Notes 

My inspiration for this work was that I wanted to show my change since moving. I wanted to express in my art how I'm able to be myself and express that instead of being a black and white person who just follows the crowd and is the same as everyone else. I started by using acrylic and water to stain the canvas. After this I added book pages from my favourite books, they include The Outsiders, Alice In Wonderland, The Perks Of Being A Wallflower, and Girl Interrupted, and I used watercolor to paint the overtop of the pages. I used acrylic to paint the people, buildings, and phoenix. Then I painted with watercolor to add a fire and light effect behind the phoenix. Finally I went over the phoenix with prisma color, colored pencils, to make the phoenix stand out more. I hope that when viewing my painting people will see the contrast between the black and white people and the colored phoenix. I hope that when they see this the idea of being yourself and standing out in a crowd gets across to them. My inspiration was how since moving here I've tried more and more to be myself and not just follow the crowd of people. The main decision I faced was what mixed media I wanted to use. It was between paint or something 3D for the phoenix. I didn't go through many difficulties in this painting. The only one was the phoenix blended in too much with the background so I made it bolder with colored pencils. I think the only thing that I would've done differently is make the drawing and painting of the phoenix better and add more detail. The research that went into it was I had to find different symbols for the messages I wanted to get across. From this research I found out that "999”and a phoenix represents rebirth. I think the best aspect from my painting is the background, buildings, people, and the wings.