Death

-April-

This is the last piece I did, and it's interesting because conceptually it's my favorite, but aesthetically I'm unsure of it. The image came to me when my friend mentioned that she knew two sisters in art; one liked to draw skulls all the time, and the other always drew birds. After I had this image, I decided to use it to show a commonality in myths. Since myths were traditionally used to explain the unknown, and death is the ultimate unknown, all cultures have their own myths about death. Most cultures are interesting in that they depict death as being just like life, the only difference being that technically you're dead. In many cultures, the dead can come back and visit the living, and do practically anything that a living person can do. Some dead even do seemingly living-exclusive things like eat, play and keep posessions, since some ancient cultures would bury their dead with food, riches, toys and figurines, like Egyptian pharaohs or the Inca ice maiden. Anyways, I wanted to show this lack of change by having the dead birds feeding, something that typically only live organisms would do.

Like my "Microcosm" piece, I used this to experiment with my two medias of choice, paint and graphite. First, I sketched and shaded my birds, and then I painted over them with a watered down combination of white and a little pthalocyanine blue so that the shading would blend and show through. I used this for added contrast, since the birds are cool colors, very light and delicately shaded while the background is warm, dark, and just shaded with darks. The contrast makes it more interesting, but my favorite element in this piece is how the compostition is appealing and guides the viewer's eye around the piece.