Dirty Messy

In this project, we were required to find a quote or a social justice topic of our choice that we felt like we wanted to portray and illustrate in a dirty messy painting. The quote that I chose for my project is:

"the anchor holds
though the ship is battered
the anchor holds
though the sails are torn
i have fallen on my knees
as i faced the raging seas
the anchor holds
in spite of the storm" -ray boltz

I found this quote to be very meaningful growing up on the coast and at the time of the assignment I was going through a rough time and it just seemed to fit perfect so I wanted to try and execute the quote into a painting. It took me a while and with some help to figure out how I wanted to create the design for this piece. I played with the idea of the anchor and text a lot. I had to get out of the mind frame of a graphic design piece because that is what I have been used to the past three years. It took me too long to get out of that mind frame but once I did it was smooth sailing, no pun intended, from there on out.




The process of adding colors and the process of really seeing the idea came quicker than the actual concept of the design. I actually used two squares for this piece. One of just plywood and other was a canvas that I had made out of old rugged canvas and I had added some additional weathering to it. I wanted the 2nd canvas to be drastically different from the first. I believe that I achieved that using a different medium, color palette and approach of design. I used my fingers and hands for that piece and was much more "messy" in my method.