Crash! Bang!

For this assignment, I was given the words "crash!" and "bang!" and had to create an interesting drawing based off of them. For crash, I decided to draw a plane crash in the ocean because it's a fear that I have since I travel in planes a lot. I chose to do it all in pen since I'm used to drawing in graphite pencil, which ended up taking a very long time. The use of black, red, and blue ink created an interesting color scheme but overall took about 4 hours with all the little details. For "bang!" I was inspired by the Big Bang Theory and decided to draw the solar system. Outer space and the unknown is another fear of mine which I chose to represent. I like my use of value but I wish I had done the drawing in color to make it more interesting. 

Expressive self portraits

In my first portrait I got too focused on the small details and shading instead of the overall expression of the face. I fixed this mistake by barely shading the next few portraits and focusing on portraying emotion instead. The emotions are (in order) serious, dreamy, surprised, confused, and sad. These expressive self portrait sketches will help me when I'm trying to make clay molds with expressive facial expressions. 

National AIDS awareness day

For national AIDS awareness day, we were given the task to create a poster to raise awareness. I chose to focus on myths related to AIDS and HIV. Here my progression from sketchbook to quick ideas to final poster is shown. The final product was more word focused than illustration focused than I would have liked but I like the background and the block letters. I would change the writing if I could to make it more readable from far away and I would add more drawing elements. I also want to coney a better message across to the viewer to make it more engaging. 

Love and Hate

In this piece, I was given the quote by Martin Luther King Jr "I have chosen to stick with love, hate is too great a burden to bear". I decided to compare this to recently deceased Nelson Mandela and his message of peace. The writing is hard to see but it gives two great quotes by Mandela about love and hate as well as his own life in prison. These two men have done a lot to shape the world's views on tolerance and diversity so I wanted to make a painting to represent that. It is one of my better portraits since it actually looks like the people it's supposed to. I still have a lot that could be improved like some technical skills as well as the overall image and the size of the quotes. Overall, I am happy with the way this turned out but I now know I can expect even more from myself next time when it comes to drawing portraits. 

Subtractive drawing - Pig's head

When I hear the word subtractive drawing, I get uneasy. Drawing with nothing but an eraser scares me because I find it a lot harder to create accurate shading. The last subtractive drawing I did was in 8th grade and it did not turn out well...or look like the original object at all. The pig's head looks very intimidating at first but by looking just at the lights and darks, I was able to recreate it fairly accurately. I'm proud of my improvement and the attention to detail. However, I could definitely add more detail and need to focus on the negative space. Instead of making it black to death, I should have had a medium tone in the back as well as shadows and a reference point. Overall, I did better than I thought I would and I hope to still improve on it before moving on to the antlers.

Multimedia Composition - Glass

On our first day of art, my teacher handed us a glass and told us to draw it 6 different ways. At first, I couldn't think of anything or be creative in any way. I started off with a regular pencil drawing and went on to draw with water colors and pastels. For the final, we had to draw a multimedia composition drawing. I chose to draw one glass but divide it up into 4 quadrants and make each one with a different technique. I used the same scheme of colors to create cohesion and unity between the 4 different sections. The 4 different sections were pastel, color pencil, water color, and dots made with the tip of a paint brush by dipping it in tempera paint. Two of the backgrounds are black (on opposite sides) to create rhythm and movement. Overall, the project can be improved with better technical skill as well as a more creative way to represent the glass.

Cabin in the Woods

The assignment was to draw an imaginary window so I drew a cabin window but didn't draw anything on the other side of the glass. I chose to focus on the details of the wood around the window and on the window sill rather than what was inside the window. I did some simple shading for the actual window part which was done using both the pencil and eraser to draw. The space in this drawing is shallow since it has some shading on it. I made the window sill darker than the rest because I wanted it to stand out from the rest of the drawing. I also used a full range of values and many different types of pencils (from 3H to 8B graphite pencil). To improve the drawing, there should be a more specific light source and better shading on the actual glass part of the window to make it look as realistic as the rest of the wood.