Equality

My entry for the DeviantART Clothing Contest. One of the themes for the contest was "How do you envision art in your mind during the creative process?" Also, to "express your feelings about the current state of the world." I wanted to create something that could be a message both for artists, and for everyone else. One thing that was brought to mind was the 'rivalry' on DeviantART, and in other art communities both online and offline, between traditional art and digital art. Personally, I am a traditional artist, and I have contributed my share of "tradtional art is better than digital art!" cries. However, looking upon the whole world of art, every type of art has its beauty, meaning, and requires skill to create.

In the regular world, there are countless other examples of rivalries, some in violent forms (hate crimes, wars, etc). On the same hand, why can't people see that everything, although different in some ways, have their own positive points and beauty? Arguing over silly, small things, such as whether something drawn with a tablet or a pencil is better, does nothing but take away from the beauty and wonder that is there in the first place.

The reason I chose the specific objects in this piece are:

Falcon: I wanted to go for a sort of "eagle holding the arrows and olive branch" type composition, like on the great seal in the United States, but since this is meant to be a design for everyone all over the world, I decided to go for a bird that is found all over the earth - the peregrine falcon. Besides the fact that it can be found all over the world, it is a noble and powerful creature.

Traditional Art tools: On the left side (in the falcon's right talons), are materials of traditional art - a roll of paper, a paintbrush, and a pen.

Digital Art tools: On the right side (in the falcon's left talons), are materials of digital art - a tablet, tablet pen, and a mouse.

Following the requirements for the contest, I used only 6 colors (black, white, dark gray, light gray, yellow, and brown), and I have a large copy saved in .psd format, with each color as a different layer, in black. The final piece (with all 6 colors) is saved as a top layer.

This was designed to be put on a dark shirt (black, gray, navy blue, hunter green, etc), but, it can be used on a light colored shirt if needed. Also, doing about 90% of this in Photoshop was difficult, and gave me a taste of what digital artists do. It showed me that digital art definitely isn't as easy as I thought it was.