For the last two weeks of my project, I decided to forego my paintings of the day and focus my attention on larger paintings. I spent the first of these two weeks working on my painting of birds attacking people, and then I decided to return to an idea that came up in the first painting I did for senior project. In the first painting (shown below on the left), there’s a human figure with wings and an eagle on their shoulder. They are sitting in a tree with the moon behind them. This was the first painting I did after I bailed out of my original plan. I wasn’t sure exactly what the painting meant until I read some John Berger in week 4. In his book Why Look At Animals, he puts forth this idea that any look at animals can only be a commentary on our alienation from them (See CR #3 for a more complex explanation). So for my final painting, I wanted to find a way to explore this idea of alienation from nature, of my experience in reaction to the alienation of nature, in a painting. I think this is what I was unconsciously getting at in that first painting, and so I decided to make my final painting exist in the same world (on the right).

I knew for this painting it was worth it to really do all the steps. I did thumbnails to work out my subject and basic composition. I eventually landed on the idea of a figure mournfully watching themselves turn from a creature into a human. The figure is watching the scales fall off their talons, leaving behind a human hand. It’s as if the wind is whisking the feathers and scales away. Or that’s what I was going for at least. Once I landed on this idea, I did I bunch of variations on the composition — keeping in mind basic composition building concepts. After I landed on something I liked, I did a bunch of color studies with colored pencils and then began painting. The images below are in the order I made them.

 

 

Here’s the final painting