Scratch Board

I did a self portrait for my scratch board. I chose this picture because of the light in the glasses, and the hair. The glasses had a cool reflection, and the hair had a lot of movement and texture. I could've done a better job showing the reflection in the glasses. I left it way too dark in certain spots. The hair showed a lot of movement so that was fun to draw. I think the hardest thing about this was that the tool I scratched it with would sometimes not work the way I wanted it too. It would get stuck in certain spots and end up making weird marks. It was kind of frustrating, but it was still fun. It was a lot like drawing with pen, which I really enjoy. It was a challenge because you couldn't erase or cover up your mistakes, you just had to keep on adding lines and hope it looked okay. Overall I think I need to get better at showing values and transitions, but I think it was ok for my first attempt.

Art 3: 4th quarter

I finished up my time project. Each square represents how I felt when I painted it. I really liked this project because it shows how much change a person can undergo in just a day. It's kind of weird for me to look at because I did it so long ago, but I can vaguely remember the way each one felt. I think visually representing your emotions in an abstract way is good for you. It's kind of therapeutic in a way, and I think it's a better way of portraying emotion. It's not just simple symbols like a smiley face for happy or a tear drop for sad, emotions are complex things and are better represented with abstract images. Reducing emotions to simple images erases the subtle differences in the happiness you felt yesterday and the happiness you feel now. You may describe yourself as happy in both situations, but you know that it's slightly different than how it felt before. Or at least it does to me. I think I wanna do another project like this again in my free time, because it helped me learn a lot about myself, but I probably won't because I'm really lazy.

This is a quick sketch I did in prisma. I was experimenting with colors and challenging poses. The upper body looks weird, but the right leg looks really good to me. 

I did a lot of bad self portraits. I got better as I kept doing them, but they never quite look like me. I guess that's something I have to keep working on. I'll probably do a lot more self portraits in the future because whenever I ask someone else to be my model they freeze up and just stare at the camera awkwardly. It's a struggle :/

When I don't feel like drawing myself and can't find a good model I find pictures of celebrities.  They usually never end up looking like who I drew so I pretend that it was just some person I made up in my head :) This one kind of looks like who I was drawing though, and it's Twiggy. I didn't finish it , but I will eventually. I did it with oil pastels, which I discovered that I love this semester. I use to stay away from them, but they're actually really fun!

These are some of my prints. I really hated them when I made them, but they're not that bad. I'm sure I could've done a better job, but I still think they look kind of cool (even if you can barely tell they're hands).

Then out of frustration I made these ugly eye prints. I wanted them to look creepy, like a bunch of eyes were staying at you but they just look kind of stupid. I'm really sorry that I wasted that rubber stuff on this trash.

This is my still life. My original plan was to paint the class in front of me, but I realized that would be too challenging because people move around too much. I settled on doing those fake flowers that just sit in the room. I decided to make it as colorful and weird as I could, but I think it ended up way too busy. I still really like the background and basket, but I could probably redo the flowers. It looks a lot better in the photo, but in real life it's a mess.

Teens Inspired

For my teens inspired project I came up with the idea of sculpting women in unflattering poses. I noticed that when I went to the museum that women were a popular subject matter for sculptures. All of their poses were very poised and graceful. You obviously would never see someone positioned like that in real life. I thought it would be fun to sculpt women more relaxed, like they're the classical sculptures but they're on break. It was also influenced a little by Degas because he would paint ballerinas unposed, and I just thought they ended up really pretty anyway. The clay dried to fast so I didn't get them as smooth and detailed as I would have liked. They also didn't end up getting fired because the kiln got messed up, but it was fun to do them anyway. Sculpting is really hard, so props to anyone who can do it well.

I also did a few sketches and paintings of classical sculptures.

Self Portrait

This is my self portrait, it's very big. I think it's 24 by 18 inches. It was really challenging because I was more likely to mess it up because of its size, but I think it paid off. I was able to add more details than I would have if it was smaller. It was kind of annoying though because I thought I would be done with one part and then I would look at it the next day and realize that it didn't show enough value. It was also challenging to redo an area because I had to worry about smudging the charcoal in other spots I had also done. I had to hold the pencil kind of weird so I wouldn't put my hand on the paper.

I feel like I learned a lot by doing this. I improved at drawing faces and using charcoal. Charcoal has become my new favorite medium because of this class. I love the way it looks on colored paper, and it really allows me to showcase my style. I can get really dark and show more movement with charcoal than I ever could with pencil. It was my first time doing a drawing this large, and I'd really like to do it again. I didn't realize that there was such a big difference in drawing large pieces compared to normal size pieces. It's not like you're just moving your arm, you have to get up and move around at certain points. I even had to stand up on my seat a few times to see the drawing all together. I also learned that it's a lot easier for parts of the drawing to fade into each other. I had to add a little pink to the eyes so they would pop out more, although it's not very noticeable. 

