Stepping Outside of the Box

I have never been okay with stepping outside of my comfort zone, but then again, who really is? But this AP Art assignment forced all of us to take a step outside of our art norms and explore different media, styles, and ideas. It did not take long for me to come up with a decent idea for this project’s concept, however, I had a difficult deciding how I wanted to pursue this idea. Typically, I would just use paint, but I knew I had to experiment with something different. So when I found out about water color pencils, I figured that they might be worth a try. My idea was to creature a timeline of “photographs” from my childhood with my best friend Izzy. I sketched out images of different moments of our friendship that I remember, starting with the day we met, to the hanging out every day, to then becoming two people who just said hi in the school hallways. I wanted to show the progression of a typical childhood friendship to illustrate that even those who were extremely close at a young age can drift apart simply by no other reason but time. Some people may be glad that they have separated from the friendships of their childhoods, but I personally miss some of them, especially my relationship with Izzy, which is what I decided to create my project about. I sketched out five image onto watercolor paper and when color them, I experimented a lot with different values. The center image is colored the brightest, signifying that this is the moment in which we were the closest. Then, the images become lighter, faded, and less detailed as they extend towards the ends of the piece, representing the moments in which we were no longer good friends. I strung all of these images together with a string I found in my childhood craft bin in order to represent the progression of our friendship throughout the years. Overall, I love my concept I created and I thought I did a great job representing the different values based on the level of closeness between the two of us in that point in time. However, through this project I discovered that watercolor pencils are not my forte. It would probably work better for me if I worked on bigger paper or created a more abstract image because the craftsmanship definitely needs work. The watercolor pencils blended too easily and made the lighter images look way more sloppy than I would have liked. Therefore, if I ever use watercolor pencils again, it will either be for a brightly colored imaged such as my center one or for a looser, less detailed image. But even though I am not entirely pleased with how my alternative media project turned out, it was good for me to experiment with a new media such as watercolor pencils so that I could then grow in my art skills even more.