Anguish through Religion: A Junior Conceptual Project by Maxwell Weber (2015)

I am exploring the feeling of anguish through the experience of religion. For this conceptual project, I used charcoal for the drawing aspect and Adobe Illustrator to add in a few digital pieces. For the initial stages of the assignment I used charcoal to make the angel wings and falling feathers. I then proceeded to make the wings darker by rubbing in the charcoal with my fingers. Then I had the idea of spreading the charcoal outward from the wings to create the smear or dark glow effect. I proceeded to scan my image. I had to scan three different portions of the drawing, because the original drawing was very large, then sliced them and stitched each image together. I used the pen tool in Adobe Illustrator to make a rough outline of the silhouette of a suit. Then I added the small white area the show off the tie to make it clear that what I had made was actually a suit.

My final product reflects my concept of anguish through religion. My image shows this through the darkened wings and falling feathers. This was made to show the fowl state that the wings are in as if they are dying and falling apart. This was meant to symbolize the anguish one would experience when struggling with their religious faith. I used a faceless man to show that this could happen to anyone, there is no specific story behind the show character. The figure is also slumped over to the right a little. This was meant to show the tired state one would experience when suffering from anguish or any other intense feeling of emotion.