Book Carving

Out of the themes we were given I chose fears and phobias. One of my biggest fears is to be stuck in a mental institution. There is this TV show where Alice was in an asylum, I got my subject from that. Thrown in a cell because of the only people she had trusted, now feeling betrayed because they allowed her to be taken away. After several years Alice loses her hope of rescue, she begins to doubt her friends' existence in the first place. She opens up to doctors and begins telling her tales of adventure, danger, and love. For the design of the project it was very import to plan before starting to make sure the idea will fit on the page. You also have to plan how deep you want it to go. while the book is open, with each page the pages pull farther from the others so my work kind of moved farther to one side. i shaved down the sides of the lower levels to make it even. I painted it with acrylics watered down so that you can still see the words from the book.

Amusement and Variety

I chose to represent amusement by selecting New York City as my subject. I spent many day trips to Manhattan while i was living in New York. This project was a little difficult to make it all work together and not seem like I just threw everything together. I started with a blank canvas and covered it in a subway map, then I added a heading from the New York Times, a skyline of the city, a taxi cab, the Yankee logo, and some other NY hot spot items. I drybrushed some purple acrylic paint mixed with a gell medium so that the subway lines would show through. I then covered the whole thing in a layer of tissue paper and gell medium. I retraced some of the the subway tracks, colored in the New York Times headline, and added some fireworks to represent the huge New Years celebration that is held in the city annually.

Nontraditional Portrait

I chose to do my portrait on 3 of my friends from theatre, obvioulsy I didn't get to the other 2. This is Danny Martin. He's a good friend of mine, and I was going to do a series of sheet music, play script, and sheet music again as backgrounds for my pictures. Danny was the perfect person to use because he is very involved in chorus and theatre. I was contemplating using costume fabric, sewing stuff, play posters, pictures of the casts and chorus classes and other such objects, but I wanted to use materials that represented my subject specifically, so I chose the sheet music of 2 songs that he said he liked best. I wanted to be able to see the sheet music under the picture of Danny, so I needed to find something that was tranparent. He looked confused in the picture I took of him so I used blues and greens to show contrast but still stick with a color scheme.I think the product is a great example of what I was trying to show of Danny.

Sticky Situation

     To come up with ideas for this project I first started with sticky food, but then I figured that would be obvious so I tried to think outside of the box. I thought of a person in jail or a trashcan full of positive pregnancy tests. I thought they would be cool, but then I thought lets go crazy and imagined something wild that would really freak someone out if it happened in real life. And so became the octopus in the bathtub. To incorporate repetition I made the wall paper of the bathroom striped and the floor black and white tile. I used acrylic paint for my project. It was difficult becasue I had to use so many layers and had to keep mixing to get the same color over and over again.The mini lessons helped me learn how to layer the paint effectively.

Up Close and Personal

1. At first I only thought of things that would be personal to a person, but then I started to think of things at a close up. The subject I chose, the pine branch, was actually one of my mom’s ideas. I thought it would be a great textured example of the theme.

2. I used all cool colors for the background and pine branch, and then used a warm, bright red for the Christmas ornament.

3.I chose to use chalk pastels. I used these because I had more experience with this medium having used it in Art 1. I think the chalk gives a rough look to the textures in the piece.

4. I didn’t smudge the chalk pastels like I had before; I didn’t want the lines to look smooth except for on the red ornament. I think that that risked my piece looking rushed, but I believe it came out the way I had planned.

5.I used technique in my piece. I used straight, short strokes for the branches needles, and long flowing strokes for the background.

What's the Point?

1. Some of my solutions were pyramids, swords, needles, a compass, a graph, and giving up on life. 

2. I chose to go with needles, though I had difficulty drawing a realistic one, so I thought to draw something that had to do with needles. I ended up using a girl with track marks as my subject.

3. I made the background darker so that the girl would stand out against it. Then, I made the part of the arm with the track marks the lightest to emphasize the focal point of my work.

4. I used pencil as my medium, I thought it would give me more control over the shading in my work.

5. I used contour lines to show the curves of the arm breast and torso, and the straight, rough bricks of the background.

6.My subject was my risk with this project. i felt it was outside of the box and might be considered crude rather than striking.

7. The message I am conveying is: What is the point of ruining your life for one fleeting moment of relief?

Depth Shoe Drawing

 This was one of the first projects I did in Art 1. The exercise was how to show the depth of one item in front of the other. To show that depth the item in the back must be smaller than that in front. Also the object in the front must be drawn in darker to show its closeness. This drawing was particularly difficult for me because of the turned up toes of the boots. This is one of the drawings I am most proud of from this semester.