Tested (2020)
It is a continuation and revamps of the last piece to try a different style and perspective. It was done digitally as a means of further practice with digital art. In this piece, I designed the rat character myself, unlike the last in which references were used. The eyes of the rat in this piece are red in order to bring attention to the malice put upon the animals that must undergo experiments for the benefit of humans at the cost of their own health. The bright green dropper emphasizes how toxic the chemicals used in beauty testing or even medicinal testing are to animals. The rat has been made more threatening in this version as a way to bring further attention to how cruel it is to test on animals unnecessarily. Making the rat in my own vision also allowed me to do some character design.
Burned (2020)
This piece is a commentary on global warming and a specific consequence: forest fires. This piece is a surrealistic approach in which the trees are anthropomorphized in order for people to grasp better the urgency of the current state of the world. It is done in greyscale to shed focus on the subject rather than the beauty. The greyscale also adds to the dark tone of the piece. The piece highlights that trees are, in fact, living creatures and that the burning of a forest can cause many mammals to lose their home. This piece is darker than most of my pieces as this topic is more frequent and deadly than most.
Deployed (2020)
This piece is a commentary on war. It uses surrealism to make it more accessible to the general public and greyscale to bring focus on the subject rather than the beauty. In this piece, I attempt to compare and contrast war to a game of chess. Both require calculation, planning, winning against an opponent, and taking those who belong to the other side. Players can play a rematch in chess if they fail, whereas war is much more serious and shrouded in death. By presenting war as a game, the rules of which are, for the most part, understood by the general public, the severity of unnecessary fighting is hopefully easier for people to understand. As with chess, in which a piece is only taken when necessary for a player to win, war should only be practiced as a last resort to a disagreement between countries or groups of people.
Caged (2020)
This piece is a commentary on the treatment of animals in zoos. It is a surrealistic approach in which animals and humans switch places so that it is more personal to the human race, thus making it easier for people to sympathize with the animals. Zoos are generally only for the amusement of people and occasionally for the preservation of a species. Even animals such as pandas, represented in this piece as onlookers to the pain of the people trapped inside, are kept in zoos unnecessarily. Though many animals featured in this piece are endangered, they could all benefit more from a peaceful, open, government or privately maintained preservation in which the animals would be able to run free. In zoos, animals are kept in a confined space and gawked at by people who cannot understand the stress a zoo puts them under. The people are greyscaled to represent their somber attitude.
Portrait: Young Boy (2020)
This piece was completed as part of a memory project in which children from third-world countries sent their portraits to the school to have them drawn by National Art Honors Society students and then sent back as gifts. This was one of my first digital pieces and sparked my love for digital art. It was excellent practice for facial proportions as well as skin tone, both of which I have struggled with before. This took approximately two weeks of work to complete. From this piece, I have learned the importance of the use of texture for a person to look completely realistic, as I think this piece lacks a little in that perspective. I have been improving my digital skills since creating this piece but I am still proud of it because it was the first digital work I had completed at the time.