Drawings-11/9/14

1.) Did you learn any new techniques or processes as part of the work for this art project?

- I learned 3 new techniques for the drawings of the Dum-Dum, Jolly Rancher, and peppermint. The first one was in the colored pencil media, which was the drawing of the Dum-Dum. I liked that I learned how to highlight the creases of the wrapper. The value of the color was also very important in order to show a variation in the colors of the wrapper. It was also interesting to learn that in order to make something look cylindrical, you have to highlight the center with white, and then have the sides or corners a much darker shade to show that the object is rounded. However, with this exercise, I mostly focused on getting the details of the wrapper. The second technique I learned was the use of chalk. I never really enjoyed using chalk because of how messy it can get, but I discovered that the most important part about using this media, is how much pressure you put onto the chalk. Even if I had put slightly more pressure on the chalk, the drawing would look unrealistic because of of that one darker color. Something new I learned was that in chalk, you should try avoiding blending the colors. This can cause the drawing to look like a mix of colors without any proper highlights or shades. The peppermint was by far the hardest of them all. The last technique was the oil pastel drawing. When I first started drawing the Jolly Rancher, I couldn't figure out how to smooth out the pastel so it would look fully colored. But once I learned the process of dragging the oil pastel back and forth, which takes a very long time, I saw the color had automatically filled a nice, smooth texture onto the paper. I also liked the fact that the values of one color (for mine it was blue) could be so distinct with adding white to the darker blues. The one thing I would've worked on more though was the shape of the candy, and better use of darks and lights.

 2.) Did you use a source of inspiration and combine it with your own ideas to make it original?

- The sources of inspiration I had were the actual objects: Dum-Dum lollipop, Jolly Rancher, and a peppermint. I used these candies to help me draw the specific creases in the wrapper; however, I played around with the colors in all three of them. For example, the peppermint's original colors were obviously red and white, but I changed the idea to put two contrasting colors together: Red and Green.
For the Dum-Dum, I chose to do more orange on the sides, more red near the creases, and then white as the main color almost. And for the Jolly Rancher, I chose to put a lot more white on the top and bottom where most of the highlight should be. I also added some black in the creases of the yellow part of the wrapper to emphasize the deeper creases.
Having these objects in front of you is very helpful in terms of keeping up with the realistic look of the drawing; and also just to have a basic reference for colors, orientation, details, etc. of the object you're drawing.

3.) How would you analyze your work?

- I would say I need to improve a lot more on how to blend colors correctly, because I definitely feel like although the highlights and shades are there, it still doesn't look very realistic to me. Especially with chalk, the proper technique is very important in order to not have it look messy or too blended. For the Jolly Rancher, I feel I could have less white and more of the darker blue. The shape of the candy also should have been better sketched out. It was also difficult for me to properly color in and around the letters of the wrapper, so I would really work on outlining next time. For the Dum-Dum, I feel that I didn't give a good range of value for the orange. I tried putting the darker red in the crease, and a lighter orange next to it, but maybe adding some yellow and browns could have made it look more varied. I also feel I may have put too much white, probably because I was focused more on the white part of the wrapper and not the actual colors. But overall, I think I did good in drawing the basic object, and trying to include the creases and highlights of the objects. In the future however, I'll focus more on outlining, variation in colors, and better technique with whatever media I'm using. 

Blog-Style of a Famous Artist

Question: Did you find inspiration from another artist or culture?

(This was my reference painting)

---I took inspiration from the well-known artist, Winslow Homer. He was known for his realistic paintings of the seaside, lakes, oceans, or any sight of bodies of water. He kept his paintings very scenic and peaceful. So, for this style project I copied his kind of visual. I painted a lake with a sunset background; and to make the visual look like an actual place, I painted the lighthouse and a shelter on the right side of the painting. Homer was also known for his unique style of blending different colors together to make the visual bright and attractive. I used his style by blending a lot of yellow, orange, red, and pink together for the evening sky. For the reflection of the sky onto the water, I added more black to have it a lot darker than the sky; this made it look like there were little pools of water in the lake. Homer had most of his personal life spent near a lighthouse, so I decided to choose a painting where I could include a specific object/building that was special to the artist. 

Question: How did you respond to challenges that occurred as you worked?

