Concentration: The Sun

Initial sketch 

On the big sheet of paper  

Coloring in the hair 

Highlights and the shirt  

Starting on the skin

After I added the sun 

With the background

For my second concentration piece, I focused on my long-time friend Aiyana, whom I've known since I was in third grade. In all that time. Aiyana has been one of the nicest people in my life, and she has always been there for me. Whenever I am feeling doubtful about myself, she is there, an unyielding pillar of hope and change that inspires me to be a better person. As the sun card, in tarot, is a symbol of optimism and the promise of a better dawn, so Aiyana is a constant reminder of all of the joy of life.
      Speaking more to the mechanics of the piece, I am not happy with how this turned out. Looking at it now, I'm going to have to add more hair to her forehead to make anything proportionate at all, and the hand itself still really angers me.  Before I put the background in, everything was looking alright, but the moment I put it in, her hand and arm seemed much too small in proportion to the rest of her face.  Hopefully I will be able to fix that.
     Also, I sort of tried to do something with the colors? Like, the top is supposed to be yellow, her shirt is supposed to be predominantly blue, and the background is green. I don't know, I thought that it would be an interesting composition? But, upon reflection, I see that it doesn't work out so well.
    I think the gradient in the sun works out very well. I wasn't going to do it, but I think that it was a good decision. Also, I had a lot of trouble with the skin, and I'm proud of how well that turned out. I used a pale peach color as the intermediate color, and then used white and pink for highlights as well as orange a light brown for the shading. I was really proud of that innovation, because the orange definitely made  her skin more vibrant.
    I don't really have anything else to add to this dissertation at the present moment.  Other than the fact that I will be changing her hairline as soon as possible.  And also possibly doing some more shading on the arms and on the hand.  Also, over the right eye.

Final picture

Concentration: The Star

For my concentration, I decided to do the people in my life as tarot cards.  And the first card I chose was The Star, or number seventeen.  The Star means inspiration and guidance, and someone who provides both of those things in my life is one of my best friends, Allie.  At the time when I was supposed to be starting this project, I only had one picture of her and no way to get more pictures by the deadline, so I referred to a picture of her that was a year old?  It's been her contact picture since last spring.
     Anyways, I decided to do this picture in pen and watercolor, because I had a lot of fun doing that with the interior spaces.  I used watercolor pencils where I could, though, because I really enjoyed doing the mixed-media map/nature vs. mechanical fruits with those.
     Another reason that I chose watercolors is that I feel the gentler colors of the medium are more in sync with Allie's personality.  I almost wish that I'd made the background darker to make her stand out more.  Also, I added a crown of stars to her head, to emphasize the point of the painting.  Originally, I was going to make the crown of stars by using a wax stop in the shape of the stars, in the same position that they're at right now, but since I put the wax on first it got really dirty.  Because it wasn't standing out as well as I had wanted it to, I scraped it off with my fingernail and painted the glitter on with modge-podge.

Reference picture

First full-sized sketch 

Adding color!

More color . . . 

Beginning the background

More of the background

A close up of her face. 

Almost done!

The final!

A final close up of her face with the crown of stars

I think that my pencil drawing in the beginning was much better than what I was left with, but I believe that the final product has its own sort of charm to it? It was really difficult to make skin color, and I messed up on her right arm. I know you can't tell, but the paper is all peeling off.  It pretty much blends into the rest of the picture, but.
     I was asked to write more about why I created this piece as I did, and all I can honestly say to that is that it felt right.  The colors of all Star cards that I've previously seen are softer, and the medium of water color also felt appropriate.  I feel like it added a texture to the painting that otherwise would have just been a girl standing in her kitchen.  I don't have a better answer to why than these.  I wanted to paint Allie in a way that was eye catching, as a star is, but not harsh or shocking to look at, because stars are quietly beautiful and don't draw attention to themselves. Hopefully, I communicated all of that in this piece.

    I know the background is a bit rough. I didn't get the perspective right initially, and I kept making snap decisions with the guache, which I used for the background.  The crown of stars around her head represent the ideas of the card itself, though I plan on making the distinction more clear in further pieces.  

      Overall, I like the piece a lot.  I know it has its faults, but I also feel that some of the faults fall into the acceptable category for watercolor and my style.  

