Obvious as it is, digital painting is quite different from traditional painting. Starting out, I knew I wanted to create a piece that would question the viewer and get them to think about the progress of biology in creating a second intelligence through the development of AI by humanity. While stereotypical, I figured that the iconic symbolism of God imparting life unto Adam in Michelangelo's Creation of Adam would serve well to convey the meaning of humans giving life to AI. Through countless hours of watching digital painting tutorials and following articles on good painting techniques, I was able to find my own style and technique for creating the details in the robotic hand.

As can be seen, the fingers of the robot alone took the majority of the time taken for the whole project. Approximately 11 hours was spent creating the piece, with the left hand taking 9.6 hours of that time. This is because a lot of time was spent into making the lighting against the brushed metal hinges and reflections look accurate. As will be shown in a later piece, the technique I used to create the realistic hinge reflections came from a similar process I used for my Midas Touch art work.

Looking at the image as a whole, I hoped to convey both hope and dread or fear in terms of what the future has to behold. By alluding to The Creation of Adam, I hoped to convey the message that we will be the creators of a new species in a way, and in that sense, we are our own gods. The space background was used to tie in the rest of my space-themed artworks as a way to express the idea that humanity's next step in progress is to look toward the stars for expansion. At the time of writing, this couldn't be closer to the truth as SpaceX and NASA returns the America's access to space back to American soil this Saturday. This reflection of humanity's current progress in technology and the implications of raising an artificially intelligent being into existence is what I hoped a viewer might discern from gazing upon the artwork... A fitting quote, I believe, would be from Dr. Ian Malcolm in the first Jurrasic Park movie, "[we] were so preoccupied with whether or not [we] could that [we] didn't stop to think if [we] should."

The concept for Modern Midas was born out of the idea that wealth, specifically material wealth, is futile, random and, quite often, squandered. It is human nature to be so preoccupied with what things could be that we don't often stop to think about what is. I wanted to explore the idea of wealth, so I brainstormed a list of items that are as useful as they are taken for granted and that I believe could be an analogy for material wealth. While I did not realise it at the time, looking at the COVID-19 pandemic that has placed us in such a unique situation, both personally and globally, we realised as a community just how much we take certain things for granted, for example, toilet paper. Like money, toilet paper is squandered when we have it, but makes life so much harder when we go without.

While researching and ideating possible subjects for the piece, I came across a few objects or ideas that may have worked. Food, for example, is often thrown away or left partially un-eaten for some reason or another. Even though this idea of taken for granted but highly useful/necessary did apply to food, I figured that not enough people had experienced real starvation or hunger to understand the difficulty of such a situation. The usage of toilet paper as my subject, I felt, was perfect since it aids in daily life but at the same time, people have had an experience where they ran out or did not have enough of it. This unique position in the the way an object is regarded by society is further exemplified by the odd looks or emitted laughter that the artwork received when it was first revealed. An artwork about toilet paper is funny, however, especially now with the all-time-high rate of unemployment and especially touchy subject of wealth and money, it serves as a commentary on the state of our societal values and culture.

The artwork was made in one sitting over the span of 5 hours, with some minor adjustments made later on. The research and brainstorm took over a day's worth of ideating and reflecting.

My aim for a viewer's first impression of the artwork is to be that of befuddlement, curiosity and, hopefully, humour. This is so as to create a contrast between the emotions tucked away into the more profound meaning of the work: the futility of wealth in the sense that our existence is but a blip in the lifespan of the universe and that the piece of wealth we struggle and fight over so much is, in terms of the larger scale of things, of no meaning; the pain of those who are born into and must live in poverty, hunger or abuse in contrast to the struggles those in developed countries do not fear facing; the taken-for-granted-ness of simple things that developed countries and seemingly developed citizens have engrained in their cultures and lifestyles. The artwork is not just about toilet paper or wealth, it is about water (or the possible lack thereof), property, freedom, peace, education. Modern Midas was created to be a critique of the values and culture ingrained in today's developed society. Along similar lines, as Martin Luther King Jr. once said, "the hope of a secure and liveable world lies with disciplined nonconformists, who are dedicated to justice, peace, and brotherhood."

In line with the theme of hopes and doubts for the future, I used this artwork to explore the idea of space clutter. I had stumbled across a YouTube video explaining how, without prudence, humanity could turn the life-giving rock we call Earth into our own planetary prison. This is especially relevant now since SpaceX has plans to launch nearly 12,000 satellites to create a cheap, global satellite internet, with a possible increase to 42,000 satellites. I continued researching the topic and found out that space agencies world wide don't just track satellites but debris as well. According to National Geographic, space junk between 4 and 8 inches is expected to multiply 3.2 times over the next 200 years, with an even worse factor for smaller bits of debris. At that rate, it is not impossible to envision a future in which space travel is near-suicide due to the sheer amount of space debris in orbit. While the issue of space debris may not feel as personal or as big as, say, climate change or racial discrimination, I argue that it is still an issue that people, and more importantly, companies must be aware of since it creates the risk of humankind terrestrial confinement.

