Artist/Writer: Darren Dobbson
With this project, I explored what interested me as an artist and how my interests influence my artistic journey creating something that reflected me and my art style. Through a lot of self-reflection and analyzing my portfolio I noticed that I was really intrigued by color. I’ve always loved manipulating color to create fun and engaging pieces of artwork, which is why I decided that color would be a very important part of my submission. I didn’t want my work to have an identifiable image of my face, so I began to research ways to create an abstract self-portrait. I intended to include a mixture of life-like forms and geometric shapes. The sketch process was actually really difficult due to the challenge of combining these two elements together. Realizing that I only wanted to include one unifying symbol in each piece I created I chose hands. Hands to me represent my creative life force and my most important tool as an artist. I use my hands every second of every day and it’s another way of letting others see the ideas I have inside my head. I believe that the work I create with my hands is more important than any amount of words I could say.
Another idea I had was to draw out the weird and abstract thoughts I find myself doodling on my homework or on a napkin. Those sketches and abstract thoughts becoming a final piece really excited me. when figuring out colors for the pieces I didn’t have a method I just let my imagination go wild I didn’t want to plan that out too much and I changed my mind a lot. My goal was to have the colors be wild and eye-catching but work well with one another and create a nice harmony throughout the entire piece. The medium I chose for this project was digital. It’s a medium I’m very comfortable with and knew I could get the very bright saturated colors I was looking for. The process included sketching out the ideas in my sketchbook and then recreating them on my iPad Pro, putting in the base colors I thought I would work for the piece. Moving the work over to my computer I added the values and shading and really started to get into all of my crazy color choices. One of my inspirations for this piece was an illustration studio based in Brazil called Bicicleta Sem Freio. Their use of color and geometric shapes had a very strong influence on how I approached these pieces and I plan to pay more attention to this group of illustrators for inspiration on other projects.
If I were to continue working with this project, I think I would create a plethora of these pieces. Maybe even creating different types of creatures that correspond with certain colors. I would also like to create a book that included my sketches and other parts of the process not shown in the final design. The idea of having a physical copy of my work is something I want to create in the future.
You can Check out more of Darren's Work on his Instagram @Darren_Designs