It might've been hard to do this piece, but I really like it. I like the compositor a lot, and surprisingly I really like the texture of the hair. The lips are what really make it for me though. I think pulling at my face made them look really cool, and it was also fun to draw the skin that way. The color of the paper adds a lot to it too and I'm really happy with it.  

Opacity drawing

Opacity Drawing

By Jessica Nastasi

This took soooooooooooooooo long to do, but I really loved the way it turned out. It's a drawing of my lunch. I did it with prisma colors and I think they really helped me show the transparency. This was really fun to color because of all the different textures and colors. My favorite parts are the top of the glass and the little part of the bag that's empty at the top. I got to use a lot of colors for both, and I really love they way they look. The only parts I don't are some of the white parts on the bag because they don't look real enough, and the background. I might go back and fix the background later, but for now I'm 100% done working on this.

Smartie and Dum Dum

If you showed these two pieces to a random person I don't think they would ever guess they were done by the same person. I'm so proud of how the dum dum turned out (besides the writing on it), and am so disappointed in the smartie.

I think the hardest thing about the smartie was that you couldn't do fine details easily with the chalk pastels. I've always had a pretty tough time with chalk pastels. I think chalk pastels look best when it's very smooth and soft, but my style is more rough and messy. I probably should've tried to be more soft than usual, but i was curious to see how it would work out. It didn't end up super horrible, but I think it would've improved a lot if I just gave in and drew less stylistically for once. 

I'm so happy with how the dum dum looks! I told myself when I first started working on it that I wouldn't use weird colors like I always do and I would try to make it look as real as possible. Obviously I went back on my word, but I like the transition from more realistic to less. I think it looks really nice. I love prismas so much and I'm so happy I got to work with more than just the usual 12 color set I have at home. I need to start saving up money and buy one of those giant sets because you can do so many amazing things with them. The biggest problem I had with the dum dum was the words on the wrapper. Next time I draw words I'll make sure I sketch the out beforehand! I don't know why I didn't it. I just did the outline of the wrapper and its wrinkles and thought that would be good enough, but obviously i was wrong. I still love it though and I can't wait to do more prisma drawings.

Eggs

These are my eggs. You might not be able to tell that they're eggs because the assignment was to color them with weird colors. And also I just didn't do that great of a job lol. 

I don't know why I have a problem with such basic things, but I can excel at more difficult things. It's kind of funny, but also frustrating. The egg on the table isn't that bad, but the egg in the cup looks too long, and not rounded enough at certain parts. The shadows are also pretty bad; they just look like they don't belong. I do think that I chose really pretty colors though and they almost make up for the weird egg. Also the lighting ended up really interesting, and it was pretty fun to find the different values with abnormal colors.  

Perspective Project

Perspective Project

My perspective project is supposed to be a giant person lying down in a city. Or maybe they're a normal sized person lying down in a really tiny city. I guess it's just up to the viewer. 

I came up with this idea because I've wanted to improve on drawing buildings for a really long time now. The idea of drawing buildings is really intimidating to me though, so I decided to add in the aspect of people, or a person, because that's what I draw best. 

I think it's a decent piece considering my lack of experience in drawing buildings, but at the same time I think a lot of it looks really weak. The buildings are all too blockish, and don't have enough variation between them besides height. The building right behind the first foot is a mess. I did a really bad job with the windows. I think if I had kept them all the same shape it might've been better, but those square windows make it look hideous and I was honestly being so lazy, and I'm kind of embarrassed I did something like that. I think overall I could have put a lot more detail and thought into the buildings. 

My strongest part should've been the feet, but both of them are a little odd looking. The one in the front isn't that bad, but I just feel like the foot doesn't go perfectly with the leg. The one in the back looks so weird. I think they both could've looked a lot better if I had found better references. 

I think what redeemed all of those bad things was the composition. I usually don't have a good eye for compositions, but I think I did a really good job on this one. I like how it's really busy on the left and more relaxed on the right. I think one thing that would've made it better though is if I had added more things around the city like cars, or signs, or maybe even little people. I think next time I do a piece that's based off of my imagination I need to make more detailed plans in advance. 

Still Life

Still Life

For my still life I used white and black charcoal on colored paper because I had fun doing it the first time and wanted to try it again. I choose this angle because there were a lot of interesting things visible like the skull, and the plant. There was also a variety of heights which made for a good composition. 