My inspiration for this piece came from two sources: Corran Brownlee's charcoal on paper art-style and my realisation that space is not as empty or clean as I had originally thought. 

Quick warning: I'll be saying a lot of numbers in the following paragraph, if it's too much to grasp, just skip to the ending sentence. So according to the European Space Agency, there is nearly a million objects between 1 and 10 cm in size orbiting the Earth and an estimated 128 million objects between 1mm and 1cm. The mean speed required to stay in orbit is ~28,000 km/h or ~17,000 mph; to put that into perspective, that's around 14.5 times the speed of sound, or ~6.6 times faster than a bullet. My point is, there's an estimated 128 million bullet-sized objects (moving 6.6 times faster than a bullet) circling the Earth, and that number is only expected to grow. Humans have had a nasty habit of 'trashing' the things we come into contact with. We did this with the Amazon and other forests around the world, we've done this with the Earth's atmosphere and terrain, and we're doing this with space* now. As 'out there' as the idea of space junk and satellites are, I argue that the issue of space pollution is of equal importance to that of pollution-pollution.

As for Corran Brownlee, to put it simply, the guy makes really cool art. The specific artwork that inspired the style of my own work was his Spacewalk piece. His unique ability to create a perception of depth on a 2D surface using solely charcoal is what really astounded me, and you can tell that his technique was mastered through years of honing and development.

As powerful as the message I hope to convey is, I don't think I did it justice in this artwork. While I do understand art is subjective and the message lies in the eye of the beholder, I would still prefer it if my own art has a central idea about which a viewer's own thoughts could revolve and grow from, thus hopefully piquing their interest in the topic, thereby raising awareness. On the contrary, I believe that for a first-time charcoal artwork, I did fairly well. Through my process, I was able to discover many techniques in how to manipulate the chalk on the paper. If anything, it would be insulting to Corran's mastery of the medium if I had been able to produce a work of similar quality to his on my first try.

Art is only as powerful as those who are able to experience it, and I don't think I did the issue of space debris justice by only showing this work at my exhibition. If there is any artwork I would like to revisit in the future to re-do, it would definitely be this one.

Almost every Wednesday at my high-school, a group of seniors would have their lunch with the headmaster to have a conversation. It wasn't about school or the IB, it was a conversation about life, about family, about music, about dreams... deep yet casual. One such topic that came up was the rise of plastic pollution within the school. Since I had gotten to the school in freshman year, the administration had been battling with reducing plastic waste on campus especially as with the rise of the issue of trash laying around in the streets of Rome. The idea of one of the world's most beautiful cities being bogged down by modern day pollution abhorred and enthralled me.

I knew I had to find imagery that successfully encompassed the deep contrast between the beautiful historical monuments and the modern day pollution that marred their beauty. Looking at some of the most common forms of plastic in everyday life, I figured the plastic bottle would be a suitable subject to symbolise pollution and likewise, the Colosseum for Rome's past.

I saw the trash next to the colosseum image in an article at the time and the view struck me: somehow beautiful, yet revolting. In a sense, it symbolises the rise of industrialism, capitalism and the malfunctioning of a bureaucratic system.

I was unable to use a professional camera to snap the image of the Colosseum that I wanted, so I searched for a royalty-free image online to use. In order to make the image square, I had to extend the originally rectangular photo upwards using Photoshop's content aware feature. Since I didn't want mislead people into thinking that I was the original photographer of the image, I blurred the rest of the work that did not contribute to the message I was trying to convey.

The left-most image is what the impressive original photo was. I searched for quite a while to find a photo that was as impressive as the one I chose but was unable to find any that matched my search criteria. Therefore, I had to use Photoshop's content-aware tool to create more clouds and foreground for my square aspect ratio (I wanted all of my digital works to be square, to create a sense of unity); this can be seen in the middle image. Finally, the image on the right is how I used a bottle model I created as a guide for the silhouette.

What was particularly difficult was maintaining realism during manipulation. While I had used the content-aware tool in Photoshop before, using it in this way really forced me to stretch my imagination and be creative in the way I edited the image. This was especially important because the tool's process is destructive in that it replaces pixels of the original image. Given the limited space and memory on my computer, I could only create new 'save' layers whenever I finished a silhouette.

The issue of climate change and pollution has always been at the back of my mind in some form or another. In my senior year, I wanted to be more active in my engagement with the topics so I joined Green Council, my school's club for people who want to engage in that sort of thing. The teacher leader of the club approached me one day, asking if I could make a poster for their knew Campaign for Plastic Reduction (CPR), an effort to, well, reduce plastic. She wanted the poster to be the face of the campaign, as well as to get the other international schools around Rome involved. I accepted the project and what came out was, in part, an inspiration for this piece as well. While I've already written much about my inspirations and the message I hoped the piece would portray, there's one quote I would like to leave, and it's the same quote that I used for the CPR poster: "A city of ruins, not a city in ruins."

