Final Essay

Everybody recognizes a sunset. It is a part of our visual world that most people consider beautiful. As the sun sets, it paints the sky in several different shades and hues. The picture that I found of the sun setting also had the moon in it. This picture grabbed my attention because we are used to seeing one at a time. So I decided to do a couple drafts of the picture with colored pencils.

In the first set of changes, I made the water in the original picture into a brick wall. To me, this was changing the serene atmosphere of the lake (or other body of water) into a more energetic mood. I made the sun a little bigger than it was in the original; I wanted the sun to be the main focus of my drawing. Because the sun was setting, I added a face to the sun and had its eyes closed like it was going to sleep for the night. In the top left corner, I added a crescent moon instead of a full moon, and a north star. I made all of the stars red and had them hanging from the sky from strings.

In the second revision of my drawing, the first big change that I made was turning the paper. The first time I drew it horizontally, this time it was aligned vertically on the paper. I added a building to the left side of the page. I thought this added to the urban feeling of the wall. This time, instead of having only red stars, I added stars of several different colors to the sky. I still was not happy with the picture because now the right side of the page seemed empty compared to the side with the building.

In the third and final draft of my drawing, I decided add many more buildings into the background and rotate the drawing so that it was horizontal on the page again. Several people suggested putting a plane on the right side, but that was not the mood that I was going for. All across the back of the page I made skyscrapers, some taller than others, some skinnier than others. I colored them in darker colors so that they would stand out against the light sky. I also decided to go back to only red stars. I thought the all of the different colors drew too much attention to the small detail of stars.

I think that each of the versions of my drawing were different but similar all at the same time. The brick wall and sun held them all at a similar level. It was the smaller details that changed the most. At first it was a very empty drawing with only a brick wall. Now it shows the sky line of a city. It has changed significantly from the original picture of a sun set on the water.