----One problem I faced was painting the lighthouse. Initially, I had not sketched the lighthouse correctly and it turned out a little crooked and not exactly straight. After I discovered this problem, I had to cut off some of the right side of lighthouse and paint white over it in order to make the lighthouse look wider. Then, I painted more black on the left side border so it shifted to the center more. Another problem I faced was making sure I didn't blend the wrong colors together. A lot of the painting consisted of black, so it was important that I didn't mix the darker colors with the bright oranges and reds. Especially with sun, I didn't want my brush to have any other color but pure yellow on it. Another challenge was painting the rock, where the lighthouse/shelter stand on. I didn't want to make it pure black or pure gray because that's not part of Homer's style. Homer was into blending colors, so I decided to mix green, dark purple, black, and white together to create this "rocky" looking sediment for the rock. 

Question: Did you learn new techniques or processes as part of the work?

----One technique I learned was how before you start your painting, you have to add a tone wash across your canvas. This helps with areas of dark colors and areas of light colors throughout the painting. Since I had more black on the bottom half of the canvas, I figured more tone had to be painted there. I also learned the technique of blending/mixing paints to create random and unique colors. An example of this would be on the left side of the water, where you can see a tint of purple and blue. I also like how the purple in the sky really stood out because I painted the shaded purple on top and the tinted purple on the bottom, giving it somewhat of a contrast. Another technique that helped was sketching lightly on the canvas before actually painting. It helped especially with drawing the basic shapes and borders of the mountain in the background, the lighthouse, the rock, and the sun. 

Art 2: Prospective Project

How did you use your own unique ideas in your work?

     -For this perspective project, I wanted to use an object that was used in one point and also somewhat repeated. The main idea of the drawing is the rings being stacked on top of each other from a close-up view. I didn't repeat exactly one object, but I did draw three rings in one point perspective. My source of inspiration was my own rings that I wear all the time; using this as a reference, I stacked them in a way to be directed to one point. I also wanted to make this piece look realistic, so I wanted my reference to be a legitimate object and not a picture that I took or got from the internet.

Did you learn new techniques or processes as part of the work for this project?

- The main technique used in this project was value and shading. In order for such simple objects to look a little realistic value was necessary. I kept the light source on the right edges of the rings; that's where you can see the highlights. Then I focused on the darker value to be on the edges of rings, and especially when the rings would touch each other. Also, to make it look like the rings are stacked, drawing the shadows was really important. There was value in the shadows too, going from dark and fading into a lighter shade.

How did you respond to challenges that occurred as you worked?

- To make the piece look more interesting I had to think about what kind of a surface I had to put the rings on. It was difficult in the sense that I didn't really believe at first that anything would be very interesting to look at. My first idea was a table, but it didn't seem that people could tell it was just a regular table. Finally, I got the idea of a drawer, or some kind of a jewelry box. Then I started drawing the edges of the boxes in perspective, and thought of drawing a handle on the left edge. This way, with value and the handle, it would look like a jewelry box which looked much more interesting to me.

Art 1 Final Portfolio

Essay Questions: 

1.) How did you apply what you learned in Art 1 to successfully complete the Identity Project? Talk about your knowledge of materials and what you've learned about working with themes.
            - Firstly, my identity project was a sketch of Mahatma Gandhi using his own spinning wheel to make his clothes. In this sketch I decided just to use the basic skills I've learned throughout this course. Such as, value, perspective, and proportion. I learned that value is a skill that can really make your artwork look very realistic and appealing since it can also consist of highlights and darker shades vs. lighter shades. On the wooden piece where the spinning wheel is placed on top of is the area where I tried putting the most amount of value. I thought that the corners and especially wherever there were two things intersecting, was the area I would put a much darker shade. On the edges of the wooden piece, I put the highlight where light would reflect in real life. This made this piece of the work more realistic. Next, I used perspective. Since the spinning wheel was placed in an angle, I had to make sure each element of the wheel was facing towards a diagonal instead of a front profile. This was maybe the hardest part of this project, since the spinning wheel had to look symmetrical yet in an angle. I also made Gandhi sit in a diagonal position so it could correspond with the direction of the spinning wheel. Finally, I learned how to use proportion in the correct way. I mostly used proportion obviously for Gandhi's body. Based on an image I was referring off of, I saw how his head was rather larger at the top and got a little narrow towards the bottom. His ears were also noticeably pointing outwards, with the glasses resting on them. His physicality was an interesting part to draw since he had a skinny and bony structure. Although these were the main parts of the body, the smallest part, which were the hands took the longest time to draw. I wanted him to be seen as if he was holding a threading spindle that was coming off of the thread from the spinning wheel. I had to draw the thumb in front of the spindle's handles, and the rest of the fingers underneath like he was gripping onto the object. The fact that this was the smallest feature of the drawing was a challenge since I had to make the details of his hands to still look realistic.  All of these ideas and skills I learned in Art 1 so far, have really helped me in drawing objects and people in a complete different perspective, which eventually made my artwork look a lot more appealing. 

