The story behind this watercolor painting is based loosely on an album cover to an artist that I used to listen to back in elementary school, Imagine Dragons. I loved the album art of Evolve, a person floating in a beam of light, but I wanted to make it my own. I decided to have the floating person be in the sky, during the day. I also wanted the person to be facing where they were floating, rather than being dragged up and unconscious. All of this with the sunbeams and lens flare make this painting almost exactly how I wanted it to turn out. It represents free will and how your mind can take you to places where you can’t physically go.
One connection that I related to while painting this was the idea of making a painting that prodded. This painting was something I have never done before because I have never used any watercolor paintbrushes in Photoshop before. This painting also holds a memory to me because it reminds me of my childhood, back when I used to listen to Imagine Dragons. It reminds me of my simple routine and old friends. Judi Betts says, “I really like the affect of building up many layers of paint”. I relate to this, I found it satisfying to experience the learning curve of paint mixing with other layers, making new colors that I would not have intended.
I valued making the Photoshop Watercolor Painting in a different way than the Pastel Painting. The pastel painting was more straightforward because we had the other image to paint on top of, whereas this assignment we had to use our imagination. The Pastel Painting was a little mindless, I found myself zoning out while I painted, but working with watercolor requires focus and creativity, two things that I really valued about this assignment. I used to do quite a bit of analog painting so I enjoyed spending time learning how to apply this knowledge to digital painting. It was a lot more similar than I would have thought, but one main thing that was hard to get used to was the flow of the brushes because it was different for each brush.
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