Advanced Life Drawing : Hybrid Body

This class tends to challenge me to do art works that I never would want to do on my own. I've never been a fan of collage because it always felt too much like arts and crafts to me. Something about just gluing and pasting made it feel simple to me, even if what I was gluing on had more complex elements to it. I always felt like somehow I was skimping on the work since most of my pieces are all completely done by hand. However, I ended up really liking my piece and found it to be one of the more work intensive pieces I've done. I enjoyed working more with color and seeing where I could go with that as many of my works are in black and white. I started my research in nature as I knew I wanted to incorporate that aspect in with my body. I wasn't as concerned with the hybrid piece of it as I knew some interesting things could spring from that concept and there were many different doors I could choose from. I discovered the work of Johannes Stoetter first, examining how she manipulated the actual human body with paint to appear as animals and nature. I thought that it was an interesting take on 'hybrid' body as it technically falls under the description of meshing the two but not in the most traditional sense. I then turned my attention to Flora Borsi, an artist that uses her own body in photographs to mesh with the bodies of animals she's photographed. She actually uses makeup and photoshop to change her appearance in the likeness of whatever animal she chooses to incorporate. It was getting closer to what I was looking for but not quite. I wanted to go into more plant life for my piece in particular. I then found Nunzio Paci who paints parts of the human body in an anatomical sense but instead of using actual human anatomy replaces it with tree branches. He actually ended up being my favorite since he was the closest to the traditional form of pen-paint-paper art, so to speak. From there, Cal Redback and Liam Gerrad were the last artists I looked at, the former manipulating photographs to mesh with plants on photoshop and the latter using pen and ink to draw multiple animals meshed together as one, excluding the human body completely. I used elements from all of these artists including a few I decided on myself in order to create my piece. I started with the female body as she was going to be the main focus of the piece. I knew I wanted to add color so I decided on colored pencils to be my main medium. I knew it would be a challenge as I seldom choose to work with them. It actually ended up being a really great experience in which I learned a lot in the art of pencils. I then decided that I not only wanted to incorporate nature but also what was killing nature: the work of humans. I added in photos from National Geographic to add some more realism and then finally decided to add in a universal effect with the background. All in all, I'd say it was a success.