Blog Feed

For my quarter two project, I did a still life drawing. The drawing was of my glasses laying on the table in with it’s shadow projecting below it. Behind it lies my phone on top of a pencil that can not be seen. It’s shadows are present as well. When drawing this, I wanted to make the view seem like a real life image and realize later that it was drawn with pencil. For this, I used ebony pencils. The 4H was used to simply draw out the objects while the 4G created darker lines which were used for shadowing or making other lines more defined. My finger was used to give the illusion of shading.

Comparing this to my last project, self portrait, you can see a difference. That project was more personal, where I could add certain features to whoever I was drawing to give a certain theme or meaning. I used colors, added different features, and didn’t use my face. This project was more restricting because you could only draw what you saw. No adding or picturing what you think something should look like.

When creating my piece, I first drew my glasses. Second I worked on shadowing. Then drew the phone, followed by it’s shadowing. Lastly I reviewed my work for any lines I could make finer and shadowings to improve.

An artist that inspired me was Emma Gennet. I like how she draws her images on a black background. Visualization was an important skill to use in this project as you needed to be able to draw what you see and not what you think you should see. If the technique is not followed, then it’s not still life. A new technique I learned was using different pencils to give darker lines. And I’m most proud of the phone drawn in the background because I believe it was well done and it gives perspective to the glasses. In the end this was a great project that taught me more skills still life drawing. Although if I had to do it again, I’d recommend more time on the final drawing.

Link: http://www.emmabennett.info/(Click paintings)

The art piece is a greyscale image of a kitten looking off to the viewer’s left of the image. The background of said image is blurry and nondescript, highlighting the subject. The charcoal is used

The main tools used were a Charcoal Pencil, and a White Chalk Pencil. Starting with the simplest use first: The White Chalk Pencil was used to show highlights in the piece and create some of the lighter greys in the image. The Charcoal was used to create texture, show dark areas, and to create negative space.

The work had no true message to showcase, moreso a showcase of skills learned, and the subject. The piece pertains to the importance of the subject, my kitten fittingly named “Cottonpuff”. Having that kitten was a big deal for me, as I went from hating cats all my life to suddenly being extremely infatuated with this small animal.

The use of the chalk and then the charcoal to make the lighter greys is integral to the piece, without it the true hinting of the colors of the cat wouldn’t be able to show.

This entire piece could be a new experience, I had experience with charcoal but nothing this extensive, moreso on the “i made a few strokes” scale. And white chalk was an even knew-er experience.

This isn’t much of a departure from things like the last piece. But this is infact my first proper drawn from photo piece, nothing too special to be entirely honest.

I had no real inspiration, I guess the softness of the image pays homage to a Frank Frazzeta (here's one) piece, or a Nora Suko piece (here's one).

I’d change the size of the image, I wish it was larger, the small size slightly chokes the image

I learned a lot. This was a very interesting foray into not only drawing from photograph, but into multiple uses for Charcoal, White Chalk, and into drawing nonhumans.

I’m honestly most proud of the accuracy the piece captures, it look a lot like the original photo, and I like that

For this project, I drew a still life drawing of  a vase and a seashell . In this work, the two objects that were observed to draw and shade the values and contrast of the two objects. This work really does communicate any personal experience this time other than it shows how I have possibly struggled to do things such as shading. The tools that I’ve used were a regular pencil that I used to sketch and outline the shape of the objects.  Then I also used the various of shading pencils to create a greater effect for the drawing. Also used an eraser to touch up and fix mistakes. I don’t really have any previous work that relates because I usually would add color to my drawings but this time I didn’t. I wanted to try to shading in a different way this time around. My process wasn’t as long as the other things I drew. I really didn’t experiment with trying to draw and practice with other objects other than the vase and seashell. Each time I drew it again, I noticed that I got better at identifying the things about it. So by the time it got to finishing the final product, I felt more relaxed and comfortable drawing it because I was finally able to resemble that original objects.

