Oil Paint Pratice
These are my two oil paint practices. I used a brush for the clementine one and palette knife for the banana one.
Christmas Dinner Table-Reflection
This is my Prisma Color representational reflection drawing. I chose to do this picture I took of the set table at Christmas dinner last year. This picture represents me because we always go to my uncle's house for Christmas with my entire dad's family and it's one of my favorite days of the year. This past year was especially fun because I hadn't seen any of my non-immediate family since moving, so that's the significance of the picture itself. I also thought the composition was interesting and liked how the plate is centered and shows nice unity but that there are still other elements to break it up so it doesn't look symmetrical. I wasn't sure if it would be difficult to capture the angle that the photo has, but I think you can see it pretty well in my drawing. As for Prismas, it was my first time ever using them. I didn't know how to use them at all and assumed they were just like other colored pencils I used growing up. I did a little but of practicing beforehand and saw how you can really mix and blend the colors, which was fun to experiment with. My first color sketch, as you can see, was really rough, like how I used black and went too dark too quickly. I think I got the hang of using them, and I can see the parts that I did last, like the present on the table, look a lot better and came easier to me. I started comparing them to watercolors, like how you have to use lots of light layers and leave blank space for highlights and be cautious of going too dark. I really like how you can see the pencil strokes all throughout it, and I think they show movement and texture in the plate and present and table. It took me a long time, but I'm happy with how it turned out. If I could go back to change some things, I'd do a better background and Christmas tree because I had no idea what to draw for that part and just put random stuff. I would also add more whites and highlights to it because even though it's a dark picture, I know I could've brought out more of the reflection-y parts in the plate.
Drink Machine-Everyday Object
This is the final product for my everyday object oil painting. I had fun mixing and playing with the colors for this, even though I ended up going over certain parts multiple times. I like the metal background part of the drink machine in the in-progress picture better than how it looks in the final. It incorporates more colors and the actual drinks have darker values, which adds depth and dimension. I kept thinking I was going to go in and fix one tiny thing but ended up changing a lot about it. The parts that I kept the same and left alone are my favorite, like the tea and the ice tray thing, so that's a big lesson I learned throughout this process. I'm not 100% happy with how this turned out, and I will definitely go back (again) and add more darks and lights in because I think it ended up looking kind of dull and flat. I will also give the wall shadow on the left side some more shape. So basically I'm saying that I'm not really done with this quite yet, even though I thought I was. I really like how the drink labels aren't clear but you can still easily recognize what they each are. I knew I wasn't going to get them perfect, so I went for an abstract look that just had all the right colors in it, and it worked out well and doesn't look TOO muddy. I also love the dimension of the tea. For some reason I thought that was going to be difficult to capture, but literally all I did was add a tiny bit of reflection in the corner and I think it turned out really nicely. This is a picture of the drink machine at Namoli's, so I see it all the time, and the yellow walls and tea machine are the defining qualities that really stand out to me. I had fun incorporating the palette knife into many of the white parts. I did this mainly because I was impatient and didn't want to wait for the paints to dry before adding my white, so I just slapped it onto the canvas with a palette knife, but it adds a lot of texture and looks cool, especially in the ice tray. If I had used a brush for the ice tray, I don't think it would've looked nearly as good and it would look like flat white with random streaks of blue and green. Overall this piece was super fun and it was a good second experience using oils. I remember last time saying I should've left sections of my hammock oil painting alone and not messed them up by going back in, and I did it again in this piece. Now I REALLY know not to do that, and I'm excited to use oils again because my favorite thing about every medium is using as many colors as possible.
This is the updated version of my oil painting. I made the walls brighter and more yellow to contrast with the purple metal and made most of the background of the drink machine purple/pink and kept the blue as shadows. I also fixed up other little things but overall I think it looks better with the updated colors.
Mentor/mentee
My art 1 mentee is McKenna Landis. She likes drawing and using pencil and charcoal, so I told her that drawing would be perfect for her. She's doing a still life painting right now, and I saw that her reference picture had some text on it. I told her to be extra careful with that part and to work slowly because I know how difficult lettering can be, especially with painting.
