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.