Suture
Natasha Oslinger
This is the feeling of a hollowed out core, this is the feeling of illumination creeping through the incurable cracks in your chest. I began this project with the intention to use colored pencils on paper as my sole medium. With these materials, I planned to create an art piece that encapsulated the feeling of emptiness while remaining fairly simple, but, my final product ended up being very different from my first draft. I began the piece by sketching a woman floating in the foreground with a hole in her chest. Behind her, was a ‘no vacancy’ sign, commonly found outside of hotels. I intended to use neon colored pencils to draw the sign, but, whilst at the store looking for said colored pencils, I stumbled upon neon thread and thought I would challenge myself by embroidering the sign. Since this was the first time I’ve attempted to use colored pencils to execute a semi-realistic art piece, it took me quite a while to become proficient. I started on a completely different paper than I ended up on because once I finished the woman, I found that the size of the paper didn’t allow enough area for the level of detail I wanted to use. But, after several attempt, I was able to utilize layering and shadowing to make what I thought to be a semi-realistic foreground. Next, I started the background by using a needle to poke holes in the places that I would be embroidering. This was the most time consuming part of the whole process, and resulted in many puncture wounds. After I established the places I would need to string, I used a thick needed and brightly colored thread to stitch up the holes in the page. I titled the piece “Suture” to provide a deeper meaning to the art, considering a suture is an open wound sewn shut with needle and thread. The greatest challenge I overcame was staring the project over from the beginning when I realized my paper was too small; finding reference photos was also a challenge. I wanted the woman in the photo to be curvy in her figure and not to display the typical european features that many artists grow accustomed to. So, finding the type of pose I wanted for the body type I was looking for took some time. Another challenge was threading the string, it took around 4 or 5 hours in total to do all of the string work, but overall, I was happy with the way it looked. I am very happy with the final product, and despite a few roadblocks, the project went smoothly.
Natasha Oslinger
This is the feeling of a hollowed out core, this is the feeling of illumination creeping through the incurable cracks in your chest. I began this project with the intention to use colored pencils on paper as my sole medium. With these materials, I planned to create an art piece that encapsulated the feeling of emptiness while remaining fairly simple, but, my final product ended up being very different from my first draft. I began the piece by sketching a woman floating in the foreground with a hole in her chest. Behind her, was a ‘no vacancy’ sign, commonly found outside of hotels. I intended to use neon colored pencils to draw the sign, but, whilst at the store looking for said colored pencils, I stumbled upon neon thread and thought I would challenge myself by embroidering the sign. Since this was the first time I’ve attempted to use colored pencils to execute a semi-realistic art piece, it took me quite a while to become proficient. I started on a completely different paper than I ended up on because once I finished the woman, I found that the size of the paper didn’t allow enough area for the level of detail I wanted to use. But, after several attempt, I was able to utilize layering and shadowing to make what I thought to be a semi-realistic foreground. Next, I started the background by using a needle to poke holes in the places that I would be embroidering. This was the most time consuming part of the whole process, and resulted in many puncture wounds. After I established the places I would need to string, I used a thick needed and brightly colored thread to stitch up the holes in the page. I titled the piece “Suture” to provide a deeper meaning to the art, considering a suture is an open wound sewn shut with needle and thread. The greatest challenge I overcame was staring the project over from the beginning when I realized my paper was too small; finding reference photos was also a challenge. I wanted the woman in the photo to be curvy in her figure and not to display the typical european features that many artists grow accustomed to. So, finding the type of pose I wanted for the body type I was looking for took some time. Another challenge was threading the string, it took around 4 or 5 hours in total to do all of the string work, but overall, I was happy with the way it looked. I am very happy with the final product, and despite a few roadblocks, the project went smoothly.