Scratchboard

For my scratchboard i wanted to do something really different. I felt like all my projects this semester had kinda stayed in this serious logical box and made sense. im sure some people wouldnt agree but for me i felt like i needed to get out of the normality and do something that didnt make sense because those tend to be the pieces im most proud of. I mixed my favorite animal, a narwhal, with scenery i observed from alice in wonderland, thus creating narwhal in wonderland. i really like it because its light piece that i didnt drive myself crazy taking too seriously. it also reminds me of a an illustration which i really like. if i was to change something id probably change the way i scratched the motion in the water. it felt really busy and divided and id like it to feel more fluid and together and resemble the still water less.

Self Portrait

For my self portrait i wanted to do something different. We had the option of doing things mechanically but i wanted to do something that felt more organic so i chose to do a melting self portrait. I chose to do oil pastels for mine because it was a medium i was unfamiliar with and wanted to experiment with. The texture of the oil pastels kinda inspired me to do the melting because it reminded me of wax and candles. for the background i did chalk and decided to do bright colors and lines because i feel like dull colors are a waste of the spectrum and use of sight. i also really dig crazy backgrounds. if i were to do it over again id probably paint it. i know that's not an option for drawing class but the oil pastels werent able to give full coverage in some spaces and i feel like paint would cover it completely and still give me the same fluid texture i liked about the oil pastels. overall its one of my favorite pieces from this course.

look at that view

for my project i did an octopus coming towards me. i struggled a lot at first with foreshortening because i naturally wanted everything to be the same size and thought it would look weird to have everything be so different but i eventually got used to the idea and after redrawing the tentacles a couple times and re-sizing settled on this. i added the blue lines after finishing because i wanted to have a sense of movement and color. overall im really happy with my octopus and how it came out. as far as values go with my graphite drawings i think this is the drawing i pushed myself the most on and im really glad with how it came out.

Dum Dum and Smarties

 The Dum Dum and Smarties assignment was a really good one for me because i feel like i got a hang of using color and putting other colors in to add value like using purple in with reds and stuff. The Dum Dum was my favorite because we used colored pencil and i had more control over my colors i also think it came out the most realistic because i could convey the folds and shadows on the wrapper really well rather than the smooth texture of the smarties. However i did like the smarties because the chalk was easily blended and the colors were really bright and fun to work with. I think what i struggled most with on that one was the wrappers ends and getting too much chalk and getting that weird and for lack of a better word gunked up texture but overall i really liked both of them and tried my best to do the assignment exactly how it was assigned and not do anything crazy or scary since im pretty sure i give mrs rossi headaches on like half of my assignments by straying from the assignment basics. ((((my b))))

Eggs

so this is my egg drawing i have no idea why its upside down but i mean hey at least i have a picture of it. So for my egg drawing i did pretty well, it served its purpose as an exercise for pastels and color but i decided it was boring and decided to graffiti it a little which nearly gave mrs rossi a heart attack but i made it look faded which kinda helped. But then i messed it up with using the matte spray because it was first time using it and i was unaware of how far away you were supposed to hold it. Overall i think my favorite thing that came out of this assignment was when other people started drawing stuff on their backgrounds and foregrounds because they said it was boring that was cool for me because like hey fight the power. Rock on egg drawing.

opacity

For my opacity drawing i decided to do lips in cellophane using colored pencils on black paper. originally i had planned to do an entire face but struggled with the skin tones and decided to minimize it to just the lips i turned out liking this a lot more because it was open to interpretation and was a little bit eerier which i liked even though mrs rossi said it freaked her out because i like art that invokes an emotion rather than one thats just pretty to look at. I think i struggled with the opacity because you have to really pay attention to the way color changes and train your eye to see things differently. Im most proud of the red in the lip where the cellophane is stretched because i feel like its the most subtle aspect but really helps. if i was to change anything id probably spend more time on the teeth. 

Progressive

The same follows for my progressive blog with the whole yahoo and iphone photo blood feud thing idk maybe itll work one of these days. Anyways for my progressive i did a a bag in four stages horizontally as it was being crushed and crumpled. I did it on black paper with white and black charcoal again. I actually like the progressive a lot more than i did the still life i guess i just got a lot more variety in the way of values because it was a lot easier to visualize with plain black paper instead of purple however the wrinkles and folds were really tedious but ya know i get why we did it because not everything is smooth and fun to draw and i respect that. overall it was a cool project if i was to change something i would probably do like a really zoomed in view of the bag for each stage and fill the entire square for each stage i feel like thatd be sick.

update: we fixed it all is well.