Reflecting at the end of the course

This year in art class all started for me when we planted the seeds in our sketch book. To me it symbolized how we will grow as an artist and as we look back it's amazing to see how the earliest seed was not as detailed or all the same color and shade. The ones further in the book were much more meaningful. We took our sketchbooks outside and started drawing different objects that we found interesting. Although mine didn't come out perfectly I really liked how it was my choice to decide what I wanted to draw. That's what is my favorite part of art. The creativity and excitement of never knowing just exactly what will come out. So many times during the course of these two terms did I start out with one idea and it turn into a totally different piece of art all together. For example, our last project with the pencil drawings. My idea from the beginning was to create a dancer who was looking up into the spotlight. As I searched for pictures of a dancer and spotlights the google search showed a picture of car headlights. This image really scared me. The fear and symbolic potential right away changed my idea. In art I have learned that creativity goes much farther beyond just do what you want. It's how one little detail can ruin or make a drawing. It's the passion you put into your work, the excitement, and the care taken. As far as ups and downs go I definitely knew what projects I was better at. I really enjoyed the principles of design projects because I love to create collages and make everything symmetrical and just right. Creating self-portraits was hard for me to do because I could never get my head perfectly right or draw my nose the way I wanted it or my eyes the right length apart. I suppose without these flaws I would never have been able to learn what I really enjoyed about art. I believe that art is always in your life, whether you want it to be or not. Creativity, excitement, passion, textures, and shapes. I truly don't know how it all ends but then again how can you? Art is always in ones life it's just how they use the opportunities set forth to direct someone's journey of life.

I See the Light Drawing

Crashing Cars

My drawing was meant to show two cars crashing into each other. This was meant to symbolize that life is short and the shot of light can make everyone stop thinking and "freak out." My goal in using light and dark was to really emphasize the absolutes of each. The bright white was to show the car lights overlapping as the cars are getting closer to each other. The black is to show the creepy side of the picture and that the scene is taking place late at night. I thought of this idea when I thought of two cars. I right away knew that the absolute opposite colors (darkest black and whitest white) would give this drawing a better meaning. When it came to the windows I had to erase a lot to get a light gray so that it would be lighter than the car but not white. This was a challenge for me and the H pencil was helpful when it came to fulfilling the correct shades. I found it really hard to use the 6B pencil because it was hard to create clean strokes making the background smoothly black.

Self Portrait as a Chipmunk

I chose to create a chipmunk because they are fast, little, energetic, and smart. These all are qualities that describe me as well. I placed the chipmunk in a train station. I did this because train stations are very busy, loud, fast, and exciting. You would never find a chipmunk in a train station, better yet train stations are busy and filled with extreme amounts of people. For the most part chipmunks are the opposites of each other. I have worked with clay a lot in the past. I learned how to take out the extra clay not necessary and create textures. I made the fur on my chipmunk and its tail scruffed up so that it looks like the fur of an actual chipmunk. I learned that the little details strongly help with the final product. Creating little people in the background and a train track and puffy cheeks really helped show what I was trying to emphasize.

Me-scape: A Reductive Block Print

At first I was very confused with the process. I didn't understand how my prints would work if I kept taking out space. Once I got the hang of it it wasn't all that bad. In the end I had two pretty good prints that I was satisfied with. I'm very happy with the colors that I chose because they complement each other well. I think that my color choice really helped create the best prints I could. If I were to re due the prints I probably would have taken more time with measuring the squares so that it would all of landed better on the actual paper. Overall I'm pretty happy with my outcome.

I am a sister, a dancer, and Jewish

I think that the strengths of my self portrait are that all of the things that I drew represent what I am most passionate about so I could represent them all well. All of the pictures that are cut up show the different pieces of my life. In the pictures are the people I love while doing the things I love most. I don't think there is just one thing that comes through the most because I tried to balance the most important things in my life equally. I did this because there's more then one thing that means the most to me. I created a collage and dividing my head up into four different sections to create four different drawings. Lastly, the contrast in my self portrait creates emphasis because the black and white cut outs stand out.

Reflecting on self-portrait progress

In my self portrait my face is filled with different sections of drawings that have to do with my passions and important things in my life. My hair is a collage of pictures that show my family and friends and basically my life. During my groups discussion they suggested the idea of painting or coloring the background of my face skin color to more specifically translate the fact that it is supposed to resemble my face. My group liked my project and thought that it was overall very creative. I am almost done with my self-portrait, basically all I have to do now is just color in.

Reflecting on the Four Hour Project

This project is very different then all of the others that we have been working on throughout the first term. This project has showed me how much I've learned throughout this term because I created something that shows my knowledge and understanding of the principles of design. This is because, my project was explaining a story and the back round was black, blue, and red. These colors emphasize sadness which was the main theme of my story. The hardest part of my project was creating leading lines to explain the story. I finally figured out that I needed a background to show the theme and then emphasize my main picture which was of a hand with a picture of a little boy. I then made a road going to a house. This symbolizes the fact that they are trying to find the boy who was kidnapped and take him home. The street shows proportion and the emotion that shows he's so far away from the house and wants to come back home. Along the way I have improved my project and my understanding of principles of design.

The Book Project...progress and planning

My original plans for my book project are the same as they are now. My story is trying to show a young women trying to buy a house for her and her husband to start their lives off. I have been following my sketchbook drawings for the most part. The only thing that I have really changed throughout my book so far is the emphasis. On the second page I totally changed it. The picture used to be the realtor and the woman meeting at the door but now there is a big hand in the background and the realtor is huge in comparison with the woman. This emphasis shows that the future of the woman is in the realtors hands. It is hard to make each picture very different while including things like leading lines. Overall the process is going well but it has been taking longer than I thought.

