If you know my painting/art style at all, you'll know that I love doing portraits and painting/drawing flowers. So, naturally, when I came up with my concentration theme, I knew that I wanted to do something that incorporated both in it. The rough draft of my "thesis," if you will, is this: My concentration is based around the relationship of people and nature, specifically the idea of being protected by nature, or having aspects of nature representing intimate parts of life. It's a lot, I know, and by the end of the semester I'll (ideally) have a well-written, concise explanation of my theme, but for now, thats the gist of it. This piece, the big number 1, is based on the idea that we all have these "walls" that we put up to protect ourselves from emotional harm. The idea of "breaking down someone's walls" is a pretty cliche metaphor, but I really wanted to expand on that idea a little more, in a less cliche way. So basically, the branches represent a "skeleton" of sorts, that covers the girl in the picture. The flowers on it are a visual representation of the health of the branches, and therefore the girl within. (It all makes sense in my head, just bear with me). I put the bruise to represent some form of emotional trauma, and I put no flowers on that section of the branches to make it seem barren and dead. Then, around the bruise, I put budding flowers to represent the gradual healing and repairing of the "walls." At the outsides of the branches, farthest away from the bruise, there are full-grown flowers, showing the healthy, intact parts. For me, this piece is about the fact that even when we are hurt or going through something difficult, we will always heal and end up stronger than we were before. I think it's one of those pieces that people can interpret for themselves, and the idea that people can get something out of one of my work is really cool to me.
From a more technical standpoint, I think this is one of my best pieces. I still want to go in and add more detail to the flowers, and possibly even add more of them, and the background definitely needs work, but this is still more than I'd imagined in my head. I got to work on my skills with oils, painting flowers, skin, and a profile, and I think I did a pretty good job. There are definitely places I need to work on, such as the hands, which I'm not 100% happy with (when am I ever, though). I also really want to work some more on the hair to add more details and make it look a bit more realistic. I think the whole piece is off to a great start, and COULD be finished, but I feel like if I went in later and added a little bit more detail, it could be something I'm really proud of. This piece was a huge challenge, and totally showed me that I can tackle more interpretive, large-scale pieces. I did realize that I need to work a lot faster and be less of a perfectionist if I'm going to make it out of this semester with twelve pieces, but that will obviously take time. I think it's a really great way to start off my concentration, and I can only hope that I'm as happy with all of my other pieces as I am with this one.
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