My concept is a patriotic design. I wanted to incorporate the combat boots because my husband is an Infantryman and he has been through many pairs, walked miles upon miles in them across various countries. I wanted to include some kind of memorial in the sketch, commemorating all the hardships and heart ache he has gone through. I think I want to put in some depiction of the American flag, and the unit patches that signify the deployments and soldiers my husband has lost. I know that I want to focus on an expressionist kind of style, where the concept of sacrifice is the main component, and use a color scheme that would highlight that concept.  I am not quite sure on how I am going to do that yet, and that is why the boots are the only thing sketched. I am leaning toward having certain parts of the picture in a gray scale or black and white scheme, using color to highlight the emotional points.

I do know that I really want to make sure I take my time with this, and focus on design and the use of color.   I know that those are the things I really need to work on. I chose the expressionist style because I think that my last attempt at this with The Rose wasn’t as successful as I thought it would be. I need to make sure that I use the colors to express an emotional response, because that is what I am looking for in this picture, or what I hope to convey once it’s completed. I think I am going to incorporate a red, symbolic for blood, but I want to also incorporate a little bit of a different color. I don’t know if I want to have the flag be vibrant and stand out, or have the patches, or the boots stand out. I was thinking about having the flag fall to the ground and the red from the stripes at the end of the fabric create pools of blood around the boots, but I really hate even drawing a picture of the flag touching the ground, so I am struggling with how to portray that in a different way.