Wednesday, October 29, 2014

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.

Wednesday, October 22, 2014

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.