For my art piece, I drew an abandoned house to portray the aesthetic principles of sabi and yūgen. Sabi suggests that something has aged and is deteriorating, which this house definitely is—chipped-away paint, stains on the roof and the siding, plants growing on the house, and rotted wood. Yūgen is all about deep mystery, and this house is a mystery, or what happened to it for it to become abandoned. 

This house is on a pretty busy road in the village of Cotuit, Massachusetts, and I'd never noticed it before until my father pointed it out to me as a potential house to use for my drawing. It is on the left side of the road across the street from a cemetery and surrounded by trees. My father doesn't know what happened to the house or the previous tenants, but it gives some mystery to a village filled with lovely homes and a close-knit community. 

Graphite drawing is what I do and am good at, so I thought I'd take advantage of that skill set for this art project. The difficulty for me is that I rarely draw landscapes and haven't since high school art class. My specialty is drawing portraits and objects, which made this experience quite different and challenging. I spent about eight to ten hours creating this piece, learning from my mistakes (I had to redraw the house siding twice). Doing a landscape drawing was a new experience for me, which I wanted because I didn’t want to create something I’d done many times before. For this to be a final project for a class where I am learning several new aesthetic terms and techniques, I wanted to try something new and learn a new skill with my drawing, and I succeeded.