Untitled
By Jessica, Year 9
Size: 22cm x 19cm
My artwork is two flowers with thorned stems. The background is a bright pink with light blue flowers branching from the same point in the centre at the bottom. The flower’s stems have very small, sharp lines coming out and going up the stems to give the effect that the stems are thorned. The flowers are meant to represent roses, however, it doesn’t look very much like roses – it just looks like an exotic flower.
To create the thin effect of the colours, I used watercolour paint. I used pink and blue for a softer look, and I attempted to blend both colours. My goal was to blend the pink and blue and make the blue blend out into the pink background, however the line of the flowers mostly covered the blended look and made the colours connect harshly. To create the lines and details of the flowers I used a small fineliner to create finer lines, rather than using a Posca pen, which would give thicker lines.
The main subject of my artwork is the two flowers in the centre. I decided to use flowers to symbolise my identity as I really like flowers and I like to collect, give, and receive flowers. Due to that, I believe that flowers have become a part of my identity. I like to express my identity with flowers because they behold a lot of beauty and can be very different in colour, shape and size. I chose blue for the flowers because the colour blue reminds me of the ocean, which fascinates me as I love going to the beach and the sea. I also chose pink for the background because pink is generally nice and loving (not evil or dark) which is a lot like me. There are several tiny petals on the flowers to show that my character is a lot, and the petals are different sizes and shapes because there is a lot about me that is different.
I had the idea of using flowers as my subject matter from the start of planning my artwork. Throughout the planning I changed my ideas a few times when creating the thumbnail sketches, however, most of the designs had flowers incorporated within the ideas. Originally I was planning on creating one flower with no stem that represented a dahlia. This is because dahlias are my favourite flower, so I really wanted to incorporate that as the main idea. This later changed once I realised how much detail and how many techniques and skills would be needed to make a flower like a dahlia. I then decided to change the flower to one much simpler, leading to the idea of a rose. Once I had created an idea of how I wanted the roses to look, I settled on the rose.
I like the final artwork a lot, however, I still believe that there could be several changes and improvements that could be applied to makes the aesthetics look better and amplify my identity better. I have the belief that both of my test artworks had turned out better than my final artwork. I have reason to believe this because I like the colourway of the first test artwork with the purple and green and I like the way the colours were placed with the roses. With my second test artwork, the watercolour blended much better, however, I like the colour choice of my final artwork more than the second test. Another issue with my final artwork is that the size of the flowers is uneven. Although some people may find it more attractive with uneven sizes and it looks to be intentional, it was unintentional, and I believe it would look much better with the flowers being the same size. In my opinion, I like the colour choices for the final artwork, however I think they could have been changed to be in a different position which I think would much more improve the final artwork.
