danger to contrast the two feelings of freedom vs. restraint.
Turtle Sketch
The
Experimentation
Before bringing my art to life with colors, I had to two brushes in mind that I wanted to test to see which brush was going to work best. Naturally, making a piece on oil spills would mean using oil paint, but from images I searched up of the spills, I thought watercolor could portray them even better.
Using images from the internet as reference, I did several quick oil paintings of oil spills that each have different color patterns just to get the feel of it. What I noticed was that it was difficult to blend two different colors and it made the paintings look awful. However, I set this aside for a while since I assumed it was due to my lack of knowledge on the tools.
With the same reference pictures, I redid two using watercolor to test the general feel of it. The problem with this brush was on the opposite spectrum of the oil brush, in which now the colors blended too easily. I tried to make a single distinct yellow branch out into the blue, but what ended happening was that no matter how small I made it, the yellow keeps merging and mixing with the blue, making it impossible to not mix different hues. On the other hand, using the same hue with different tones resulted in a pretty adequate piece since the ease of mixture worked well for similar colors.
Going back to oil paint, I tried playing with the options for each brush and discovered two important factors. The flow of a brush changes the build up of the paint where the lower it is, the more it acts like a pencil when you shade. What I mean by this is overlapping the paint will make it darker just like when you're repeatedly scratching a line with a pencil. The higher it is, the more it will remain the same color.
​
The second option was to change paint mix and I immediately knew my initial issue would be solved with this. Setting the percentage to 100, the ability to mix two contrasting colors became way easier and vice versa when setting it to 0.
Applying these new findings to a quick sketch, I realized that the paint mix works best at 50% which honestly is a no brainer. Another thing I learn from testing these out is that blending is more clean when doing it from light to dark since the light color barely has an effect on the dark, but if we do it the opposite way, the dark completely overshadows the light.
The
Process
My vision of this piece was to have a turtle be trapped beneath a sheet of oil and this wasn't really successful in my first draft. The problem was that it was hard to determine the outline of a turtle even with the shading and I also forgot to add the limbs of the turtle. Prior to revising this, I had to find ways to better show the viewer that there is a turtle beneath the sheet and since I couldn't find any reference pictures, I had to make my own. At first, I cupped my hands in the shape of a turtle shell and placed it beneath my shirt, but again this was missing limbs. Utilizing what I have, I formed packaging paper into a turtle and placed it beneath an even bigger shirt. Though the proportions were not quite what I wanted, the picture served great as a reference and I was able to achieve the illusion of a turtle being present beneath the sheet through shading and colors to create depth.
The
Reflection
One thing I enjoy most while working on project four was my ability to improvise on the spot. My first draft didn't go as well as I planned, but I was able to come up with creative ways to fix my mistakes. I also learned the importance of reference images since they really made my life way easier and in the future, I plan to continue making my own reference pictures for my artworks so that less time is wasted on trying to get it right with my own mind. My least favorite part was shading the wrinkles since it ate up a lot of time even though it was small. A concept I used from previous learned experiences while doing this artwork was to restart everything over when needed and I did it twice. It took me a lot of dedication to soldier through the fatigue and I was glad I did what I can in my power to get it the way I want it to look.
​
​
​