Maps and Nature vs. Mechanical

Originally, I was planning on doing the Nature vs. Mechanical project, with just like fruits that were cut open so you could see cogs and stuff inside of them? But they would be placed on a table, or in a normal setting near a fruit bowl, so you would assume that this was some sort of alternative reality where it was completely acceptable to have mechanical fruit.  I guess I was going for more of an absurdist thing.

    So, I drew out my apple and my banana--they're water color pencil--and then I drew the cogs and gears in pen, and then I painted them with water. They came out looking fantastic, and I was really proud of myself, so I started on the marbled granite of my counter using oil pastels.  Honestly, it looked terrible, and I was really disappointed. 

   

       So, I did what any normal person would do and I cut the pieces of fruit out individually.  As you can see here.  Now that I had the individual fruits, though, I needed a background to put them on.  I had already planned on doing the map project after I was finished with this one, so I decided that I would just combine the ideas.
      I had a better plan for the map project than the nature vs. mechanical project, so I continued on with that theme, which was road trip.  I know that that was a pretty stereotypical idea for a map, but I was going to do a monster road trip. So, I sort of incorporated that into this piece.
      The map that I chose was of Manhattan and the surrounding boroughs.  Ms. Rossi said that she liked the little newspaper and pen monsters I'd put in the water, so I decided to really amp it up and make the piece about monsters attacking New York City? And this was just someone's plan to get out. So, I drew escape routes directly onto the map, wrote a list of things that you would need to do if you were escaping the city, and sponged holes into the paper itself, and glued monsters coming out of it.  On top of all that, I added my banana and my apple because I thought that they fit the idea well. Sort of a steampunk atmosphere and also the color scheme went well together.
     Whenever I make collages, I'm thinking of creating more of a story that I do when I'm making another sort of art.  The combination of different objects from different locations lends itself more to storytelling for me.  So, the idea behind this is that someone is quickly leaving their home, and they have fruits that are lying on top of their map.  Fruits and a bunch of other stuff that they'll need, as well as representations of their future and what's going on around them. So the piece is a still life of a moment in time.  It's not a very cohesive idea, I know, but I love it a lot.  
     The note in the middle of the page was one that I found in the book of maps, and it's handwritten by my uncle. It's directions to somewhere, so that is the coolest piece of this collage.

This is a planning stage. 

This is probably my third or forth stage. I hadn't even glued the banana down yet, or glued down and
torn off a thing of white tissue paper.  

This is the final! 

     I don't know if you can tell, but there's a monster crawling out of the map by the banana, and then there are a bunch of cut out letters that say 'avoid water' like a ransom note in the middle. The picture on the bottom is of my mom's car with a bunch of luggage on top booking it down the highway. And the gears in the top left and bottom right corners are yellow, to keep the banana from standing out so much.  I definitely could put more stuff on top of all this, but I don't want to obscure any of these details, because I'm so attached to them (that's a problem I have with collages, I think), and I wouldn't know what else to put. 

Landscape

So, surprise surprise, I don't have final pictures for my landscape drawing. And, surprise surprise, I don't think it's that great. But, let's talk about it, shall we?

First rough draft 

Rough draft with brown chalk pencil 

Beginning of final 

Day like 3 of final 

Day 4 of final 

In my defense, this piece of paper is like, two feet by a 18 inches. Which is a tremendous amount of space to work with. Also, I didn't really know what I was doing with foliage, as is probably obvious.
    The media for this is white and black charcoal with chalk pastel pencils on brown colored paper, in case you were wondering.
   What I wanted was for the brown of the paper to be the middle tone, and for the white charcoal to demarcate highlights.  Of course, the color range was eventually expanded because the amount of depth I would be able to get out of those to components was questionable, so two different shades of brown and black were added, as was gray.
    I think I made two big mistakes. The first being the black in the foliage. It's much too overpowering, and really detracts from the entire scene.  Possibly, I should have left out black all together. Secondly, I forgot that there were actual places where you could see the sky, and so had to color those the lightest possible color, white, which really threw the highlights of the trees out of whack.
     To top it all off, using the paper as a medium value left a lot of blank spaces on the paper, without any real depth. I'm going to have to revisit this piece and figure out how to make it more cohesive and how to give it more depth before submitting my final.

