Landscape: Seattle Space Needle Watercolor w/ Pen

For the landscape project I decided to use pen and water colors. After looking through many pictures of various things I could use, I decided to do a painting of my favorite city's monument, the space needle. I love the space needle because it's such an interesting piece of architecture. I thought it was also cool because of the irony of using watercolors when it happens to rain a lot in the city of Seattle. I used hatching and crosshatching with pen for the building as well as the tree. I used different shades of purple for the clouds and blue watercolor for the sky. I used the dripping technique to make a runny look as if water was pouring from the sky. This project benefited me in getting better at my cross hatching techniques. All and all this was a pleasant project and I thoroughly enjoyed it. 

Bows

In this project for the color challenge I decided to draw several bows with different colors.

I used prismacolor pencils of coarse. I was able to have a month to do it so that was pretty nice that I could take my time with it. I got more experience with using colored pencils. I only used prismas one other time. I really enjoyed blending the colors and making an interesting reflective look. I know that this was not a very liked project by others, but I will say that I actually enjoyed it. I really like trying to make realistic pictures and this was a great opportunity to try and do that.

Turning Nature Into Mechanical Steampunk Cat

For the turning nature into something mechanical project I made a steampunk cat. I used my cat, Princess Buttercup as my model and looked at pictures of gears for reference. I used pen and acrylic paints on poster board. First I drew the cat out and placed what was going to be the metal and gears. I then started to paint the fur. I used natural tones of brown and tans. After I completed the fur I used copper and gold acrylic paints for the metal and gears. For the background I decided to paint a night sky, but with a wave of stars coming out of the cat's ears. This was a challenging, yet fun project. I learned fur techniques and gained more experience from drawing animals.

Choice Project: Shoes

I decided to do a choice project for the fifth project. The theme is pairs and the topic is exaggeration in the color. For the color pallet I used green, blue, purple, and pinks. The medium I used was oil paints. I wanted to uses oil paints because it had been a while since I used them, plus I thought it would be good for creating smooth textures. I chose to paint a picture I had taken of my shoes from right after a music show because I liked the after affects resulting in a beat-up look. 

Self Portrait With Ripping Skin

For this project I was able to choose what to do, so I decided to make a different kind of self portrait. I made a self portrait with me ripping a side of my face's skin and showing the bone. I knew this would be something exciting to create as well as challenging. First I created the background using water color and splatter techniques with blues, greens, and yellows. For the portrait I really wanted to exaggerate the colors so I used neon colors of purple, magenta, pink, blue, green, and yellow. I did use a small amount of black, but just to show depth in the skull part. For the most part I stuck with my color scheme. I used watercolor paper, watercolor paint, and acrylic paint for this piece. This was a very fun project because I could paint something more my style since I really like painting odd things. At the same time this was a challenge because I haven't had a whole lot of practice with making self portraits and this definitely gave me more experience with that. Overall I think this was a successful project.

Interior Spaces of a Box of Dice

For the interior spaces project I had a hard time coming up with an idea that was good, as well as not typical or done too many times. So, the weekend before the ideas for the project were due, I was at a friends house on Saturday playing a game of Dungeons & Dragons. As I opened the box of dice to get mine for the game, I figured I could use this for my project. I took pictures from different angles and then decided which one I'd make a painting out of. I got a big canvas so that I could fit the details of the dice better. I then started painting and used acrylics. It has been a pretty challenging project with getting the angles, perspective, and proportions right. That's what I have struggled most with. It is super close to being finished I just need to either color the background a dark solid color or learn how to paint wood grain. In the future I'll probably not pick something too challenging as this, where as it would take me too long. However, it gave me good practice with those things I struggled with.

Oil Painting of a Cassette Tape

For this project we had to choose an object you see everyday so I chose a cassette tape. I chose it because I love music and my tapes. This happened to be one of my favorite tapes as well. I figured it would be a challenge for me because of the angle and the fact that most times I've tried to draw cassette tapes I've usually been bad at it. This was the first time I made an actual painting with oil paints. It was quite challenging, but fun and I definitely learned from this experience. Once I finished painting the background and tape I felt like it was too bland and then I remembered I could use the palette knife to make texture and make it look more interesting. That being said, I was pretty happy with the end results. I used greens and yellows for the cassette tape and used a variety of colors such as blue, orange, red, and magenta for the texture using the palette knife. I feel like I learned from using oil paints and would definitely like to use them again for another project.

Apples/ Oil Paint Practice

Last week we started practicing using oil paints and painting apples. I did one apple with a paint brush and the other with a palette knife. I learned techniques with the materials as well as the helpful tip of putting washes down before you start painting.

Painting of apple using a palette knife

Painting of apple using brushes

Reflection Prisma Colors Project

I decided to make a prisma drawing of a vinyl record reflecting trees from outside my window. I chose to draw a record because it reflects me and my love for music. It is also special to me because one of the first people to introduce me to good music was my dad and he was the one who got me a record player along with a starter collection of records. One of those records is included in the drawing, which would be Billie Holiday.This was a very fun yet challenging project. I spent a couple days practicing how I would draw the record first. Then I sketched it out on a tan piece of construction paper. I chose blues, greens, and reds for my color theme. Some thing I learned from this project was to layer colors and substitute black. At first I wasn't sure if I could do it without the black because most records are black and in my mind at the time I didn't know I could replace it with dark blues. I'm actually pretty pleased with the way the record turned out. I really like that I was able to substitute the black and I think it looks a lot better than how it would look with it. 

Here you can see the sketch I did.

The finished project.

