Ice Burn: A Senior Explorations Amplified Piece by Cindy Nguyen (2014)

Following the prompt ''isolation versus solitude,'' I could only imagine ice and snow. I pictured coldness, but also beauty. When in solitude, individuals shut the world out. When in isolation, the world has shut them out. A location such as that with blizzards, bitter weather, and beauty, I thought of a far-off mountain in the midst of winter. And then expanding from my written piece, what if the individual chose to be in solitude, and someone had helped bring them out of it, only to desert them? The meaning of alone is completely different now, and they are now back to being alone, but can never again be in solitude; but isolated.

I painted my initial image of being alone with Indian ink and watercolors. I began with an ink outline and painted with very basic, cool colors. Afterwards, I scanned my artwork into Photoshop and combined it with the image of a fire performer, seemingly trespassing the mountain to melt the idea of solitude. I learned a watercolor technique and applied it to the performer, so that it blended better with my watercolors. I also downloaded FilterForge 4.0 and used the Polygon Painting filter for mainly the background, to give the artwork a more crystalline-feel. I used certain key words from my written piece with a sketch/brush font to give the fire performer a haunting and creepy aura.