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My Pencil Cactus Watercolor Painting

Screenshot 2019-12-19 at 12.21.22 PM

   My artwork is a painting of the Pencil Cactus. Its background has a mixture of purple and magenta. It makes the cactus look like its under a disco light. The element of color is most obvious in my work. There are many colors in my work that are clashing with each other. The cactus itself is orange, red, yellow, and green. With the background, these colors stick out. This is an overview of my work.

   My cactus and background are both painted in watercolor. The different techniques I used to paint my work were wet on wet for the background, and wet on dry for the cactus. This makes the background controllable, and prevents it from seeping into the cactus.

   This artwork was based off of the field trip and project we did in science. The science field trip taught me how plants reproduce, and showed me a possible selection of plants I could choose for this project. The science project was actually about the Pencil Cactus, which is why I chose it for this project. It gave me an idea of how the plant survives in the wild, and what it looks like, so that is why I chose it for this project.

   My goals as an artist are to create a neat piece of art that shows what I want it to look like, and what I want people to learn from it. This piece meets the first requirement because it clearly looks like the Pencil Cactus.

   I learned that you can create anything if you put your mind to it. I didn’t think I could paint such a complex plant, but I was able to make it look like how I wanted it to. The final piece is everything I wanted it to be. That is what a Pencil Cactus looks like.