2.) What was your most successful project this semester? Describe the project and your work, then explain why you picked it. 
            - I believe my most successful project was the tea lamp (flower piece) and the zentangle. The zentangle was my first project in this class, and was luckily an area of art that I was most comfortable with. For that piece, I used dividing lines to separate the specific areas of where I would fill it with designs. This helped me a lot, especially since the paper was quite large. As I kept going with the intricate designs within the dividers, I didn't even notice when the whole paper got to be filled. Using lots of designs from my henna ideas, I used the technique of repetition. This was the main factor of this project that really caught people's attention. Although people thought that it's a paper filled with very different designs, it's actually just patterns that have been repeated randomly throughout the piece. For example, at the bottom of the paper, where there is the circle, I used the same pattern over and over again to fill up the circle. This gave a detailed effect since the pattern itself was so intricate. Doing this, I kept going on to fill the whole paper within a span of 3-4 days. I also learned to put value and emphasis onto the major lines of the art piece. 
         For my tea lamp, the medium I used was clay. That was my first time using clay to mold into something that was functional. I felt that the best part about this project was the painting of it more than the sculpting. I decided to use a lot of vibrant colors along with white to highlight some of the designs. I noticed the the clay piece was going from up to down towards the bottom center. Using this idea, I wanted to use a repetitive design that would get smaller and smaller as I was painting downwards. With the many options I had for colors, I used bright yellows, pinks, and reds. On the contrary, I also used a dark blue, a light blue, and a magenta color at the top. Since the clay piece was quite small, I had to really make the designs tiny in order for the detail of the painting to show. I also learned that layering colors on top of each other can also give an interesting effect. For example, on the border of the piece I drew petal-like designs that had white layered on top of it. I liked that part a lot just for the fact that it looked like actual petals. These two artworks are very special to me since I did my best while learning so many things throughout. 

3.) Do over - what was a project this semester you would change if you could? Describe the project and your work, including what you didn’t like about the work, then explain what you could have done differently to improve the result. 
        - If given the chance, I would definitely want to redo the block printing project. This was a project that I didn't really realize was going to be so difficult at first; therefore I took it as an easy project at first, later seeing that it affected my prints quite a bit. I think I should've known how to use the tools on the rubber pieces a lot better. I also was a little confused on what colors to put for the piece, since we needed 2 different colors. The matching of the first color and then the new color on top of it was the biggest challenge, since you didn't know how it was going to look after you peeled it off. If I had more time to practice and learn how to match up the colors then I would definitely would want to redo this project just because it looks so interesting in the end...if it turns out correctly! 

4.) What is a media that you enjoyed working with this semester? Write about what the media was, explain why you liked it and give examples of work you created with it.
           - I really enjoyed the stop motion app for the change project. I did a henna tattoo on someone's hand and took pictures of the design developing from the beginning to the end. I have done henna for a very long time now, but I never thought that I could make it look even more interesting through this type of media. The stop motion really made the design look like it was growing from a simple design to an intricate design. Seeing something that I'm so used to doing, now through a different perspective made the change project really interesting for me. The fact that it was something new and different made me want to choose this media, and then use it through a type of art that I'm so used to doing. 



Artwork and Reflection:

         - For my reflection I chose to redo one of the warm-ups, which was drawing a face. I feel like I did this better because I added a lot more value, especially in the hair and below the neck. I emphasized her eyes a lot more, with the highlight within the eyeball. Overall, I kept the features on her face very dark, with subtle detail within. For example, the lips have a dark outline, and then within the lips I drew lines to show the curve, or shape of the lips. I also changed her hairstyle, and position of the flower to make it be seen in a different perspective. I think the proportions of the first try were not as great, since the eyes were a lot larger than any other feature; so I made sure the nose wasn't too small, and the eyes didn't dominate the entire face. I tried to balance this with her hair to take up most of the forehead so the face wasn't awkwardly large. For the flower, I put more value that radiated from the center, as if there were two colors blending with together. Overall, I tried to focus more on value for this piece. 

