This piece of work was heavily inspired by my fear of getting trapped in a cave. More specifically getting trapped in between something. I’m not claustrophobic per say, I’d be fine in a trunk or a closet but obviously there are different implications. I wanted to capture with this piece the feelings I have about an experience like this. One of my favorite movies, As Above So Below, is a horror movie taking place in the catacombs of Paris. There are several scenes that always get me really worked up and that's when the characters are about to get trapped in a pile of rubble and bones. I wanted to take this idea of what would happen if you were stuck, wasting away until you died. I wanted to take that concept and convey it quite bluntly. The movie poster for this movie gave some inspiration as well with the graphic quality of the images of skulls on the poster.

I used an ink brush pen for all of the pieces except the linocut. I did this because I wanted the contrast between the two tones to be stark, and graphic. I wanted all the skulls and bones to have character, and depth. The reason I used linocut was for the rough linework it produces. The scrappy carving around the face would emanate from it in a way creating a palpable tension in the air. The work process I used was mostly just inking skulls and bones for hours on end. Drawing all the femurs(being mostly the same shape) got tedious.

I want my piece to convey an inescapable endless catacomb. My face being centered with the bones going off the page, getting smaller and smaller makes it feel as if I, being trapped, will be forever. I am not just trapped in the wall in this piece, I am also trapped in the catacomb. I want the piece to be tense and frantic.

I think that the skulls I drew were the most successful, that and the perspective I created, though I did make some errors, as I had no reference. I would also like to think that I created a piece that embolized the terror that would come from being trapped in a cave.

I had to decide whether or not to paint the piece red, eventually I decided not to. I liked the bold white and black colors against each other. It was very difficult to stay motivated when drawing the same bone endlessly. I didn’t really work through it in any way, I just kept going. I also had a lot of trouble with my linocut print. I am super unhappy with how it ended up printing. However I tested it probably ten times prior at the time of the printing, and it had been fine. There isn’t anything that can be done at this point. There's nothing I would have done differently because the only issue was with the print, and I couldn’t have foreseen it turning out the way it did when I practiced so much. 

 

I like the aesthetic of the graphic inking style and will most likely come back to it in some future projects.