My art nouveau scratchboard project is an urban-themed work of art. A gangster dog wearing a baseball hat and a gold chain is the focal point, which is located on the bottom of the scratchboard, slightly to the right. A flame design surrounds the dog, bringing attention to it. Between the dog and the first flame, there are lines pointing to the dog’s head. Surrounding the flames are floating squares based on a checkerboard-typed patterns. There are solid gold squares alternating with larger squares. The larger squares have some black in them, but they each have a small, gold square inside. The small gold squares “lean” inside the large box towards the dog’s head. Bordering the whole picture are bricks, which really add to the urban theme. To add a touch of refinement to the very dynamic pattern, there are three wines with flowers growing along the bricks in the lower left, upper left, and upper right corners.
I used contrast in this project. I used a lot of organic/geometric contrast and gold/black contrast. For organic/geometric contrast, I went from straight lines, to flames, to squares, to bricks, to vines and flowers. The organic shaped flames definitely attract attention amidst all of the geometric patterns. For gold/black contrast, I went from thin gold lines to bold gold flames, to the x’s surrounding the flames. I found that this gave the impression of thin smog. Then, I went to bold gold boxes and black boxes with a little bit of gold. Then, there were mostly black bricks. The outlines of the bricks were thick and gold, and there were gold vines and flowers growing on the bricks.
I like the general appearance of my artwork. I really love the flames popping out. Though I like my artwork from afar, I hate looking at it up close, because then I can see all the minor mistakes. Though I really love to draw the flower designs I made, I think that they don’t really belong on the scratchboard, as they are elegant amongst a really dynamic, awesome design....