Five Summer Pieces

This is a portrait I did of myself from a picture I took last year.
I think the emotion shown in this piece would be pensiveness. I myself
often stare off into the distance because I'm always in deep in thought and
I thought that would be interesting to incorporate in the painting.

This is a pen and ink of the interior of the inside of my shelf of books and
an old jewelry box I have had since I was five. On this piece I have to work on creating
more shadows on the edges on the jewelry box as well as in between the books. When
I finish the improvement I will make sure to post it. 

I did a acrylic painting of an object submerged in water. For this project I did consider actually
taking an object like a shirt or something and putting it in water, but I chose something more typical. In a way it is not so "typical" because it does have meaning. On my mother's birthday I made her gifts of coarse, but wanted to put in something extra just to make my representation of the gifts prettier so I found flowers in my backyard and put it in a glass bottle. I liked how it looked so I took that advantage to make a painting of it for the object submerged in water project.

This is a watercolor painting of reflective objects showing my makeup and perfumes
on my vanity.
 

This is a charcoal drawing for the cafe project. I decided to walk to Common Grounds Coffee shop
and draw in the inside of the coffee shop. This is my least favorite of  my summer pieces. However it was my first time working with charcoal pencils and I think that with more practice I could make a better charcoal drawing.

Artist Statement

 I express myself through everyday things I see and dream in life that I transform into a page of my sketchbook. I like to over exaggerate things in my pieces I create. Instead of drawing a sky, I want to draw a melted sky with cotton candy clouds and bright neon fragments of stars peering off from a distance. I combined reality with dreams to create my art.  I try to draw anything that I like or that interests me like eye balls or skeletons. I am always open to new ideas and themes. The mediums I prefer to use are acrylic paints, water color, and pen.

Progress Through the Reflection Project

This week in art IV/ AP, we've been working with prisma colored pencils and water colors. Our first project this semester is to do with reflection and how an image you pick reflects you in some way. I've really been enjoying working with prisma colored pencils for the first time. Because this is my first time working with them, I have been practicing by testing the colors and shades. I have also been practicing drawing and coloring in the record in the image I have chosen. As you can see at the very top is my practice work and a rough idea of what it should look like.

Clone project

In Computer Arts class we made clones and such.

Final Project/ Flower crown.

In sculpture/ceramics class we had to do our final project. For this project you could do anything you wanted so I chose to make a flower crown! I was inspired by these beautiful crowns I saw at a little shop first Friday of December. I really wanted to make some similar and recreate it. The materials used were: Naturally wired, glitter glue, thin floral wire, fake flowers, and a hot glue gun. First I measured out the naturally wired thick wire for the base of the crown. Next, I wrapped the thin floral wire around and hot glued the fake flowers. After this process, I used the glitter glue to make the edges of the flowers' petals sparkly. This was one of the funnest and well-planned out projects I've done in this class. I think it was a very nice way to end the class!

Interaction project (In the process of making punk dolls)

For Art III we were given the choice to either make an interaction or a re-do project. I came up with several ideas for both projects and decided to make little punk dolls for an interaction project. I have not finished my project, but I will. Once I finish I'll post. I plan on making a Sid Vicious, Buzz Osbourne, Henry Rollins, Kathleen Hanna, Joey Ramone, and possibly others! as you see I have started making a Sid Vicious doll below which kinda resembles a voodoo doll.

"Let There Be Lips" Rocky Horror Picture Show marble drop

Recently sculpture/ceramics class had to make marble drops! Marble drops are contraptions that you drop a marble in and are made to lead through a path like a maze. They are also a form of interaction art! It took me a while to come up with a cool theme for this project. I tried to move away from the cliche type of ideas and decided to use one of my favorite movies for the theme, Rocky Picture Horror Show. I thought this would be a great theme because the movie has many neat subjects in it as well as interesting characters that I could incorporate into my marble drop! This project was a bit challenging for me because there was just so much to do. I know that many people were working in groups and I thought about doing that, but then I thought it would be a good challenge for me. So I went for it! The materials I used were foam board, paper, hot glue, acrylic paints, and glitter. First I measured out the pieces from the foam board and used hot glue to put them together. Then I looked up images from the movie to get an idea of what things I would incorporate into the marble drop. I drew out the characters and then glued them in. I think the most difficult part of the project was cutting out the measured pieces with the exacto blade, but besides that things went pretty well.

Texture and Pressure.

I went through many ideas for this project and finally came up with one I loved! I decided to make a skeleton bowl. This idea stuck out to me the most because the idea of pressure put on bones, plus there is texture in bones! I am also fascinated with skeletons and figured this would be the perfect opportunity to incorporate one of my interests into my art. For this project, I used a bowl mold to help shape the bowl and make it nice and even. After I smoothed out the clay, I began to make the bone pieces and shape them into a skeleton hand. I used score and slip to put them onto the bowl. Then I used carving tools to give the bones more texture. For the color scheme I decided to use green and turquoise glaze. This project went pretty well for me and hardly had any challenges even though I had never made a skeleton bowl or even a bowl for that matter.

Perspective. R.I.P Lou Reed

For my perspective project, I decided to make a series of images to create one. I chose the recently diseased Lou Reed for my image. First I measured out the pieces I would paint on as well as the base. Then I placed the pieces in positions I wanted the projection to go. I taped them down and traced the projection of Lou. After I painted the images, I glued them down to the base. I think this project was one of the more challenging ones for me.  I had never done a perspective project like this. Tracing the objects in the images was hard even though the pieces were taped down, they would move. I actually ended up erasing more of the tracings and redrawing them by eye. The reason I chose this solution for my project was because it's something I had never done and I always wanted to try it so I did it. This was definitely a challenging project, but I did enjoy it as well as learn from it.