Drawing the Human Figure From the Inside Out

The goals for today's drop everything and draw were to draw humans from the waist and down and up. There was a lot of scribbling used in this activity and everything connected together in a certain way. Another goal for today was to not listen to what your brain was telling you to do. For example, if someone was lying down that didn't necessarily mean that you had to turn your paper around unless that's what you actually saw. I think I achieved my goals pretty well but I have to work on not listening to what my brain was telling me to do. I was drawing Alex who was lying down and I flipped my paper around because I was at side view and that's what I saw. When drawing both Sophia and Taylor I could only see the back of their heads. This was harder for me because I didn't fully know how to create the arm without putting the arm legitimately in the middle of the back.

Shades of gray

Today in class we made charcoal drawings using different shades of gray. The goals were to make it so you could tell what everything was, have 5 different shades of gray, and make it look realistic. I think I achieved this goals pretty well. I right away got to work on different shades of gray which I like a lot because it helped show whether the object was light or dark or in between. What was hard for me was drawing a certain handle from a pitcher it wouldn't fit right and I was making it with an eraser which didn't give great curves. This was a very big challenge for me. Also, we were to make things bold and make it look like they were actually hard or made of ceramics if they were which I think I showed in my drawing as well. Overall I think I achieved all of the goals from this weeks drop everything and draw day.

Reflecting on Found Object Sculpture

I started my found object sculpture by taking the chains off of my moms old shoes. This pretty much is what inspired me to start my sculpture. I thought that together the two chains looked like a body. I then took two plastic pieces from sunglasses and noticed it looked like a butterfly. I didn't know what to use for wings at first. My plan in my sketch book was to create a tree for the butterfly to be on. Which is when the flower pedals came in to use. I noticed that it looked more like wings and kept adding more and more making it very colorful just like a butterfly. The best part of the two chains was that I got to use a wire to tie it together making it look even more like a body. Once I noticed this my mind was set and pushed me to want and to ultimately complete my sculpture of a butterfly. During the scavenger hunt I noticed how much people overall influence art. Half or even more of the sculptures were of people or animals. This shows how natural it is for us all to take what we see every day and apply it to art. I really like how my sculpture hangs but if I could go back and do it all differently I probably would have been more strategic when it came to putting the flower pedals down as the wings to make it look a little more neat looking.

Reflecting at mid-term

So far in this term I have progressed by having a better attitude toward creating art in general. I easily become uncomfortable with my art because I'm not great at things like drawing. I have learned to embrace my creativity which I do have and just try my best to show what I can do. I'm good about doing all my homework and blogs thoughtfully and on time. During the line story collage in particular I got really into it and created this story from a song I was listening to that inspired me. This project helped open up my mind and show me how much fun art really is. I liked taking pictures from magazines and creating different emotions through lines which was really interesting to me. Lastly, on drop everything and draw days with charcoal, helped work on my focus and drawing still life. I wasn't afraid to get messy or erase what I had already drawn. As you can see, I have progressed a great amount so far this term but I definitely have much more to work on and learn throughout the rest of this course.

What's in the Sack?

The goals for today's drawings were to create shapes out of the bags to make them look different to show whether there's liquid in it or something hard and to represent the object. For the what I believe to be a big bag of water, I shaped it so that it was not proportioned and an odd and circular shape. For the bag with the box in it I made it so that there were straight and pointy edges to show what I was trying to create. Another goal for today was to make the shadows. This was a little difficult at first, because I made the shadows dark instead of the background. Since I did this I had to go back and fix it to make the shadows lighter. One last goal was to at first go quickly and look at the still objects more then the painting. This was a little hard for me as well because I liked perfecting little things which I learned not to do during this process. These were the goals for today's drawing.

The changing still life

In order to keep up with the changing still life I had to keep my eyes on the set up almost the whole time. Also, I had to not worry as much about whether my drawing looked good and neat but more about getting all of the objects onto my paper. Lastly, I didn't really carefully draw anything I mostly just drew the obvious and didn't perfect each little thing because if I had then I would have gotten behind. When I was erasing I had to go really fast which made my drawing really messy and dirty which I truly only noticed afterwards because I was paying attention to the changing still life.

Reflecting on my first critique

My artwork was very in depth and creative to a point where it was hard to figure out what was going on unless you actually knew what it was about. My negative feedback was that I should have used darker colors to show more sadness. I really like bright colors so I couldn't help but use colors I liked even though it didn't match the theme of my picture. My positive feedback was that I definitely thought about the story. Getting feedback from my classmates was fine. It made me think a little bit more about my painting and what I need to work on in the coming projects.

What we've done in art principles class over the past week and a half

All these activities have creativity in common. This is because, for the postcard project you have to use your imagination to find different ways to explain what's going on in the picture without actually saying what's "in" the picture. In the collaborative drawing we had to continue someone else's drawing which is very challenging but put our creativity to work. The pour paintings went from a spot of paint to a total different figure. Lastly, we did the mapping of still life which was incredibly hard. It takes a lot of creativity and thought to figure out how to draw something without actually drawing it. That sounds so weird but actually what we had to do. As you can see when it all comes down to it we put our imagination and creativity to work for the past week and a half.

Re-visiting observation/description activity

She got the triangle in the left corner right and the big red square in the middle. She missed the letters and most of the colors. She drew a pizza box it looks like but thats not what it was at all. If I were to do this project again I think that I would be much more descriptive when it came to the colors and shapes on top of shapes and the patterns that evolved throughout the picture.