King of the World

Artist Statement: Through the process of scratch art, I created a lion. When searching for scratch art ideas, I saw a lot of cats. They incorporated a lot of fur details which looked fun to do. However, I didn’t want to create a house cat. I chose to create a lion. Relating to my Christian faith, many people use the lion to represent Jesus as he is king and has the power to triumph over evil. Lions are referred to as the “King of the Jungle” but in this art piece, I wanted to use the lion to represent Jesus. I substituted “jungle” with the word “world” as He watches over us.
When working on this art piece, I used toothpicks, skewers, and an x-acto knife to create the fur details. Originally, I was going to leave the background black so the lion would blend into the background. This idea wouldn’t look great. It made the lion seem timid, hiding in the shadows. I wanted it to look fierce, not scared of danger. I chose to take a risk in scratching all the black around the lion and adding its paw. Through the ups and downs, this piece came out exactly how I envisioned it.