Book Carving

My idea is based around Jesus and elements surrounding Him and His glory. Before starting, it was very important to have a clear plan. Without a clear plan, I would've lost track of what I needed to cut. Some challenges I faced were cutting the smaller areas and cutting the corners. I also struggled with painting, it was harder than I thought to paint book pages. I originally tried watercolor, but it wasn't turning out nice so I changed the paint to acrylic. The design has nothing to do with the book I carved out of. My design is cosisted of a larger cross, then a star, 3 crosses, a dove, the Alpha and Omega symbols, IXOYE, a church and a fish. I didn't really take too many risks throughout the course of this project. I suppose one risk I took was I made my layers thick which made it challenging to cut. I think this project gave me a new experience with book carving, however maybe next time I will make the layers thinner.  Overall, I think my project was sucessful, it turned out the way I imagined it would.

Amusement/Mixed Media

    In my piece, I chose to do a flower for amusement because some people find gardening amusing and I thought it would be fun to do. I decided to add a hand and a hummingbird to make it look more out doors-y. My experience with mixed media was pretty good.  I think I did a good job of making everything "blend" together. The mixed media I used was watercolor, magazine, tissue paper, and pencil drawings.  My experience with visual journaling helped me in this project because it gave me a new perspective and more experience with working with different materials.  Throughout the project, I didn't face that many challenges. It was pretty smooth and I think it turned out good.

Portrait

For the project of portraits, I decided to do myself so I could hang it up in my room. When I was thinking of materials to use, I had a lot of ideas. However, I chose the Sunday comics because I read them every Sunday.  I could get a lot of different tones and colors.  The choice of comics gave my overall portrait a childish/abstract look.  Also, the comic people faces gave my face color.  It was important to have the different tones because it gives my face depth and character.  I faced some challenges during the project.  It took a long time, and an overall of three Sunday comics combined to get everything I needed for the portrait.  Finding and cutting out all the tiny faces to go around the eyes was also a challenge I faced.  A risk I took was adding all the speech bubbles in the background.  It was a last minute idea, and I went for it, and I think it turned out pretty successful.  I think my choices created a comical and overall fun portrait.  The materials have a connection with me since every Sunday, I read the Sunday comics and it's interesting to see some of my favorite comic characters on the portrait. I feel my portrait was successful.

Sticky Situation

When I heard the prompt "Sticky Situation", the typical sticky situations popped into my head, for instance gum and an up-side down ice cream cone.  I can honestly say I do not know how I came up with the city idea with the food, I was just doodling and that came up. I think I succeeded with thinking outside of the box, doing a series of over sized foods in the middle of city buildings.  I also showed repition in my paintings, each one has the same buildings with the same number of windows, and each contains a different type of food-type object.  For my medium, I chose acrylic.  I found it easy to get values and different colors using the acrylic. I found the mini lessons helpful in deciding which medium to use and helped with practicing with that medium.  I found this project really fun and I think it turned out great, especially the ice cream cone one, which is my favorite. 

Upclose And Personal

For up close and personal, I decided to do a lemon cut in half. I had several ideas but I chose this one because I knew I could learn from it.  The emphasis is on the lemon.  It is the brightest and lightest element in my project which makes it stand out.  The medium I chose was oil pastel.  I chose to do oil pastel because I thought I could really get those bright highlights and I could do the inside easily. I took a risk by adding orange to darken some areas.  At first, I thought it was going to look more like an orange, but once I started blending I realized that it still looked like a lemon.  Of the five characteristics of great art, I included technique and medium in my art.

What's The Point

   I had a lot of ideas for "What's the point". One of my ideas was a geometric-type drawing and I came up with the idea of drawing cards.  I chose to do cards because I thought I could use different values and shading with this particular subject. I showed contrast by making the cards underneath darker and adding shadows. I also used contrast when identifying the black and red cards. The black cards are darker whereas the red cards are lighter. The medium I chose was pencil. I chose pencil because for my drawing, it had a lot of defined lines which I thought I could best draw with pencil.  For this drawing, I used different techniques.  I wanted to be sure that all the cards were equal in size, so I made a template for the shape of the cards. I also measured out and sectioned off the suits and numbers so I could make them even.   Some risks I took were I changed the scale of the card and I had to try and change the contents of the cards to scale. Also, in sort of a "spur of the moment" I took a chance when I decided to differentiate between the red and black cards.  The message I am conveying is how all the cards are the shape and I used the same method to create all of them even though they hold different values. So what's the point of discrimination if we're all part of the same deck of cards in life.

Printmaking

Well, I started off the project by finding pictures of goldfish and their environment and then combining different elements from the pictures to create my own drawing.  Then I traced it onto linolium and cut out the parts that I was not going to put ink on.  In my original drawing, i had all the scales on the larger goldfish drawn out, but after realizing how difficult and almost impossible it would be, I decided to do just a couple of scales.  It still gives it some texture and design, but keeps it simple and not busy.  I found the scales the most difficult part because they were so small.  I think, overall, I did pretty good on this project.  I do agree that it lost some of it's design while being transferred to the linolium and being cut out, but it was neccessary to complete the project so it looked good.  I also like the colors I chose, they are the colors of a goldfish.  I learned a lot from this project, including how to draw simple but intricate designs, and then to cut them out and make prints out of them. 

*****Shoutout to my goldfish, Joey, who inspired me to do a goldfish. Whoop Whoop*****