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.