Activist Blog Post Final

1.  In the beginning, I was toying with a lot of different ideas to follow through with for my final projects. You can clearly see in my sketches there was not an overlapping theme, and when I finally followed through with the idea of suicide I also had to decide what aspect I wanted to convey to spread awareness. When I realized I liked the idea of symbolizing death with the raven, I did more research and ended up at another dead end. Suicide is an extremely dark and saddening topic, I wanted to the topic justice but at that time I was stuck. That's when I remembered the semicolon project, an organization spreading hope through it's symbol of suicide prevention and mental illness awareness. They turned a punctuation mark into a symbol of hope and choosing to continue your story. That's when I wanted my piece to be more about hope.

2. In my piece, after struggling to find the right path, I wanted to show  the continuation of life and rising from the darkest of places. As I stated earlier, I found much inspiration from the semicolon and what it symbolized, and that's when I knew I wanted to incorporate it into my piece. I knew that the raven was not fitting in with the message, and finally thought of the phoenix. People suffering from these mental illnesses or suicidal thoughts face extremely difficult challenges, and their bravery and courage keeps them rising from the ashes. The semicolon and phoenix worked so well together, that I even meshed them together, something that you have to take the time to see. My goal is to always give the project layers, and if the audience doesn't know what the semicolon project is I still wanted there to be meaning. That is why I also added a book with flying pages, almost like the book of life continuing as well.

3.  I think I was successful in conveying my message because people still found things they related to and understood about my piece. For those who don't know about the semicolon project, they still found other topics branching off of my that related to my topic and also made me see it from a different perspective. Most knew the symbolism of the phoenix and continued to investigate from there. That's when they made connections that were either on track, or was an entire new idea that I really enjoyed and understood.

4.  In the composition, I wanted the bright oranges, red, and yellows to really pop of the bird. The pages were a little difficult shading because they are obviously white, but shading them with the brown tint made them slightly burned, aged, and more lifelike. As if rising from the darkness, I thought keeping the background dark at the bottom and fade into a light grey would keep the contrast from the bird but also another layer of symbolism. I also thought the fading background and fire would look better in a medium like watercolor so I could easily change how the paint moved. Keeping the bird as the main focal point was important, so putting it in the middle with its fiery color scheme was a successful decision.

5. Even if I didn't choose this topic, I know that I wanted my piece to have meaning and shed light onto a topic in my own creative way. After completing this project, I am very happy with what I decided to do. The semicolon project is a beacon of hope, it was only right that I used that aspect as well. I truly love what they are doing, and I am not doing this project just for supporting their cause, but I loved to share what the amazing team is doing with more people. We need to embrace the differences we all share, and understand the stigma around mental illness and suicide and make a change.  I made this as an art piece and not a poster hanging campaign, but if I have infinite time and money it would be extremely rewarding to add text and hang them up all over the country.

6. Paper is an extremely awkward thing to draw, it is extremely thin and unpredictable in how it will move. Putting this flat object into the wind and as if was blowing away was very difficult, also because I had to add shading to add to the fluidity with realistic shades. I also didn't want to draw the outline of them in the same shape close to each other, so I needed to think of where they fit into the composition as a whole. It challenged me with its small surface area and strange movement, but overall I definitely learned a lot about making things seem more lifelike and how different thing move. The back ground was the opposite of the paper because it was too much area. The fading was not working as well as I had hoped and in the smaller area I could not fit in the desired amount of pigment. I just tried to work slowly and dab away if there was too much water or ink, but I would defiantly change things if I did it again. For example, switching the order in how I painted the background and bird.