Camp Tent-Interior Space
I used Prisma markers for the first time with this project, and it was fun to try out a new medium. I love how it turned out and I really like the vibrancy of the markers. I think it looks cool, but maybe a little too cartoonish and not detailed enough for a final project. That being said, I might go back in to add details with pen other than just the outline. One part that bothers me that I don't know how I didn't notice it when I was working is the shadow under the duffel bag and container under the shelf. The shadow under the trashcan looks so good because I did it before coloring in the floorboards, and for some reason I didn't think to do that with everything on the floor. My favorite things about this piece are the color variation and the fact that this really does look like my tent at camp. I lived in this tent for eight weeks and not much changed about it throughout the summer, so all of the little things like the Christmas lights and prayer flags and certain things on the bookshelf remind me just of how they were in real life.
Inktober
I turned my ink splatter into a peacock, and I'm planning on finishing the body and later adding watercolor to it.
Self Portrait
I like that I'm challenging myself by using watercolor for this piece and experimenting with a medium that I'm not very experienced with. For every watercolor painting I've done in the past, I get too dark too quickly and lose values within the piece. I was pretty proud of myself for getting through the whole face successfully without going crazy with my darks. I'm glad that the issue I have with it right now is that it's too light because I can easily go back in and add more shadows, which I'm planning on doing. I'll add more shadows under my chin for sure. I was thinking that with the magnifying glass I shouldn't add darker values there, but now I can see that everything below my face is right around the same value. I really like the colors I incorporated into the hair. I think the pen only adds to it to create the texture it needed. Right now the main thing bothering me is how I look a little like a grandma and how dark my lips are. I think/hope that once I finish adding pen to the face and chest and hands that it'll even out and look better. You can't see it very well in the pictures, but I love the eyes and eyebrows because The eyebrow hairs look real and I think the eyelashes and reflections in the eyes. I'm also glad that I was able to keep the reflections in the magnifying glass. Although the background isn't a nice detailed scenery, I like the abstractness of it and I think it looks nice since the rest of the painting is neutral. I was careful to work slowly with the watercolors values and I know how easy it is to get too dark with pen. I started to see myself getting too dark and I know I need to work slowly when finishing it up because I've gotten this far and obviously don't want to mess it up.
Pet Portrait
After this project, I have a new love for palette knives. I was nervous to see how difficult it would be to get fur texture without a brush, but I think it turned out well. I think this project was a good one to try out palette knife because it wasn't a too detailed picture. I started out with the dog and just putting white down. That took less than ten minutes, so then I was ready to move onto the bow. I just used a variety of basic red and white. I knew I had to add different values in the fur, but I wasn't sure if I should use black or brown or a cool color like purple. I went with the brown and just hoped she wouldn't look like she was dirty. I don't think it really looks like she's muddy and the brown looks fine, but I should add some darker values in the fur. I'm going to go back in and make pieces of the fur sticking up because right now it looks like it's inside an outline. I'm also going to add something to the right leg because it looks too straight and out of place. I like that I used blue for the nose because I think it looks nice with the bow and ties in the blue from the background. I really like the different values I added in the nose and I think it has good dimension. I thought the wood floor would be super easy, but it was hard for me to get the variety of colors and highlights without all the colors blending together. I think the shadow under the dog looks like the right shape and everything but that I need to make parts of it darker so it's not just one color. I really like the background even though I made it because the picture didn't have much of a background and I didn't know what else to put. I think it's fine that I didn't make a scenic background because the colors in the background go along with the playfulness of the pink bow and blue nose. I like all the colors I incorporated without it looking too blended. I like how many colors there are in this but that it doesn't look too busy and messy. I love this painting and I'm glad I experimented with palette knife. I'm using this class as my experiment class and trying out as many mediums and different things as I can, so I think the palette knife for this was a good choice.
Harbor Town Landscape
This is the first acrylic painting that I've done in a while, and I forgot how much I love it. I had a fun time mixing all the colors and not blending everything out. I decided to use this picture over another one that I was originally planning to use because I liked the composition better and I thought I could do a better job with it. Every other year my family and I go to Hilton Head, South Carolina, for Thanksgiving. This Thanksgiving was an off year, so I used a picture that I took of the lighthouse in Harbor Town last November. I started out with the sky, my favorite part, by using just white and a basic blue by not blending the two together or adding any other colors. Then I tackled the lighthouse, which is also my favorite part. I like how three-dimensional it looks and that I carried the reds and whites out throughout the whole thing. The straight red and white striped remind me of an acrylic painting I did of a candy shop storefront in Art 2. I think the boat in front of the lighthouse looks kind of weird because of the top parts looking super flat. It needs to have a rectangular look to actually be boat-like, and I think I honestly just forgot about it and moved on. I like the black and white and purples I used in it though. I think the three docks look nice and have good values ini them. I like the shadows I used under everything in the water, but now I'm noticing that I could go back and make them darker/bigger. The foliage looks fine, it's just kind of there. I like how it isn't too detailed because nothing in the painting is, but something about the fact that it took me less than ten minutes makes me think it could be better. I really like this painting, and I think it represents the painting style that I'm starting to develop pretty well. Because I like certain parts of it so much, I'll make sure to go back and fix things the boat and water and maybe the foliage so that I love all of it.
