Open Assignment Project

"SEE SOMETHING SAY SOMETHING"

We were assigned a project to complete where we were allowed to use any medium to make anything we wanted. While the piece that I really wanted to turn in eluded me, I chose to do a painting of something that has been on my mind for a while lately: anxiety around the police. This presented a challenge, how does one convey this fear without resorting to obvious visual cues of violence? The answer came to me through this idea that I could go for the vibe of those old thriller movies, a "Here's Johnny!" moment if you will.

So I started to sketch out the composition using white conté of a group of people that are desperately trying to keep this cop out, but he isn't struggling at all.

 
 I decided to go for a non-realistic color scheme to convey that this is a highly charged scene where the colors are less naturalistic and more representative of the tense atmosphere of the piece. I also decided to implement heavy part making in specific areas like the light coming from behind the cop and within the arms to suggest force and movment. I unfortunately ran out of time to work on the finer details like rendering the hands more or making the door look more like, well, a door.