Zenith

Introduction

As the term “Zenith” suggests, the Zenith project is the peak or culmination of our Freestyle experience. It is a self-designed and executed project that lets us explore our passions and demonstrate what we have learned in our media classes.

My Zenith project is a short epistolary study on race. Or in other words, a collection of letters on race. The letters – in order – will be addressed to my mother, grandfather (on father’s side), and people who have racially misidentified me. Each of them will have an illustration that goes along with them, done in watercolor and gouache. The letters and sister illustrations will come together in full-spread sets in a hardcover notebook.

I am passionate about this project because the role that race plays in the different ways we shape our society fascinate me and I believe that by writing about a story of race like mine, I can give a voice to people in the community with similar identity struggles. 

This project will challenge me in countless ways, from developing strong and cohesive literary content in the form of letters to exploring painting with watercolor and gouache. This will give me the chance to expand my literary abilities and break my biases against my own ability to paint.

Process

The first creative part of my Zenith creation process was the creation of the writing that makes up the central body of my project. For each piece of writing I would start by thinking about who the letter was addressed to and from what perspective of my own I was writing. The creative process for writing is always much more challenging and time-consuming that one imagines and so I spent a lot of time trying to shift my perspective and think outside the box to fulfill each letter in a way that made it stand by itself as a strong piece while being cohesive in the overarching structure of the three letters together.

The second creative part of my Zenith creation process was the painting. Each painting was done based off of an accompanying piece of writing. I would start by reading through the piece I was trying to illustrate, thinking of ideas that would appropriately visually represent the central theme or message. I would then sketch it and then paint using gouache for the foreground and watercolor for the background.

Here is a gallery of photos of my painting process at various stages:

My color scheme that I chose at the beginning of my project.
My workspace where I tested color swatches of watercolor and gouache before starting my full pieces.
An example of a sketch before painting.
One of my pieces half-painted.

Completed Product

Letter #1

Accompanying art for Letter #1

Letter #2

Accompanying art for Letter #2.

Letter #3

Accompanying art for Letter #3.