Dancing in the Deep
By Annabelle Zhang, Grade 11
About This Art Piece: The Artist’s Statement
My inspiration for this piece was initially an underwater ballet. I remember seeing a video of an incredibly elegant lady dancing ballet inside a sunken ship underwater a long time ago and I wanted to do something similar. I started to brainstorm, but since this was a totally new experience working on such a huge canvas, I needed to plan well and cautiously draw each step to prevent spending more time and paint to do this.
The process: after I had my basic thoughts planned out, Pinterest helped me find inspiration for more exact details on what I envisioned. In the end, after lots of edits and lots of thinking, I settled on adding another element to the piece, which was ballroom dancing. Ballet was not the choice to go as I didn’t know ballet and it seemed complicated, I figured it would be bad if I messed up the moves. Ballroom dancing seemed like it would fit underwater near a sunken ship and I wanted to create a sense of story in my art. Most importantly, I had already begun envisioning scenes in my head and it was something very special. I wanted it to seem like its own world, apart from the daily hustle of the society on land, serene and undisturbed. As I was drawing, I started adding all the elements of a story in my head, making small adjustments from the original draft as I went. This was something magical and whimsical hiding underwater, unlike the average underwater kingdom one would imagine from stories like the Tale of The Fisherman and The Turtle or Atlantis, none of that glorious polished posh look, I knew that this was going to be a beautiful, sad story.
Although I cannot use my words well, they are expressed here to accompany my art piece. Based off of the famous sunken ship, the Titanic— which sank to the bottom of the ocean, deserted to the passing of time. A memory of two lovers deceased: the shining white star engraved on the main mast is a supernatural force, a result of the strong passion and desire - pure, bright, and blazes eternally on. Lit like stage lights, guiding your attention to the characters. They are no longer alive, their physical bodies have decayed hundreds of years ago. Their image is a fragment of the past, an illusion of yearning, a passing memory, like the work of two famous actors. Everything around them seems desolate, yet the two dance in bliss.
By Annabelle Zhang, Grade 11
About This Art Piece: The Artist’s Statement
My inspiration for this piece was initially an underwater ballet. I remember seeing a video of an incredibly elegant lady dancing ballet inside a sunken ship underwater a long time ago and I wanted to do something similar. I started to brainstorm, but since this was a totally new experience working on such a huge canvas, I needed to plan well and cautiously draw each step to prevent spending more time and paint to do this.
The process: after I had my basic thoughts planned out, Pinterest helped me find inspiration for more exact details on what I envisioned. In the end, after lots of edits and lots of thinking, I settled on adding another element to the piece, which was ballroom dancing. Ballet was not the choice to go as I didn’t know ballet and it seemed complicated, I figured it would be bad if I messed up the moves. Ballroom dancing seemed like it would fit underwater near a sunken ship and I wanted to create a sense of story in my art. Most importantly, I had already begun envisioning scenes in my head and it was something very special. I wanted it to seem like its own world, apart from the daily hustle of the society on land, serene and undisturbed. As I was drawing, I started adding all the elements of a story in my head, making small adjustments from the original draft as I went. This was something magical and whimsical hiding underwater, unlike the average underwater kingdom one would imagine from stories like the Tale of The Fisherman and The Turtle or Atlantis, none of that glorious polished posh look, I knew that this was going to be a beautiful, sad story.
Although I cannot use my words well, they are expressed here to accompany my art piece. Based off of the famous sunken ship, the Titanic— which sank to the bottom of the ocean, deserted to the passing of time. A memory of two lovers deceased: the shining white star engraved on the main mast is a supernatural force, a result of the strong passion and desire - pure, bright, and blazes eternally on. Lit like stage lights, guiding your attention to the characters. They are no longer alive, their physical bodies have decayed hundreds of years ago. Their image is a fragment of the past, an illusion of yearning, a passing memory, like the work of two famous actors. Everything around them seems desolate, yet the two dance in bliss.
By Annabelle Zhang, Grade 11
About This Art Piece: The Artist’s Statement
My inspiration for this piece was initially an underwater ballet. I remember seeing a video of an incredibly elegant lady dancing ballet inside a sunken ship underwater a long time ago and I wanted to do something similar. I started to brainstorm, but since this was a totally new experience working on such a huge canvas, I needed to plan well and cautiously draw each step to prevent spending more time and paint to do this.
The process: after I had my basic thoughts planned out, Pinterest helped me find inspiration for more exact details on what I envisioned. In the end, after lots of edits and lots of thinking, I settled on adding another element to the piece, which was ballroom dancing. Ballet was not the choice to go as I didn’t know ballet and it seemed complicated, I figured it would be bad if I messed up the moves. Ballroom dancing seemed like it would fit underwater near a sunken ship and I wanted to create a sense of story in my art. Most importantly, I had already begun envisioning scenes in my head and it was something very special. I wanted it to seem like its own world, apart from the daily hustle of the society on land, serene and undisturbed. As I was drawing, I started adding all the elements of a story in my head, making small adjustments from the original draft as I went. This was something magical and whimsical hiding underwater, unlike the average underwater kingdom one would imagine from stories like the Tale of The Fisherman and The Turtle or Atlantis, none of that glorious polished posh look, I knew that this was going to be a beautiful, sad story.
Although I cannot use my words well, they are expressed here to accompany my art piece. Based off of the famous sunken ship, the Titanic— which sank to the bottom of the ocean, deserted to the passing of time. A memory of two lovers deceased: the shining white star engraved on the main mast is a supernatural force, a result of the strong passion and desire - pure, bright, and blazes eternally on. Lit like stage lights, guiding your attention to the characters. They are no longer alive, their physical bodies have decayed hundreds of years ago. Their image is a fragment of the past, an illusion of yearning, a passing memory, like the work of two famous actors. Everything around them seems desolate, yet the two dance in bliss.