Reflection

My art piece is a watercolor of whales in the ocean. There is a symbolic silhouette of a human on the side, with a dark cloud extruding from his hand. The dark cloud is entangling the whales. The ominous dark cloud is a representation of plastic pollution endangering and entangling marine mammals, especially whales. The dark cloud coming out of the human’s hand represents human’s responsibility for plastic pollution in the ocean. I created this piece to communicate the responsibility humans have for plastic pollution in the ocean, which endangers many animals. I chose the medium of watercolor because water color is a very abstract medium, which helped me create the ocean background, and the shading of the whales. To make this piece I sketched the whales and filled in their silhouettes with resist, so I could wet the paper, drop different shades of purple, blue, and green drops of paint onto the paper, so the color blossomed in the water, and then rub off the resist which left the whales unpainted so that I could paint the whales separately and with detail. I decided to make this a symbolic piece, with detailed whales and just the silhouette of a human to show that the important part of my piece is the whales, and the ominous cloud is my representation of plastic pollution in the ocean.