I struggled with what I wanted to do this project over for a while. I had a plan originally, but I wasn't really in love with it. I remembered that I really enjoying creepy teeth and monsters and remembered a sketch practice I had seen from another artists on Twitter. They had drawn all sorts of different mouths and expressions, just for practice. That inspired me to do this project over the change of expression, but using a creepy monster mouth as the subject. I used a piece of cardboard with four faces to help show the transition of a neutral(ish) expression to one of rage. Originally I also wanted to use different colors in the gums to further emphasize the transition of emotion, but the canvas didn't work well with my colors.
I had to paint over the cardboard at least 10 times just to get it white enough for me to work on. Then I had to draw each mouth at least four different times because the canvas was such a struggle to work with. The pencil and ink smeared like nothing I've had to deal with before. It took a lot of erasing and re-tracing to finally get each section to a place I was happy with. This whole piece was a struggle. I used angles and depth I've never had to work with before and used a level of detail that I usually get too tired with half way through a piece. I normally never finish pieces like this. In the end I learned a lot and feel like I gained a lot of experience creating this and grew a little as artist. For me, this is my best work.