Rise originally started out as a random sketch I was doing on my iPad. The general idea I was going for was an extreme positive emotion, along the lines of bliss, ecstasy or flow*. I wanted to create an image that evoked an echo of these experiences. Ironically, while creating it, I, myself, was experiencing flow as I played with ideas, colours and layout. While the IB guidelines do require a certain amount of research and planning go into the creation of a work, I wanted to use this piece to explore the opposite: to see how an artwork could be made progressively and, in a sense, accidentally.

A few years ago, I saw this incredible video of a woman making a technically perfect street art spray painting and one of the comments wrote 'why would I pay X amount of money for something someone made in such a short amount of time?' A response I read, and one that I highly agree with, is that it took her years of failed works and practice to achieve the technical skill required for her to do it in that time: time ≠ value.

In a similar manner, at the 2016 Summer Olympics, it was estimated that Usain Bolt made £5million per second of his 9.81s 100 meter sprint and as absurd as it sounds, the athlete spent years perfecting his technique. Likewise, my ability to sketch a human figure without reference (albeit not being a perfect rendition) came from countless hours of prior practice and art, and my know-how of using Procreate was a result of many more hours practicing, sketching, drafting and drawing.

Square: The style I made the clouds with was to create an added sense of realism which would contrast the line-art style of the figure. To create them, I used a cloud brush I found online and merged different techniques I had learned from tutorials online and observing other artists paint clouds.

Triangle: As shown, the piece was created with multiple layers of brushes and colours. The difference in styles between said layers was in attempt to contrast and merge styles from different art periods: Renaissance-like clouds and the haphazard strokes of colour from similar to Shadow Chen's dynamic pieces. In addition, the clouds were also used to balance out the energetic background by providing a source of stability or calm.

Circle: The black paint splatter and the strokes behind the figure were used as a way to increase the dynamic nature of the figure in contrast to his levitation-like posture.

As simple as the piece looks, I wanted to convey emotions of bliss or flow. In a way, this artwork is a representation of the disassociation I sometimes make when I am in a stressful situation; in my head, I leave my body and make my way to the nearest exit where I am free to rise up, beyond the clouds and look down below to where I physically am, and put the source of stress into perspective relative to the world as a whole. Through the piece, I wanted to bridge the gap between positive and negative experiences and create a visual connection between stress and flow.

When I started out in IB Art, I knew that one of my final pieces would be a large work depicting SpaceX's over-arching mission, to deliver 1 million people to Mars. Having been an avid follower of their launches and progress, I knew that the latest development in their road to Mars was what was called the BFR (short for Big Rocket) which was subsequently changed to Starship during the creation of the piece. Starship is a capsule and rocket all in one, a first of its kind considering its size and payload, with each rocket being able to carry 100+ people to Mars. Unlike my Touch and Clean-up pieces, I wanted to capture an image that felt daunting yet inspiring, hence the strict lack of colour, movement or detail.

The images above have been altered so that the lines can be seen more clearly. The image on the left is a picture of my first official sketch of As can be seen by the first sketch image on the right, the paper I started the piece on was not black. In hind-sight, I should have used black paper as I would have had more control over how the subjects came out (since I would not have been drawing on multiple layers of charcoal and fixative). Despite this, I feel that the matte-black of the final piece helped give the piece more life.

Shown in the square, I feel that I did a good job in detailing the rocket and creating the surface reflections on the stainless steel and tinted glass surface, albeit unrealistic reflections. On the right is a closer detail image of the lens flare hexagons, along with source from the upper-right hand corner of Mars. A particular difficulty with creating the white glow of light from the Sun was in keeping the orange colour of the planet's surface. 

As can be seen by the difference between the black of the space in the artwork and the black of the images' background, I edited the artwork in Photoshop to have a slightly warm tint, so as to produce an image that isn't too cold.

Among their future plans for Mars colony transportation, SpaceX will use Starship to bring artists to the moon on the #dearMoon project, announced in 2018. The project aims to bring civilians, specifically artists, to the Moon to create works of art for humanity to gaze upon for generations to come. Headed by Japanese entrepreneur, Yusaku Maezawa, the launch in 2023 will be the first civilian space journey to the Moon in history. Similar to the #dearMoon project, through my own Starship piece, I hoped to capture a sense of hope and interest in the future.

I feel as though we are living through a period of rapid acceleration and progress of humanity on all fronts. As a species, we are more connected than ever, and yet it is due to this that we turn on the television or read the news and see headline after headline of negativity. When creating this piece, I was going through a tough time of my own but the message within this artwork is, in part, what helped me back on my feet; for it is through our unwavering hope in a better future that humanity is able to make progress toward it.

To visualise my exhibition, I needed to create a thread that would link all my pieces together, that thread being hopes and doubts for the future. I consider the artworks above to be pieces of myself, and thus, it is my hope that through these works, I was able to impart to you, the viewer, a little hope and a little curiosity about what the future beholds.