My artwork is a large but proportional, betta fish that fades from bright, vibrant color to bone. I use colors such as maroon, red, violet, turquoise, and yellow for the head and the neck. Then, those colors fade into a skeleton like figure. This artwork is to express what is happening to the fish and the coral  in the ocean due to global warming. As I have shown in my art, all the colors of the beautiful ocean are disappearing. For this reason, I have named my art piece “absence†represent the colors the Earth will soon not have and never be the same without. The colors of my fish are not the only thing that make it special. The fish is also drawn to show that it is still moving by having its tail slightly turned to the left as if it is still in the middle of a swim.
To create my artwork, I first drew it in a lead pencil. Later I used color pencil to fill in the large fish. Towards the head of the fish, my coloring is more vibrant and dark. I used bright colors like red. In the middle of my fish, I also used bright colors but I colored a little lightly as I had to fade into a bone. The tail of my fish was also done in colored pencil but instead I used dull colors to surround the white bone. Some of the techniques I used were blending and fading. For the fading I added strokes of one color into the other to look like they faded. Since I had colored so darkly, this was a little difficult but gradually, it worked. I used this technique from the maroon to the red and the red to the purple. I used the blending for the lighter colors like yellow and light blue. Since they were colored lightly, it was easier to blend. To blend, I scrunched up a kleenex and rubbed it along the paper. This gave a blurry look.
Although art may be fun to look at, all artists have a true meaning behind a work of art. The big idea behind my artwork is to show what will happen to the oceans if global warming on Earth doesn’t stop. Fish populations are slowly decreasing and colorful coral reefs are not able to produce their skeletons. They are turning white. Also fish aren’t able to reproduce due to global warming. This artwork was inspired by my science teacher, Mr. Humphrey, and my science project for 8th grade. My teacher really cares about animals and the fact that they are going extinct due to global warming. This inspired my science project on coral reefs and fish which then inspired this art project. My artwork represents an issue that many people aren’t considering. By polluting the Earth and wasting electricity (just some examples) we are causing the innocent fish to not be able to produce their own species. Global warming is definitely having a negative impact on our planet and this artwork was to made to express the sadness/panic the fish are probably feeling and to speak for the ocean.
My goals for this artwork were for it to clearly show the damage global warming is doing to the ocean. I wanted people who walk by my artwork to feel that they have to make a change on our planet for the Earth’s sake. Some of my goals as an artist are for my artwork to be special and portray a message. I also wanted my artwork, especially for this piece, to turn out how I imagined it would in my mind. This piece has definitely helped me reach my goals because when I look at it, I see bright colors fading into a dead skeleton. I think most people will understand that something bad is happening to the fish based off of just that.
Overall, some things I learned when creating this artwork was that global warming is not just harming humans but also animals in many unfair ways. Animals have not been doing anything to the planet to cause global warming but it is negatively impacting them. This final piece is pretty much what I imagined. This is because pf the fish’s structure, color and message. The structure and color are what I wanted my fish to look like. The fact that the colors are fading into a bone also portray a very important message. I will remember this artwork and probably create many more like this one to speak out for the animals that are getting unfair treatment due to humans.