Grace • 17 • Waterford

16-18 Category   •  2024
Many people take for granted how inspiring and intricate day-dreams and childhood dreams can be. They act as a fuel for my imagination, and help me come up with ideas I find meaningful in my art. This is what I wanted to represent in this drawing. The sea in the drawing has many different meanings. Before I decided what I would make, I knew I wanted the art piece to be related to the sea, because sailing is something that I spend a lot of time doing and it's grown on me to the point where being at the sea makes me feel at home. The girl in the drawing is being lost in a simple daydream. She's drowning in her own thoughts and imagination, depicted as the deep sea around her. I made the length of the drawing longer than my usual pieces, I wanted to emphasize the "deepness" of the sea (the daydream) she's drowning in. Imagination is broad and means many different things for everyone. Sea dragons represent personal untapped potential, I wanted the sea dragon in this piece to represent the potential our imaginations can hold. It's deep in the ocean of our imagination, but once we catch a glimpse of it, it's an incredible sight. I believe that our childhood is an incredible source of imagination and our long lost dreams can still be a source of motivation even after many years. I wanted to give an aspect of child-like wonder to the piece to show the importance of our childhood dreams. To do this I drew in a style that is similar to a child's drawing, a messy crayon-like texture matched with the cartoon style. I did this using multiple layers of the gouache mix and bleed pen digital brushes. Although realism is a preferred style in art, I think different styles present a different approach to reality itself and it helps make someone's art more unique.