Ratatouille

For my Spaces Spaces project I decided to depict the place where I work, Cosmos Pizza, and all the workers as rats. The personification of rats in the media has interested me lately, they are often seen as scrappy, dirty, resourceful, and clever; both good and bad traits. In my daily life I often imagine made up scenarios when I’m bored, like many people. Recently rats have just been the focus of that imagination. I have worked at Cosmos for over a year and made some close friends there. I work the night shift, till 12am and sometimes 2am, and a lot of the people that also work the night shift remind me a lot of these traits that rats sometimes embody. From my point of view, this is maybe what I would imagine while I’m bored at work. However I like my artwork to create a story for the viewer too even if they don't know from what context it was created. I want my imagination to spark imagination in other people’s lives.

I have never really drawn with charcoal before, so I had a lot of fun with this project. I tried to accentuate its unique traits in my drawing. Charcoal is really soft and easy to blend and erase sometimes, and sometimes it's harder and can make really dark harsh lines. I tried to include both of these aspects in my piece. I also wanted to try to use the toned and white paper to see what the difference is between the two and what effects they create.