My name is Masao Gonzalez, and this year I’m a senior in 2D Advanced Art at Pacific Grove High School. During 2019 and throughout sheltering in place, I started to draw quite frequently. Creating art tends to be a very expressive hobby for me. I always draw art when I need to release certain emotions such as a complicated past experience or feelings of regret, loss, sorrow, pain, forgiveness, and change. Being able to bring out these emotions on paper is a gift I will cherish forever, because some emotions can stay in your gut for a long time.

I mainly work with graphite for all my pieces. I implement different values of shading into my pieces with a wide ranging of tones from light 1 values to dark 10 values. In this piece I’ve included some charcoal to enhance the expressiveness of the contrast of the forms. Many of my pieces have different aspects of surrealism because I like to creatively invent my image with juxtaposition. I also enjoy including an exploration of space through different perspective methods and I hope to continue to grow as a surrealist artist.

This piece is titled The Reach because it reflects the loss of a relationship due to a personal blunder. I started the piece by creating a mid tone with a graphite mechanical pencil. Then I outlined the face and hands with a darker value. I chose to use charcoal for the hands and face to allow them to stand out. The clouds were also done with charcoal and blended with a soft tissue. I used a pointed eraser to allow for highlights throughout the piece. The process was very enjoyable and allowed me to really step out of my comfort zone.