Teacher Name: Ms. Grimm
Grade: 12
Materials: Patterned paper
Dimensions: 9” × 12”
Artist Statement: This artwork was made to be submitted as an independent school project. My previous art assignment was a patterned-paper collage project; working with patterned paper was fun, so I used this school assignment as an opportunity to experiment more with collages. Because I had a fascination with birds, their varied looks, and their behaviors, I decided to choose a bird as my topic of interest. My first choice was the Victoria crowned pigeon. However, I quickly realized how complicated its lace-like crest would be and that it might not translate well into a collage. My second choice was the bearded reedling; its perfectly round shape in winter was endearing to me and also easier to work with. I searched and printed out an image of the bird, then determined the value of each color on a scale of 1-4 and label it with that number. Next, I traced the image’s outlines on tracing paper to transfer it onto my final project paper and the selected patterned paper. I used a white sheet with light blue and brown stripes as the background because snow has a slightly blue tint. Both the top and bottom half of the background are part of the snowy ground, but I decided the top half should have vertical stripes because the stripes would look like distant trees on a white sky and so that the background wouldn’t look monotone. The bottom half has horizontal stripes to distinguish it from the top half. The bird was made with an assortment of sheets with complementary colors with the exception of pink; the pink sheets represented the gradient on the bird’s sides. This project took considerably more time than I expected, but I was content with the result despite its simplicity. This experience and the mistakes in my previous artwork helped me understand that I can efficiently work by first starting on the general areas before focusing on the smaller details.
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