Final:
Artists Develop Art Making Skills
With this piece I have gained a lot of experience with Chalk Pastel, i have never worked with the medium before and when i was planning out this piece i was thinking about what medium to use, and Chalk seemed like the best option to give the piece the image that i had. It was a great chance to work with Chalk and use it in a lot of different ways that worked really well, and establishing a good foundation for my knowledge about the medium and it was fun to have something turn out extremely well with a completely new medium.
Artists Solve Problems
I had some trouble with this piece with getting the contrast and realistic look that i wanted to have for it. It took some work and thinking about where to place the colors to get just the right about of contrast and value ranges. When i was working with the silver stripes around the eyes i had tried to make it look as a part of the skin by blending, but that wasn't working the way i had hoped and instead it looked just like another value in the skin, after adding the white line through the blended part that's when it really popped and i got the look i needed as well as the contrast that makes it look a lot better. The neck was also difficult to get it to have that rounded neck look and so it took a couple of tries to get the shading and value just right, but after adding the white spots it really stood out and gave it the last thing it needed to look realistic.
Artists Reflect
Looking back on this project i'm really happy with how the Chalk turned out, and that i took that risk with a completely unfamiliar medium. The ideas i had planned out for this piece was for it to be really colorful and bright and pop like how a lot of seahorses look, but that didn't exactly translate on page and so i had to shift from it being really bright and colorful like i wanted it, to subduing it and adding spots of color to pop, the idea of adding the white dots was more of a whim of the moment, it was never something i had planned and certainly hadn't tested out before i did it, but that is really one of the defining aspects of this piece that ties it all together and makes it look the way it does, without these dots it wouldn't be as convincing of value change or 3D appearance.
