During the Fall of 2022, my sophomore year at Wesleyan University, I did an individual tutorial with my professor from drawing 1. I met with my professor once a week to set up individual research and practice in the medium of colored pencil. I would show my work every week and would get critiques. I started off the class with no experience in a colored medium. All of my previous artwork had been in black and white. I had little to no concept of color theory. Color theory is the idea behind which colors work together and which feelings colors combine. Colored pencil is a very tedious medium to create artwork with, especially when creating large pieces of art. This is due to the nature of colored pencils and the need to lightly layer colors over and over to achieve the desired tones. Over the course of the semester I completed 4 pieces of artwork. My last piece that I created was by far the most impressive piece and something I am most proud of to date. I was assigned this project with about only 2 classes left. Due to the extreme time commitment I decided to schedule another class one week after I was originally supposed to finish. I spent countless hours on this project.
My creative process for coming up with ideas takes place at night when my mind is running right before falling asleep. Without even picking up a colored pencil I had already put in at least 10 hours of work into the project between coming up with ideas and creating mockups. By the time I collected all my ideas and had a solid idea in mind, I had two weeks to complete the project. For the next two weeks I spent around 4 hours a day on the project. With colored pencil hours go by and all you accomplish may be a 1” x 1” box of color.
Eventually after late nights with little sleep I completed the project. This was something I was extremely proud of and possibly one of my biggest accomplishments in life. This project showed my development as an artist and a person for multiple reasons. My technical art ability was able to convey 3d dimensional space on a 2d plane in an accurate manner. More importantly my artistic concept and meaning behind the project was the most impressive part of it. Each individual symbol had a dense amount of meaning and the overall piece conveyed a strong message. I had overcome a seemingly impossible deadline with a project I was happy with.
