Tension

    First post of Art 3! I can't believe that one year ago I had just begun Art in high school. It has been a wonderful ride and I am so grateful for every experience. For this mini-assignment, we were given the theme of "tension," first day of class, no boundaries, just go. We began by brainstorming lists of things that came to mind when we thought of tension. One thing that my group came up with was the idea of not belonging and how that can create tension. So I decided to play around with that as a figurative thing and thought a lot about contrast. That's how I came up with this!
    I began by doing a watercolor design on the whole page. Then, I covered the paper with black acrylic paint, but left the shape of a couple flowers. When the black dried, I then proceeded to create white flowers to balance the contrast between the black and the color. While this shows literal contrast, it also reads the theme of "tension" because the color flowers stand out among the rest.
    While this was just a little exercise, I really like how it came out. I don't usually do abstract work like this, but it was a neat experience to be able to not use value or realism to still get my theme across. I was able to practice certain skills such as composition and line fluidity. For example, I used different sized lines to show emphasis on certain flowers, rather than value in the petals. It was interesting to work on these skills and see how that will be able to transfer in future projects!