Animal Portrait

Original sketch

More sketches 

Some more sketches, looking at shading and
head shapes

For my animal portrait, I decided to draw my three pet mice. The white one is named Cassie, the black one that she's sitting on is Sammy, and the brown one who eats too much is Dean.  I used prisma colors in this piece, obviously, even after swearing that I would never so much as look at prisma colors ever again for the rest of my life.  And it was actually a lot of fun. I used some layering techniques that I had never considered before, which are especially prominent in Cas's fur.  I also layered a lot on the wheel and its shading.  

     I think this project was successful for me because I paid attention to my technique, and it was large and complex enough to hold my interest for a long amount of time. I think five days? There are some things that I don't like about it, but overall, I think it turned out really well and is most definitely one of my better pieces this semester. 

     I appreciate the warm undertones that the red paper gave my mice, but they are not under a red light?  I just really like the color red for prisma colors. So, since changing the technique that gives a lot of this piece its individualism, I would change the paper in the background to a brown or orange.  Yellow might not have gone so well with the blue.  I would also have liked to look at Dean's proportions a little more; I don't know what I can do now, but she still looks a little cartoonish to me.  Of course, I might want to make not to use more unrealistic colors all over the picture in the future, so I don't have just one section that stands out as really miscolored, but I don't think the effect is too terrible here. 

     I really appreciated working on this drawing, and it had given me new understanding of prisma colors.  Though there were things that I would change, this picture definitely has its strengths.  I will post the final soon.

Final, day 2

Final, day 1

Final, day 2.2

Final, day 3

Final, day 3.2

Close and personal with Final, day 4

Final, day 5

Final, day please let this stop

Final, almost done! 

Self Portrait

So, I forgot to take in progress pictures for this, which is really bad of me, I know.  In my defense, though, I drew this really quickly so taking day 1, day 2 photos wouldn't have really mattered.
     I know people look at this and think of "A Bad Case of the Stripes," but I really didn't mean to copy that idea.  This project was introduced on the day that I was sick, and I came in the next morning and came up with this idea and the reference photo in time for inspection.
     Directly below, you can see my planning piece for this portrait. Um. I don't know what happened, I really don't.  I thought it was a good picture when I first drew it, and as you can tell I played with the ideas of having different colored stripes throughout my face instead of just one solid color each time.  I also had the idea of not doing just random colors for each stripe, but a rainbow gradient down my face.
      I really have no idea how I can copy the same pictures twice and end up with such drastically different results each time.  Anyways. I really like the brown stripe under the nose in this one, it looks good enough to be part of the final.  

       I do appreciate the effect the orange had overall, though?  Sometimes I look at it and I feel like it's Halloween, which it is, but not Halloween in a good way. Or, like, an old timey prison jumpsuit, but with orange instead of white?  Overall, though, I like the orange.  I like the way that I've blended it with red and purple and yellow.  It makes me really confident about using prismas again.
      I wish I had used a little more expression in the face and given myself more of a challenge, but that's what my concentration's for, right?  I like my shading and composition, and how I used color.  I really like the fade out in the background, with the intensity of color fading out into the light blue, which is sort of the reverse of what's happening into the face.  I think that the texture in the hair really makes the picture that much better.  And I am so happy that I redid the eyes over again, because they look really great.
     If I could change anything, I would make everything just a bit smoother. The shading, specifically.  Again, I would change the expression of the face to give the drawing more complexity.  I also don't know that it looks like me? But I always make my face longer when I'm trying to fill up a page, so that's nothing new.  I would darken some shadows now that I'm staring at it, and would probably go back in with the lights if I had a chance, but I really like this piece and am glad that I had the chance to create it.

Ms. Sudkamp told me that it's been really nice seeing how my art has matured since art 1, and I agree.  It's really refreshing to be able to look at this compared to, like:

http://apex-2017-emmaspace.blogspot.com/2014/03/portrait-project.html

It makes me really proud of what I have been able to accomplish so far, even if it isn't all that spectacular in the grand scheme of things.  

Interior Space

This was my reference picture. 

This was after my first day of working on my final. 