There were so many different objects, and they were made out of so many different materials. It was really fun and interesting to figure out ways to shade each one. The most fun thing was the fabric, closely followed by the glass. Glass seemed like it would be really tough, but it was actually much easier to shade after I got use to it. I'm obviously no expert yet, but I think this assignment helped me improve a lot on drawing glass and that's something I've always wanted to be good at. 

I think the hardest thing to do was the plant, which I wasn't expecting. By the time I was at that side of the paper I was burnt out of energy. I got a little sloppy and when I came back in the next day with more energy it seemed like I had messed up too much to fix it. I kept trying to make it look better, but I still think it looks weird. It definitely weakens the piece overall, but it doesn't completely ruin it for me.

Blog post #2

After finishing my text art project I moved onto time in art. I first found inspiration on Pinterest.

For my challenges I observed something that happens a particular time each day. I picked observing a sunset.

I've always loved sunsets because you'll never see two that are exactly the same.

For my second challenge I had to find something "timeless" I had to look no further than my seat neighbor, Ambika.

That's a beauty that'll be admired for generations.

For my final project I decided that I'm going to paint my feelings for twelve days.

These are the three I've done so far. As you can see my emotions can change drastically over a short amount of time. I think one of my favorite things about art is that it's a snapshot of your mental state during the time you made it. Although an artist might not be directly painting their emotions like I am, it still can show through somehow. And like a sunset your feelings will always be there, but they'll never be exactly the same as they were the day before. Each painting shows who I once was and who I'll never be again, even if it was only a short time away. 

Since this project is going to take a few days I've decided to start working on another along side of it. I've started the print making unit and you can see my inspiration here.

Homework 2

For my still life I did a water bottle because I wanted to challenge myself with the plastic. Plastic, and transparent objects in general, have been something I've struggled with drawing. I think this homework helped me improve a lot because I really took the time to see all the different values on the bottle.

text art project

For my text art project I wrote something on the outside of a balloon, and put a piece of paper on the inside. Together they made a sentence. The outsides said positive happy things, but when you popped it the sentence turned not so nice.They said things like "smile" on the outside and the continuation on the inside would say something like "because your life's only gonna get worse from here." Some people found it cool, while others thought it was weird. I liked the reactions I received overall, and I'm satisfied that it made people feel something. It was really fun and I'd like to try more interactive art later on.

Hershey Kisses

Drawing, period 2

 Our final value drawing was a series of something being destroyed or changed. I did a series of hershey kisses. The exercises that we practiced up until now really helped out. The one I think I learnt the most from was the fabric exercise. You had to identify all the different values and transition it from light to dark appropriately. Another thing that helped a lot was the contour line drawings we did. I improved a lot on spacing and placement because of those.

Even with all the exercises I still need to improve on certain things. I think I could've added a lot more values, and my transitions could've been softer. I'm use to working really fast because I lose my concentration and interest easily. I think the thing I need to improve on the most is my focus. I'm going to try harder in the future to work a lot slower and really show all of the values.

fabric

This is my fabric drawing. I thought I would really hate drawing this, but it's my favorite so far. It was really fun to use white and black charcoal on colored paper. It was my first time doing that so I had a hard time figuring out how to shade it at first. I tried different techniques throughout it, but I mainly stuck to putting the dark parts in first and the light parts later. I think the way they blended together ended up looking nice. I usually draw on white paper with something dark, but drawing on red paper with black and white was really interesting. I think leaving certain parts red made it look really cool.

The lighting was really interesting too, I put a lot of emphasis on the dark parts. I think that made it look cool, but I didn't make it look life like. It was cool looking at other peoples drawings and seeing what they had done. Everyone had such different styles, and they focused on different things. Some people had really soft transitions that made it look really realistic. It amazes me that even though we're all drawing the same thing it can look so different depending on the person. 

It was overall really fun to draw this. The only part I disliked was the block I put at the bottom. I feel like it's really ugly and takes away from the fabric. I also struggled with losing my place in the drawing and adding more wrinkles than what was actually there. I messed up more with that on the top piece of fabric, I didn't lose my place as much with the bottom part. I need to work on spacing things out better in the future, but I'm still satisfied with this piece. 

homework 1

This is my first homework assignment. I drew a cactus. It was fun to color.

Paper

We practiced value by drawing paper that was rolled up. We drew it with white charcoal on black paper. I really liked drawing light on dark.

shapes

We practiced shapes in different mediums. 3 shapes in pencil, charcoal, and pen each.