Homemade wash (Concord grapes mixed with miscellaneous condiments), black archival ink, and colored pencil on 6”x6” watercolor artist tile

Medium

I have worked on a similar style to this particular piece before. In my Visual Fine Arts (VFA) class in high school, we had to go outside and collect foliage that we felt called to. We then created a wash from whatever we could find in our fridge, set up a still life with our chosen foliage, and began to create. I used this process with this piece because I enjoyed the creativity of making a homemade wash, the looseness of the colored pencil, and the attention to detail using a fine-micron pen. While creating the wash, I used items from the fridge that would provide me with as much concentrated color as possible. Luckily, we had some Concord grapes on hand; they tend to be extremely pigmented in color to the point that they can stain your hands and clothing. Aside from this, I don’t exactly remember what I mixed, but I certainly used some soy sauce, sriracha, and Worcestershire sauce. I boiled everything together and strained it into a beautifully pigmented wash. I then went outside to the nearby park to see what I could collect for my still life. I found some nice twigs and leaves, but as I was collecting, I found a used doggy poop bag. I was immediately inspired and created my still life on the spot and took photos. Once I had some proper references, I made sure to toss the bag.

Even though I had worked in this style and process before, I did learn (or honestly re-learn) a couple of things. I had entirely forgotten from the last time I had worked on this kind of project, that it’s very inefficient to use items from the fridge with any amount of sugar content. Once I finished this piece and allowed it time to dry, the surface became very sticky. Traveling with it became very difficult and so did scanning it. It also made it a bit difficult to draw over with the ink pen. I also learned that it is so important to plan pieces out and to allow yourself the time you need to fully process your work, so long as there isn’t a time crunch. In VFA, they pretty much made the creative process easier by assigning each step of a particular piece: the subject, thumbnails, color schemes, critiques, etc. In this particular case, I had a bit of a time crunch, as this piece was due for an event and I hadn’t planned anything out ahead of time. This caused me to rush and not give myself the wiggle room to test out washes, compositions, and styles.

If I were to change anything about this piece and the creative process, I would have used a different wash to avoid the stickiness from the grapes, possibly used a different colored pencil color, and made sure to properly plan this piece out by making multiple thumbnails before creating the final piece. Despite this, my favorite parts of the piece are the loose inked details and the ambiance of the piece. I plan to create more artwork in this style/process in the future.

The concept of this piece is that it has become customary in human nature to leave trash behind in places it doesn’t belong. I always find some sort of trash every time I visit my local park, trails, beaches, forests, rivers, etc. I find it disgusting. There’s always the most trash in places where there are nearby garbage cans that those people could’ve easily disposed of said trash. It is guaranteed that humans will leave trash strewn about the environment just for the sake of our convenience; even if it is just to save us from having to take an extra few steps.

Artist Statement