Original                                                                                                       Redo

Artistic Behaviors - Blog 5

Artists Create Original Art:

Change Project: Henna tattoo (Original Art)

      For my first sculpture I used clay to make a tea lamp holder. It's also gives a flower effect because of its shape and designs. Using vibrant colors I painted the sculpture with yellow, dark blue, magenta, red, light blue, and white. This is original art for me because I used my own idea for its functional use and sculpted it based on my imagination. The designs I used for this piece are very small yet detailed. Using the colors I mentioned above, I tried using contrasting and complementary colors to make it look colorful. For example, I put the red and blue paint next to each other, and then white to highlight the contrast with small designs. I purposely kept the base color of the flower mustard yellow so it could give a somewhat general brightness to the piece. I wanted to fill the inside part of the flower, so I repeated a single line of design in layers pointing towards the bottom center of the tea lamp. I feel this idea really gave depth to the sculpture which is what attracted most people. Instead of giving the piece a simple profile, I painted a surrounding design so it would look complete.  I basically just used the red to paint petal - like designs; and then painted white in a smaller form on top of the red. This complemented the plain yellow base.

Tea lamp (flower sculpture)

Artists develop new art making skills

For my 2nd sculpture I made a teddy bear holding a heart out of clay. This was actually my first time sculpting something "unrealistic". Starting from the colors, to the shape, to the size, everything was based on making the sculpture look cute and appealing. Some of the new skills I learned through using clay were cross hatching to suck on separate parts, using water to moisten the clay every once in a while, and using the basic smoothing tools in order to finish the piece. My biggest challenge for the bear was making the parts of the body proportionate. I tried not to make the head too large and kept the feet of the bear show instead of all of the legs.Sculpting the arms was the most difficult though; the size and especially the shape was a new skill I learned. I figured out that firstly I have to cut a longer strand of clay in half so the sizes were equal. Then rolling it in a way where it's fatter at the ends where the "paws" of the bear are, and skinnier at the back where it attaches to the body. Although the main technique I used for this sculpture was the pinch pot idea. In order to make air not get trapped within the body of the sculpture I had to dig a hole at the bottom of the piece using one of the tools. I also did this on top of the "belly" of the bear where the head is attached to. 

Artists convey messages through their artwork:

For my last project I did a portrait of Mahatma Gandhi using his own spinning wheel. The history behind this portrait is that when the British were in control over India, the Indians were forced to buy the products the British made. In order to boycott with nonviolence, Gandhi encouraged everyone to create their own spinning wheel where they can make their own clothes instead of buying the British products which were too expensive for the common man. This portrait obviously shows the spinning wheel, which was built by him. Simplicity, independence, courage, and intelligence is what I tried conveying for the viewers. The quote on top reads: "I will not let anyone walk in my mind with their dirty feet", an original quote by Gandhi. I thought this suited this specific portrait because he was not allowing the British to take control of what he could or couldn't buy in his own country. The clothes I drew on him were very ordinary like how Gandhi was in his time. For people to recognize Gandhi I drew his glasses and simple clothes which he always wore. I worked mostly on the value for the portrait so it could look realistic; although the hardest and longest part of this sketch was drawing the spinning wheel. To firstly keep it in a sideways perspective yet still symmetrical was a challenge.  

Blog Post 4

- Artists Communicate Through Their Work:

I painted a picture of teeth biting onto a stem that has thorns on it. I also depicted my feeling through the blood coming from the thorn going into the lip. I chose this idea/visual because I wanted to express the feeling of pain. I mainly wanted to focus on the outside visual of really pretty lips, but then suddenly seeing blood to the pretty lips making it seem sad; I wanted to do this for the color project because it shows a contrast in the painting's effect. In other words it shows irony since the beautiful lips make you feel nice, yet the blood on the lips completely changes that feeling into shock. To really make the blood show a strong effect, I had to put a lot of paint on that one spot where the lip was hurt so it was obvious for the viewer. But in general, I basically just wanted to show how something so nice can turn ugly very quickly. As I explained before, pain was the feeling expressed since the blood ruins the beautiful effect of the luscious lips. 

