Anika Mosby; Advanced Drawing

This drawing seemed like an interesting concept from the beginning. I've always enjoyed steampunk-like artwork, and given the macabre factor that much of my work has, I knew that I would lean toward the "war" side of this project to begin with. The dark subject matter, however, was basically the only thing I was entirely comfortable with. I'd never created any kind of blueprint, manual, mechanical design or even anything similar.  I did make myself familiar with more of my peers' concepts before getting started than I usually do, and I saw the benefits of that within my own thinking. Being an avid lover of anatomy of any kind, I considered incorporating the body into my work multiple times, and my peers who used a more human approach to the assignment pulled it off beautifully, but I was fearful that I may have come across too cliche or cheesy if I'd attempted the same, so I took that as a sign that it was time to leave my comfort zone behind and pursue somet

The works that I'm happiest making are deeply personal, and this semester I've been fighting that comfort and attempting to make works outside my comfort zone, unsuccessfully. Creating art with text isn't something that I normally do, especially not with the assignment guidelines and implications. I was much happier with less freedom in this assignment, as I've realized that this semester I seem to be struggling with setting my own guidelines than I normally am. This doesn't discourage me permanently, I'm familiar with waves of success and failure, but my art is certainly on a down swing. I began with researching artists. Christopher Wool, and Ed Rucha stirred my imagination but I couldn't land on one single idea. After my first page of notes, I'd decided on a scene of surgeons during an operation with text reading "better luck next time". After getting a second opinion that seemed less than confident in the content, I went back to my research.

Beginning this project, I felt overwhelmed by the number of drawings to do. Having done a similar assignment for the Venice study abroad trip over the summer, I wasn't as overwhelmed in the beginning of the current assignment as I would be near the middle/end. The 75 drawings I had to produce in Venice were under specific categories, and in turn, I put more thought into the image I produced and less on the style I was drawing in, and just let my drawing style shine through without focusing on it too much. With the 100 drawings assignment, I wasn't as overwhelmed by the number as I was what to draw.  I know my interests in art: my work is creepy but cute. Sometimes it has a statement, sometimes it's just for the aesthetic. I chose two works of my own art to create my list of 50 words from. One being a work made with dry pastel depicting a still life containing pink hydrangeas, a set of blue teacups, and a cat skull. The second work was a master copy oil painting of Jenny

When given the words “dream-like, surreal, and creepy” to work with for this assignment, I felt extremely ambitious. I have an interest in all things dark, strange, and somewhat unsettling. A few months ago, I stumbled across an article about why people find clowns so creepy, and desperately wanted to know, because I’ve never been afraid of clowns. The article said that because of our ability to recognize pattern, we know when something isn’t quite right. The exaggerated face paint throws normal facial features way out of proportion, raising red flags in our minds that the creature we’re seeing might not be human and may be a threat, even though our brains know that there’s a person underneath that giant painted smile and goofy red nose. In the same respect, people find dolls to be creepy because they’re meant to resemble humans, but are different in some ways, like oversized eyes. I used this concept heavily when creating the creatures for my drawing. For the larger creature I plan

Beginning experimentation, I found a bin covered with a thin sheet of ice. I broke the ice and piled it on sketch paper, then dropped ink onto the ice.  If I could have stopped the process here, it would have been precisely what I’d hoped for, but I used far too much ice and ink, so I repeated my experiment with less of both. Again, the paper was still far too wet. I realized this and attempted to take an imprint of the top with another piece of paper, but the imprint was very underwhelming.             With the weather warming up dramatically the week following this experiment, I was forced to venture to my own freezer to continue experimentation with ice. I used dinner plates to recreate the thin sheet of ice that I’d found outside. With less ice, I decided that using smaller paper would be a more efficient process to perfect my marks. In addition to ink, I used dry pastel and vine charcoal. I decided I would try dry media both on the paper before placing the ice, and over th