This piece was also really enjoyable for me to work on. I wasn't fighting the medium, or struggling to express my ideas. The composition was enjoyable for me to work with, and I feel like the colors all worked together.
        It was really fun to paint with water colors and gouache. Though the paint I had was actually gouache, I sort of used it as water color for a different texture.  I thought that gave it a certain feel that just doing one or the other wouldn't have. Outlining in pen also added an element that just color wouldn't have.  I think Morgan was right in saying that it looked whimsical.
      I know that we're in Art 4 to make serious art that will eventually be judged by college professionals, but I think at this point in the semester I have to realize that I am not artistically on par with the rest of the class in a lot of mediums. I enjoy making art very much, but I never plan on it becoming my livelihood, or utilizing my skills beyond enjoyment.  Obviously, I would love to improve.  But overall, I think that I would like to like making art more. These past two pieces have been very frustrating to me, and I haven't liked the process of making them at all.
      This project, though, made me remember why I love making art. The simplicity of the colors and the shapes, and how they all came together in the end, was fun. And I know that it doesn't look a lot like the reference picture, and that factually it is a very poor representation of my interior space, but I think that stylistically it is an accomplishment.

This was my initial trial run, and as you can see,
I did this without a reference picture.
I've made notes on how to improve it on the picture itself.

This is my final project. I really like it, and I think the
posters in the back provide an interesting contrast,
because they aren't super detailed, but
they are very colorful.  

Inktober

This is a bit late, but here's my inktober monster!

This is my fellow. As you can see, he is walking by the milliner's, and he is upset because he does not have a hat.  I think this turned out really well, especially the shadows.  Eventually, the top will get smoother because it will be touches a lot and worn down, and that's the only real problem I have with the piece. Also, I wish the windows were a little different.  I tried to use some white charcoal to indicate the difference, but I don't know how well it turned out.  

    I love working with charcoal. The contrast with ink in this was very interesting, I think.  For a small sketch the piece was a lot of fun to work on, and hopefully I can do something like this again soon.  

Oil: Everyday Object

This project, man.  We were supposed to choose a bunch of everyday objects and paint them with oils. Again, I wasn't super enthused with my idea, and I didn't dive into it with elbow grease and all that.  I didn't feel that soul-rending passion that I enjoy from the beginning of a project.  But, I did it. I'm not finished, I'm going to go back and touch some things up and add some shadows and also some copper design or whatever behind so that it will match the mermaid. I have a plan.
      I really hate presenting my painting to the classroom? Because everyone else has these masterful works, and then there's me, and it's amateur hour.  Get ready to suffer, Emma! I touched my oils when they were wet because I was painting on the floor between the dining room and the front hall.  And because I'm impatient and always have paint all over my hands. So I have to go over and do that.  Also, I was painting with minimal light so the colors look all wrong and just--ugh.  I dislike it very much.
    I mean, I like the basis of the painting. I think I have a solid foundation, and was even able to pull some of that off. I really like Charley, the skull.  Mercifin, the dragon, and the mermaid, are a little more abstract, but that's because I didn't have the control I needed to make them more realistic. I didn't like how little I could manipulate the oils.  Also, I painted shadows where there shouldn't have been shadows between the books, and it was hard to rectify my mistakes. The whole time I was painting this I felt like I was swimming and just barely keeping my head above water.
      I should have done a grouping of objects that appealed to me more, or at least something with a set background that I wasn't making up as I went along. Or, not used blue as my shadows. That's something I learned in drawing, but I really dislike it. Like, it's good in theory, but it takes away from the actual blue.  And if no other colors are distorted, it makes you question what you're really looking at.  But, at the same time, black is such an overpowering color.
      Also, I tried to be clever with the color? At the bottom of the painting, Charley is warm browns and yellows, and then we have the The Dream Thieves, which is red, and the table cloth, which is yellow. Moving up we have Blue Lily, Lily Blue which has a green jacket, the mermaid's tale, and then the hypothetical green fixture in the background. At the top I wanted to group Mercifin, The Raven King, and then the rest of the blue background together. Maybe I'll make like the stack of books and table that they're on are right up against the wall and add shadows to the background along with the fixture, to keep it from being so static.
     What we can surmise from this project is that I dislike waiting as much as I ever have, and that I am just as bad with color as I am when we started out.  I will get around to fixing the painting, but I don't think it will ever be as good as I hoped it would.

My reference photo.

First step.

Second step.  I added in Charley and Mercifin
on like the third day. 

This I think, would be a picture of my work on the
fourth day.

And this is not the final picture, but was taken before I
smudged everything!

This is probably from the sixth day i worked on it.

Not the best photo, but another one will be posted
shortly, after I finish touching up some stuff!