My design started as a fun sketch from our skeleton unit. The project is meant to be a hand study but I talked to the teacher and got this skeleton hand approved because it is still technically a hand. The process for this drawing was definitely long and took several days. It started with a graphite base and then I added layer upon layer of colored pencils. During the making of this piece, I've also been working on trying to make more realistic works which is the reason for the light and dark colors in the bones as well as the number of lines in the grass. Prior to this and our skeleton unit, I had never really drawn skeletons or much of bones, except Dia de Los Muertos sugar skull drawings. The design with the flowers and vines comes from my love of nature and my slightly morbid belief that everything that came from the earth will eventually return to the earth. 

       I used several elements and principles of art in this piece. Some of the elements of art that I used were color, shape, texture, value, and line.  The use of color is rather obvious and the shapes used wound mainly consist of the shapes used to make the bones as well as the shapes used to make the flowers and vines. There are two main textures demonstrated in this piece that are meant to oppose one another, those are the texture for the rough grass and the smooth bone. The values are used to show the depth of the creases and separation in the skeleton hand. Lastly, line was used for the grass because the grass consists of many little lines all put together to give it the grassy textured look. The bright white bone against the dark grass is meant to emphasize it, along with the central position and the greater size than anything else in the piece. I tried to use the number of vines and flowers to balance out the drawing around the skeleton hand. 

       This drawing took a very long time to create and didn't turn out the best. There is most definitely room for improvement in all aspects of the piece. Regarding the grass, I would have found a faster and easier way to do the grass and likely made less of it. There are currently way too many layers of colored pencil in the grass and actually drawing it hurt my hand quite a bit. I would make the flowers more distinct and nicer. The bones in the hand would also have the anatomically correct separations in the bones and the texture would be smother. There were a couple of mistakes made in the process of this piece but it would not have turned out the same without those mistakes because mistakes are a part of the process.