Final Project

Final Project:

1. The project I chose to complete was a project I came up with myself, which was recreating some of my old family photos. I wanted to do this project because, all of my family and siblings typically return home this time of year and I was looking for an artistic way to express those nostalgic feelings.

2. To make this piece, I looked through many old family photo albums and picked out some of my favorite photos to recreate. Then, I gathered my family members and studied each photo, staging and recreated each one as closely as I could to the original.

3. One problem I overcame during this project was the difficulty of getting my family members available (and willing to participate) at the same time, which I overcame by explaining my plans in detail to them and convincing them to participate, as well as finding ways to work around their schedules.

4. What I think is most successful about this piece are the concepts and overall re-staging of the photos and how nearly accurate some of them were. One thing I wish I could change would be that the lighting and some of the settings were not exactly the same in the recreations as in the originals.

Final Exam

Final Exam

Part One:

1. Critiquing: 

1. Step One: Analyze the artwork in terms of literal content and artistic elements.
2. Step Two: Describe how the work is organized as a complete composition.
3. Step Three: Interpret the work in terms of emotional content or allegorical symbols.
4. Step Four: Judgment; is the piece successful?

2. Before:

3. Critique:

This piece is a still-life portrait I created to represent my sister. I used several different colors of both warm and cool colored acrylic paint to add value and create a contrast between my sister's widely varying interests. By using different brush techniques, I was able to create details such as the yarn fur on the crocheted owl and the faded, worn covers of some of the older records. I organized the work by placing all of the items at the center of the canvas, making them the focal point of the piece, and arranging them in a way to place emphasis on each individual item. I chose to keep the background a plain, neutral blue to give a calming effect and to not draw attention away from the main concepts of the piece. Each part of this piece represents something about my sister's personality, hobbies, and interests. For example, the records and mixtape represent her love of music and her interest in creating it, as well as her personality, which is shown through the wide variety of genres she listens to. In addition, I included a ball of yarn, a crochet hook, and a crocheted owl that she made to show her passion for crocheting and her love of animals, particularly owls, which are one of her favorites. And finally, I also included a piece of her art, which she uses to express many of these interests and talents, as well as her own individual personality. These things all have significant meaning to me because added all together, they make up my sister and each one of these individual elements represents an important piece of her identity. I think this piece is successful because I feel it clearly and accurately conveys the contrasting yet harmonious message I was striving to convey of my sister. In addition, I believe it is successful because the techniques and processes I used each helped to create the texture and physical appearance I was going for overall.

Pick Three Questions:

9. Throughout the semester, I very much enjoyed completing the Illustration Friday projects and felt that they very much helped me improve my artistic skills. For example, my Illustration Friday for the word "Wood" helped me improve my sculpture skills by allowing me to practice structuring pieces and using the hot glue gun. This and many of the other Illustration Friday projects allowed me to practice and improve certain skills outside of my main pieces and in addition gave me a space to express new ideas.

10. One project I feel I learned a lot from was the first portrait project. This was one of my favorite projects because I learned a lot about different brush techniques, mixing shades and tints of different colors, and creating fine details. I feel this project helped me improve my painting skills greatly and overall improved my artistic capabilities. I now feel more confident with using paints and painting or drawing small details.

18. My favorite medium to work with that I used this year was watercolor. Although I didn't like watercolor at first, I grew to like it the more I used it and appreciated what I could do with it. I like watercolor because it offers a wide range of colors and ways to mix, blend, and texture them. In addition, it is smooth and relaxing to paint with, and creates a relaxed feeling in the piece. One medium I never used but wish I had explored was weaving with yarn or with thread, because I saw some others working with it and it looked very challenging and interesting.

Illustration Friday: Nostalgia

Illustration Friday: Nostalgia

Illustration Friday: Wood

Illustration Friday: Wood

Portrait Project

Portrait Project

Reference:

My Piece: 

Charcoal Face:

I did a portrait of myself, because I haven't done many self portraits before. I picked pencil and water color (with some pen) because I wanted a very light medium where I could easily mix colors and do small details. I think the most successful thing in my piece are the eyes; I am happy with how the details turned out. Next time, I might try to make the piece a little neater, because the transition between some of the colors in the piece are a bit blurry.

