Jayden Song

The artwork that inspired my painting is called Dancing Mutants by Hernando Ruiz Ocampo who was born in 1911 and passed away in 1978. Hernando Ruiz was in a leading group of radical modernist artists in the Philippines and his paintings reflected on the harsh disasters World War II left on his home country. The natural leaves of his painting symbolises the lush sceneries and the beautiful landscapes of the Philippines.

The skilful bold colours used in this painting reminded me of Pop Art. Pop art was something I used to love drawing when I was young and these bold colours reminded me of it. So, I decided that my number was going to be 6 because the time this painting was painted was 1960 and the time Pop art ended was 1965.

I thought that Dancing Mutants had a very natural nature feel to it since it symbolises the lush sceneries of the Philippines and so I painted the Bonsai tree, the tree that most call the symbol of nature. I enjoyed painting the Green Background of my painting the most because when I was dabbing the green paint on the wooden canvas with a sponge, you got this very sophisticated rough texture and you could add red or yellow to it and even when red and yellow look nothing like green, it would make these beautiful hints of these colours in the background. There was also no direct shape I had to paint so even if I made a mistake, it would still blend into the canvas because the rough dabbing motion covers it up.

I painted the tree filling up the whole canvas because in the Dancing Mutants painting the whole painting is filled with leaves and nature, so I decided to have the same idea. When I was painting the tree, I used a very dark brown near the bottom and a lighter brown near the top to convey to the people who are looking at my artwork where the light is the most and where the light isn’t. I made the roots of the tree wrap around the canvas of the painting to add a sense that the tree is trapped since the original painting was reflecting in the harsh disasters of WW2. I pressed in more near the tree and let more of the tip of the brush paint the end of the roots since the thicker the root is, the closer it is to the tree and the thinner the root is, the further away from the tree it is. But most of the roots’ ends on the bottom of the tree aren’t shown in the painting as it would look too unnatural and short if I painted it to show the end of the root on the painting. For the main trunk of the tree, I added streaks of lines to it to make it look really earthy and natural and to make it look like a tree. I had to make it blend in with the tree because if the lines stand out too much, it wouldn’t look really natural so I had to be really careful with this part and make it blend in with the tree.

For the branches, I had to really spread it out as when I started, it looked like a normal thin and skinny tree and so to make it really look like a Bonsai tree, I had to spread the branches and the leaves and take up the whole upper canvas space of the painting to really make it look like a Bonsai tree. For the leaves of the tree, I added a dabbing technique as the leaves are not smooth and soft. I added a really dark green for the first layer to make a contrast between the background and the leaves as both of them are green. Then I added another layer of lighter green as the leaves of the tree aren’t one solid colour and to make it look more natural, I added a lighter green and to really clean the look of the leaves, I dapped a light lime/green dot on the leaves and a little bit of black to emphasise where the branches are under the leaves. For the background, I added a dabbing texture again to emphasise the war/nature kind of look. I painted this with a light green so the contrast between the leaves and the background wouldn’t be too hard to paint. I also added dabs of red and yellow as this added a hint of war-kind of like feel to the painting. My painting’s story is the exact opposite of Hernando’s Dancing Mutants.

My painting tells a story of a new start, and I thought that nature would be the best way to emphasise this. My painting reflects some of the things I am doing such as starting a new instrument, a new term, and that things are going to change as I get older and older.