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Update: I added a front side to the boat, and I think it looks a lot better now. I also fixed up the pole thing a little bit by adding more darker values and cleaning up the lines.
Nature Vs. Mechanical
So the final product of this turned out way different (better) from what I had originally planned. The composition is 10x more interesting and it's probably my favorite part. I like how there's a somewhat main focus on the pear with the knife in it because that's what's in the center, but then you see all of the mechanical elements and realize that the light bulbs and pears are reversible. I love how the colors on this turned out, and I know that's because I chose to do it on wood. The whole thing felt like dry brushing. It was different from canvas because it was hard to get the colors to show up and everything dried instantly, but once I got the hang of it and found out that I just have to use thick layers, I ended up really loving it. It was tough to blend things because of the drying factor, but that's not really my style anyways so I just went with it and tried to exaggerate it. The number one thing that stands out to me is the vase of flowers and gears. I really like how the reflection turned out with the red showing through and the strong white highlights and blue edges on the glass BUT I could've made the gears and flowers match everything else. Something about them stands out to me, and it doesn't seem as strong as the rest of the piece. I think they need more highlights and shadows because they look flat. I love the pear cut in half. I like the colors on the pear half and the shape of it and the subtle shadows where it's stabbed. I like the light bulb half because of the fact that I made it pear-ish with its shape and stem and skin. I don't think the whole "pear vs. light bulb" concept would be portrayed without it because it's the only aspect that remotely ties the two things together. I spent an entire day on the clock, and it gave me a lot of trouble for some unknown reason, and it still looks a little weird to me. My plan was to have the face of it be more of a transparent white like the light bulbs have, which you can't really see in the picture anyways. To start off with, it never looked circular to me even after using a compass, probably because of its placement being awkwardly partially in the corner and overlapping the chair. Adding shadows in the area was hard because I wanted it to look neat and blend in somewhat, but that became impossible with the paint drying too quickly. Then adding shadows under the hands of the clock was taking me too long and not working out, so there ended up just being a huge vague shadow over basically the whole face of the clock. Adding a shadow behind the clock itself was a nightmare, so I finally just painted that random blue shadow-like thing around it. It certainly doesn't look like a shadow, but it looks cool and doesn't seem to need a shadow anymore, so it got rid of my problem! I was worried about this not looking cohesive in the end, but I think by using bright colors and not adding TOO many different elements that it looks fine. I'm used to working from at least a few different reference pictures, but I made up the scene in my head and don't think I used a single reference picture. Going solely by memory is pretty out of my comfort zone, but it came naturally for this painting and I'm proud of the end result.
CPM Gumball Machine Entry
I started out thinking that this contest was somewhat optional and didn't start right away and when I did, I didn't take it seriously at first. I don't like Prismacolors that much, and I didn't like the idea of copying someone else's picture. I thought we had to make it look as much like the picture as possible, which isn't what I usually do and it's not what I'm good at. I went into this with a bad attitude and then tried to turn it around at the end. Basically there are parts about it that I really like, and I know I could've done better had I spent more than two hours on it. To start off with, I don't like the composition-there's not enough foreground. When I drew it out, I kept starting from the top and running out of run. After redrawing it a few times, I just went with what I had. The bottom of the gumball machine isn't even on the page, and I don't know how that didn't bother me when I started out. I colored the top of the gumball machine in class and used colors that I don't have myself, so when I went to do the main part of the machine I realized that I only have Poppy Red, which is more orange than red anyways. I don't mind that they're different colors because I have tons of colors going on anyways, but I would've preferred to use a nice red and not a weird orange-red. Other than the lack of detail, I like the gumball machine and the gumballs around it. It was annoying to make so many overlapping spheres with a similar highlight and shadow etc. I like the machine itself and the dimension I got out of it. I tried to copy the highlights/shadows that were in the picture as closely as I could but also make them looser and different colors. I think it looks really 3-D and cool. I think I had too much fun with the colors in this, especially in the background... I really don't like the background. I don't know why I chose those colors, like most other colors would actually look better. If I had a really nice background then the fact that I rushed the gumball machine wouldn't be as noticeable. I don't know if it's the color yellow that looks bad as the background, but it's the shade that I used. I know that yellow Prismacolors never look good, at least for me, so I don't know why I irrationally just started coloring it yellow. Even with the yellow gumballs I was thinking to myself how gross the yellow was turning out, so I don't know what I was thinking. I was thinking that the gumball machine had a lot of dark colors and that I needed a light background, which I still believe to be true. I think a mostly white background with some light blues would've looked better. I also meant to add more highlights and totally forgot until the end, minus that little one in the middle. I should've thought about where those would go ahead of time. I'm not super proud of this piece, but it looks fine. Nothing about it stands out to me, but I like the gumball machine idea and the values I brought out in the gumballs and machine itself.
