Painting Strokes

 

Original

Shaky Hands

Short Attention Span

Poor Vision

 

For my final project I wanted to stray away from digital art and experiment with a different media I don’t use often– painting. The idea behind my project was to show the “after effects” of a stroke. Similar to my previous project on Alzheimer’s where I tried to experience it myself, I wanted to see how certain symptoms would effect a skill one previously had. I chose three main effects, which were having shaky hands/lack of coordination, a short attention span, and poor vision. Ways that I tried inducing these conditions included holding the paint brush by the very end to give an unstable grasp (shaky hands). For the short attention span painting, I did it over the span of a whole day. It’s subtle but all the colors don’t match because my mixed paints would dry, and I would have to mix a new batch to continue. Also the background isn’t blended as nicely because the dry paints gave a harsher line. To emulate poor vision, I tried painting only through my peripheral so that I couldn’t clearly see where I was putting down my brush. When I had the idea for this project, I originally expected to see drastic differences between the first painting and the ones done under other conditions. However now that they’re all complete, it’s hard to tell which is which. Because I inflicted the conditions upon myself it’s not as accurate, but I think it’s interesting to see how skill might not necessarily be as affected as I first thought.