Stop Motion

Stop Motion

For this project, I worked with Amelia, Maddie, and Mikaela. We all helped come up with the idea and the storyboard, I built the pipe cleaner nest, Maddie made the egg, Amelia filmed and put it together, and Mikaela helped stage and direct it. I think the most successful part of this is the beginning, when the egg is shaking back and forth, because it really looks like the egg is shaking on its own, due to the way we took the pictures. Our storyboard pretty much lines up exactly with the storyboard, except we had the egg hatch inside the nest rather than hitting a tree and breaking open, but overall, our idea remained the same throughout the project.

Printmaking

Printmaking

Best:

Worst: 

I thought this process was fun and interesting, but very time-consuming. I think the most successful thing about my best print is the small details of the whiskers and the stripes. The least successful thing about my worst print is that I didn't put enough orange ink on it. I learned patience from this project, because it took a very long time to cut out all of the small details.

Postcard

Postcard

I represented the themes "Dreams" and "Your Favorite Holiday" in my postcard. I thought multimedia art was a lot of fun and I liked getting to add so many different layers. It was very interesting and fun and I would definitely try it again.

Quilling

Quilling

I had never heard of quilling before this project, but I though the technique was interesting and different, and I would definitely try it again.

Painting

Painting

This still life represents my sister. The yarn, crochet hook, and crocheted owl represent her love for crocheting, the mixtape and records represent her strange taste in music, and the small painting represents her artistic skills. I liked painting a lot and found it easy to use; it is definitely one of my favorite mediums. What I think is successful about this piece are the album covers, because I am very proud of the detail I put into them. If I could change anything, I would fix the blending of the black into white on the Billy Joel Album.

Intro to Sculpture

Intro to Sculpture

Main Project: 

Plan: 

Inspiration:

1. I picked this project because I really liked the idea of taking old or common objects and turning them into something new and unified. I was drawn to this medium because I liked how in each sculpture I looked at, I could see each tiny piece individually and also see how everything fit together as a whole to make the piece.
2. Some difficulties I had to overcome in this project were working with tiny and sometimes delicate pieces, getting things in position exactly the way I wanted them (especially the tiny ribbon bows I had to tie), and repeatedly burning my fingers with hot glue.
3. I think the robots themselves are the most successful part of this piece, because I think they are very fun and individual, and for the most part they turned out exactly how I wanted them to. However, if I could change one thing, it would be the blouse on the bride robot because I couldn't get it quite right.

Mini Magazine Challenge: 

1. In this project, I enjoyed picking out the pictures from different magazines to use for the piece and making them into a fun shape. (I mainly used pictures of nature scenes from an issue of National Geographic from the 1970's.) However, I didn't like working with hot glue because when I tried to put it together, the magazine poles kept getting glued to my fingers and I kept getting burned by the hot glue gun.
2. From this project, I learned about how you can make sculptures that are abstract and vary based on the angle you look at them from, and that hot glue is difficult to work with.

1st Major Project

Most Helpful Warm Up:

My Piece:

I took this photo during the summer at my brother's house in Boone, North Carolina. It is meaningful to me because it reminds me of that summer and good times with my family. I picked watercolor because I thought it would be the best medium to bring to life the colors and details in my photo. I found it most successful in my piece when I did random brush strokes and stippling. Next time, however, I probably would not choose watercolor because it is difficult to work with.

Drawing Techniques

Pencil Drawing:

Advantages: ability to erase, easy shading, easy to add value, clean

Disadvantages: pencil sometimes smudges, takes a long time to shade

Pen Drawing:

Advantages: more defined lines, ability to create darker values, clean

Disadvantages: can't erase, sometimes smudges

Charcoal Drawing:

Advantages: fun to work with, easy to add value, wide range of values

Disadvantages: harder to erase than pencil, very messy

Inspired Artist

Danielle Clough is an embroidery artist from Cape Town, South Africa, who uses various bright-colored threads to create beautiful portraits of people, birds, flowers, etc. More unusual work of hers, such as the pieces photographed above, are embroidered on vintage tennis rackets. She studied art direction and graphic design at the Red and Yellow School and has her own website: http://www.danielleclough.com/contact/

Her work is inspiring to me because it is clear in every intricate detail how much time and effort she puts into her work. I am drawn in by her use of color and choice of medium, and I love the idea of embroidering on tennis rackets and find it very interesting. Her work is beautiful and definitely one of my favorites out of all the embroidery work I've seen.