The idea of doing a painting of a UFO came to me when I was watching a special about UFO sightings. This reminded me that there had been a big UFO sighting in my hometown of Stephenville, TX in January of this year. I thought this would be perfect for a disruptive technology, because UFOs have plagued mankind with fear and mystery for hundreds of years. With my idea now I still needed to know how I would interpret my curiosity into an art form. The decision to make it into a painting came after a mellow Monday morning in Intro to Psychology. On the slide show of notes that I had printed out prior to class there was a picture of a group of people with shocked facial expressions gazing into the sky. The picture was taken in the 1950's and was perfect to compliment my UFO idea, and after studying the photograph I thought there would be no better way to do this but to paint my idea.

The first step into putting the vision on canvas was to get four pieces of styrofoam board. This would be used to place my paintings on. Next, I received a document camera and projector from the RTF Media Lab, which was used to project the pictures of the shocked people onto the poster board so I could trace out their figures. I then made a trip to visit the nice people at Breeds, where I picked up my paints and brushes, Christmas lights, sauntering kit, copper wire, and 9 volt battery.

Once I gathered all of my supplies I was ready to start creating art. Using the doc camera and projector, I projected the shocked people's picture onto the foam board and traced out their figures and main lines. After this process the painting began, which took forever and ever. When picking the colors I attempted to use complementary colors, like I learned in first grade art, but I also enjoyed adding one color on a small object that didn't quite match. The color tones I chose were made in order to make the colors pop. Once the people were finished painting I hand drew the UFO and proceeded to color it. A couple of days later after making sure the paint was completely dry, I attached the lights to the UFO and sauntered the wires in a parallel circuit that lead up to the 9 volt battery. Finally my masterpiece was finished and ready for presenting.