Throughout my breaths of work, my goal was to highlight the various ways that we interact with animals on a daily basis. At any point in time, there are a lot of interactions between humans and animals of varying degrees. Some of these interactions are relatively safe, while others are dangerous. When going through these works, I wanted the audience to widen their perspective of the world we live in and be attentive to our impacts on both animals and the environment. When making my works, my intention was to be direct with how I went about displaying these methods. The titles of my works help emphasize that, “Hunt: White-tailed Deer”, “Farm: Sheep and Dog”. When trying to bring attention to something, taking an indirect approach can spread awareness but there’s a chance that the message won’t reach them. With my works, each of them (except Amur Leopard) takes on a way that humans interact with animals. Solace in Companionship highlights the pets that we’ve taken into our homes and care for. Hunt: White-tailed Deer, as the name suggests, highlights animals that we hunt for food and other reasons. Farm :Sheep and Dog shows the more utilization side of our interactions with sheep herding. Many mediums and materials were used to create these works. The majority of my works used graphite pencil, whether as the foundation of the work or for the entire thing. Amur Leopard and Solace in Companionship utilize watercolor and various materials in my possession respectively.
My influence for wanting to work on human and animal interactions was an article that I had read last year about the cultural view of the sloth bear(Melursus ursinus) in a village. The article went on to show that the village associated the sloth bear with bad luck, while the tiger was considered good luck and fortune. It made me curious to how other people interacted with animals, leading to these works.
Title: Hunt: Whitetail Deer Medium: graphite pencil Size: 14.9225 x 12.7 cm Intention: The reference for this work was from a hunting video, (Whitetail Deer Hunting - Big Buck Killed With Rifle by 70's Gamer) I saw while looking for a reference to draw the deer. The main difference from the video is the addition of the scope’s sight. For the hunt portion of my works, I have chosen the whitetail deer for its prominence in hunting within North America. Deer hunting is common throughout the United States, and even portrayed in various media like Bambi.
Title: Farm: Sheep and Dog Medium: graphite pencil Size: 14.446 x 20.955 cm Intention: Similar to Hunt: Whitetail Deer, this reference was taken from a border collie herding demonstration video. The purpose of choosing this reference was I wanted to find a real life example that showed both the person and animals working together instead of it just being the border collies. Dogs have been a pretty vital part of human history, and have been by our side since prehistoric times. Sheep are also a significant farm animal. When creating this work, getting the proportions accurate to the reference was a challenge as I hadn’t needed to scale so many objects, backgrounds, and foliage before especially while adhering to the vanishing point.
Title: Amur Leopard Medium: watercolor, graphite pencil Size: 24.13 x 22.86 cm Intention: This work used a reference of the Amur Leopard, a critically endangered leopard located around Southeastern Russia and Northeastern China. After losing most of its habitat to deforestation and being poached, there’s very few of them left in the wild. This is also an example of how humans have negatively interacted with animals. Referenced from the Chicago Zoological Society's Brookfield Zoo website.
Title: Protect: Giant Panda Medium: graphite pencil Size: 21.7 x 18.5 cm Intention: The Giant Panda, one of the most prominent animals that come to mind when you think of animals that are being protected currently. The bears, while cute and clumsy at times, need protection. Protection from various things such as habitat loss and poaching. They have an important part in their native ecosystem, helping spread seeds of the bamboo forests which keeps the forests alive. The giant panda is also the symbol of China, giving it significant cultural importance. One challenge I had while creating this was deciding on the amount of foliage that I would’ve been able to realistically put into this work. The reference had a plenty of intersecting branches of varying sizes and lengths, making details slightly more challenging to get correct. This work was referenced with the Giant Panda Cam from the Smithsonian’s National Zoo.
Title: Solace in Companionship Medium: photography, glue, Case-It Black Binder covering, notebook cover, black pen Size: 24.13 x 20.955 cm Intention: Pets are a common thing among humans and come in many different species and sizes. Throughout my life, I’ve always lived alongside a pet. They are an important part of my life and have helped me get through rough points in my life. People around the world also have likely been helped in some way by a companion, whether it be physically, emotionally, or mentally. It’s a unique bond between humans and animals that can’t be overlooked when considering human and animal interactions. Creating this, I used a photo of one of the community cats that I work with named Terror and divided his image into smaller shapes. Afterwards, I cut out various materials like the covering of an old binder I had to give the image a softer feel to it. His nose was made with the cover of a old notebook.