Mixed Media
This mixed media has sooo much going on in it. It looked super hectic and I kept trying to cover things up and make it look more unified, which I didn't REALLY do. I think I liked it better before, but now there are just more connecting lines. I started out just pasting on things that I liked and that looked interesting or cool to me. Clearly that wasn't a good plan, so I went back and found some lines and made them continuous. I joined together edges going down the middle-left of the paper and did the same with horizontal line going through the middle. From that point and on I was more a little more conscious of keeping those lines visible and keeping new elements in their own quadrant thing. I put the edge of a playing card along one of the lines and some black stripe things going in the same direction as that same line. I think that if I had used a color scheme of some sort that the all of the random little pieces of stuff wouldn't look as unorganized. Even though I was obviously 100% in control of how this turned out, it didn't feel like it, which was frustrating. I need to have more of a plan for the next mixed media piece that I do. I think that keeping a few key elements in my head would help a lot and the outcome wouldn't be all over the place.
Art 4 Final Reflection
Aside from the art I created, I learned a lot about college and post-high-school life just from being in a class of mainly seniors. The conversations about college that I had/listened to were mostly intimidating, and as a junior, I don't want to start even thinking about that stuff. BUT it helped me realize that I really don't have much time left and that I should enjoy high school while I'm still in it and to make sure that I'm keeping track of schoolwork etc. because I'll appreciate it when I'm applying to colleges. I also didn't realize how much time and effort it takes to apply to scholarships and to get money from schools. Seeing how much time it takes for the seniors right now made me want to make a plan for myself next year where I apply to one scholarship a week, or something like that.
I think that this class was the most pivotal one I've taken so far. I made some pieces that I'm super proud of that I know I'll be using in future portfolios, which is exciting. I probably only have three or four things from everything I've made in arts 1-3 and drawing that I'm really proud of that I would use for anything important, so I'm glad that I had a lot of portfolio development in this class. My goal for the class at the beginning of the year was to experiment with as many things as I could. I think I succeeded in that because I did pieces in Prismacolor, Prisma markers, oils, watercolor and pen, acrylic on canvas, acrylic on wood, palette knife, and mixed media; out of those, I was new to Prismacolors, Prisma makers, palette knife, and acrylic on wood. I bettered my skills with familiar and new things and sort of started to develop a style of art, and I'm figuring out what I like and what I'm best at. I'm glad that I have an independent study next semester because I know I wouldn't do NEARLY as much artwork at home on my own without a class. Now I basically would've had two "free" Art 4 classes this year before the real deal next year.
I think that this class was the most pivotal one I've taken so far. I made some pieces that I'm super proud of that I know I'll be using in future portfolios, which is exciting. I probably only have three or four things from everything I've made in arts 1-3 and drawing that I'm really proud of that I would use for anything important, so I'm glad that I had a lot of portfolio development in this class. My goal for the class at the beginning of the year was to experiment with as many things as I could. I think I succeeded in that because I did pieces in Prismacolor, Prisma markers, oils, watercolor and pen, acrylic on canvas, acrylic on wood, palette knife, and mixed media; out of those, I was new to Prismacolors, Prisma makers, palette knife, and acrylic on wood. I bettered my skills with familiar and new things and sort of started to develop a style of art, and I'm figuring out what I like and what I'm best at. I'm glad that I have an independent study next semester because I know I wouldn't do NEARLY as much artwork at home on my own without a class. Now I basically would've had two "free" Art 4 classes this year before the real deal next year.