Concentration #1

This is my first choice project and I got to go ahead and start on my concentration. My concentration is the goal to portray real world problems in my art through the use of mechanical and organic organisms & objects. The big problem I chose for this specific one, is smoking. Over 50% of my family smokes or uses tabacoo and I hate it so I thought I would do a piece on it. Too many people are getting sick because of this God awful substance. It, like so many other hatful things, is man made. This is the idea behind things being mechanical in my work. If things are man made, they can't be completely harmless no matter what people tell you because they are UNATURAL. 

To start off my project I drew a set of lungs to create one (left) to be a healthy, natural lung, untouched by any man made substance. It has a tree in it to stand for trees that give us oxygen to breathe and without them we wouldn't be. So I could spin some deforestation off of this too! Then, another (right) to be a smokers lung who has given in to so many temptations for whatever reason. 

 

I began filling in empty spaces in the lungs with gears and what not in the right lung with black and white charcoal pencil and blended it. Then on the "healthy" lung I used prisma pencils to do the bark for the tree inside and then watercolor for the leaves and rest of the lung. 

It looked very good to me, but not complete. It needed something more. I thought about doing a full spine all the way down the back but decided against it because I didn't think it would look that different or take up enough space. 

So I decided to start another part of the human anatomy- the ribs. I began by making sure they matched up across from eachother and then started filling them in. I used solid black for the "dead" lung because it's so dark and made the lung pop and I think it's just what it needed. Then i used brown to work on the other one to make it still dark but a little bit more suttle. 

To finish off the project, I added water color spouting out the top and dripping down the bottom to allow movement since the piece was previously so restricted. I'm extremely satisfied with how it turned out. 

I was very happy with my finished project and I think it turned out very well. It was extremely different than what I had anticipated it being like when it was done but I liked it more than my original idea. I hope that the message behind it is seen by everyone who looks at it.