-Artists Have a Global Awareness of Artmaking

Original painting: Francois Boucher

- For the style project, I took inspiration from the artist Francois Boucher. Francois Boucher was an artist who was born on September 29th, 1703. He was a French painter who was known to paint classical themes and decorative allegories. He was largely known to be a the biggest decorative artist of the 18th century. In the beginning of his art career, he was a lot on painting landscapes and nature, but eventually he started painting portraits. A lot of his paintings depicted passion and intimacy. I chose the painting of the Young Woman who is holding a little flower. The expression of this painting was very peaceful, innocent, and beautiful. I personally enjoy doing drawings which depict some kind of expression on the face of a woman. I had something new added onto this sketch, which was the hand holding onto the flower. It was interesting how I learned to draw this, since I only looked at the painting and pretty much copied the orientation of the hand and flower. Boucher's paintings also show a lot of realism which looks very organic. He painted a lot of human figures, which I like doing instead of abstract art. This is why Francois Boucher was my inspiration for the style project. 

-Artists Develop Art Making Skills

  For the style project, I was using the basic skills of how to draw realistic eyes, lips, and nose. I focused a lot on the eyes of the woman since that's where the feeling of "innocence" comes from. I made sure I kept the highlight in the eye which keeps the eye to look realistic. I also kept minimal detail for her make up since it could ruin the effect of what Boucher's painting gave, which was naturally beautiful.The nose was the feature that had more shading and highlight. The tip of the nose shows the highlight, while the surrounding of the nose has shading, as well as the top of the nose leading up to the eyebrows.  The lips just had a darker lining around the lips compared to the shading within. Something I did different was do some shading on the face of the drawing. I kept most of the shading on the cheeks and on the corner of her forehead. Even on the side of her arm, I did some light shading on the top. Her hair was the "decorative" part of the drawing, and so was the flower. So I did a lot of shading in the corners of where the hair was being pulled back; and for the flower I gave it color so it could be different from the normal black and white sketching. That's where I decided not to do much shading for the flower, since I was going to color it pink.

Blog Post 3-artistic behaviors

Artists Communicate Through their Art:

This was the original sketch I was referring off of.

-For the color project I painted a picture of a woman's lip biting the stem of a rose. The stem has thorns on it, and the thorns bite her lip, causing dripping blood. With this painting, I tried to communicate with the feeling of jealousy or hate. For me, I feel like letting out my anger through hurting myself allows my pain to release. This is depicted through the thorns from the stem which hurt her lips. I also felt that jealousy could be another perception of this expression. Jealousy tends to make people (girls especially :P) do something that causes even more pain for them. It can also make someone feel worthless and therefore punish themself for being who they are. Her way of putting the stem on her mouth, knowing that her lips will bleed, shows how she wants to feel the pain. That's why I chose to do an unexpected action for the focus of my painting. This made it easier for me to display the expression of my painting clearly.

Artists Develop Art Techniques

I learned through some of the warm-ups on how to sketch in comparison to what you see in real life; for example, the perspective of what you're looking at should be the same as what your drawing on your paper.

* the orange came from the chalk pastel that
smeared onto the sketch from another next page*

In the hand sketches I really focused on what I was looking at, almost like contour drawing where I just followed the object without taking the pencil off the paper. This helped me in getting a good base off of what I was trying to draw, and it turned out to look the same as my own hand! I had to add in some value to make the hand look somewhat realistic; along with the lines and curves which had to be in detail so it didn't look fake. What I did as something different was color behind the hand all black so the drawing could really pop out in contrast with the background. I also tried to focus on the orientation of the hand; since the position wasn't straight, I made it a little slanted so it was the same as how my own hand looked. These techniques really helped me in making the sketch look realistic. 

Artists Create Original Art

-For the land/sky project I wanted to have a difference in what art materials I used as well as what effect to give from the drawing. For the land project, I used oil pastels to burnish/blend the bright colors of the drawing. The concept of my land drawing was very simple, I tried to make it look peaceful by adding just colors that really stand out to you. For the trees, I enjoyed making the bushels of leaves look combined by swerving the oil pastels continuously. The trunk of the tree also had some value, because I wanted the details of the bark to be darker than the local color (brown). With the sky project, I had a choice of doing the night sky or a bright sky with the sun; I stuck with the night, since there's a lot of blending involved with it. The effect of the night sky is quite dark, and mysterious since the moon shines alone with dark clouds scattered randomly. The original aspect of these drawings were that I made these based on my own ideas/visuals.