My art piece is a butterfly gracefully sitting on a flower. I tried to make the color scheme more on the dark side but I did end up using some brighter colors to color the flower. I used a dark blue and purple to paint the butterfly, while I used pink, red, green, and yellow for the flower. My art has some similarities to my previous work because this is a limited palette painting. The painting was supposed to come out elegant but once I added paint, it kind of ruined any good parts about it all.

In my last limited palette painting I tried to paint over any stray marks with white and it helped to bring out the other colors of the painting which I did in this one. I also feel like I had hard lines to paint over and I wanted everything to come out straight and smooth but I didn’t.

I used big, wide, brushes to fill in large gaps of space, and I used thin, smaller brushes for outlining and filling in smaller lines of space. I had to dump my water out a lot because if I didn’t, the water would’ve mixed in with my new colors and I didn’t want that.

Something I would definitely change about this is the object I would paint on. I feel like with what I used, it was too textured and I feel like I should’ve just used wood so it would look cleaner and better. I also think overall, I should just stop doing limited palette in general and do something that doesn’t require good painting skills.

For my quarter 2 art benchmark, I created a clay 3d rose. The rose is created with solid color clay and colored with paint. I created the rose to represent “beauty in everything” since the rose has been known for that. For the rose, I used a few specific art tools to create my piece. For the first, I used clay along with my fingers for carving the clay to my liking of petals. I then used red paint for my petals and a green paint for a leaf. I made sure this piece related to my previous work by making sure the theme kept the idea of having beauty. The steps of this process did not take too long. You first want to take a good amount of clay. You then want to start breaking off pieces of your clay, molding them into petals of your liking. When you’ve gotten your petals, you want to connect them together going into the direction of a rose. When you’re satisfied with your looking of the rose, let it dry for a day or two. Your final step would include painting/coloring your rose. My work reminded me of Hukasai since he is known for making garden like pieces. When creating your piece, painting is an important technique because you want to make sure your paint does not interfere with the other petals that will be different. I am most proud of my consistency I kept throughout creating this project because the project was a challenge and did include a lot of fails. Although, I wouldn’t want anything to be changed. In conclusion, this project was a learning experience and is now a fun new hobby.  

In my project I chose to create a clay model of a women’s open legs. In place of genitals, there is a large flower. The skin of the piece is comprised of patches of tan and brown to represent different skin tones. I want this piece to encourage an empowering message about sexuality and femininity and masculinity. It is often looked down upon to be open with sexuality and I want my piece to show that all people should not be ashamed of who they are. To create this work I used metal wire, air dry clay, acrylic paint and a fake flower. First I created the frame with the metal wire and then wrapped the wire in the clay, shaping legs and the bottom half of a torso. I then let the clay air dry, and painted over the entire thing with different shades of brown. I then hot glued the flower in between the legs of the sculpture. This piece is definitely more meaningful than my last. I chose to create this piece in the light of something I think about very often.

Another artist that has inspired me to want to start sculpting is Lynda Benglis. Specifically her exhibition titled Female Sensibility inspired me to go in the direction of sexuality.

http://www.cheimread.com/artists/lynda-benglis/exhibitions

The most important technique to my piece has to be the smoothing. Making sure the clay dries smoothly and not rigid was accomplished by wetting the pads of my fingers and smoothing over the surface. A new technique I learned has to be the ability to shave layers of the clay off. You have to remove and reapply to effectively shape the sculpture. I am most proud of the actual shape of the body. The legs and hips and everything else look very nice in my opinion. If I could change one thing about this project it would have to be the color of the skin. I wanted it to be a bright color like purple or green. I have learned to be more comfortable with clay.

For this project we had to create a piece of original work that incorporates 3 mediums or more. I decided to create a piece of artwork that was a physical representation of my heart. I decided to use marker, oil pastels, soft pastels, charcoal, string, staples, cardboard, and newspaper. I used the marker to outline the heart. I used oil pastels to make the artifact look like and actually heart. I used 4 different shades of pink and tan. I used soft pastels to blend before I used the charcoal because oil pastels and charcoal doesn’t mix well together but soft pastels and charcoal does and soft pastels have a similar color to oil pastels. I then took the side that the charcoal was on and put one line of string through the paper and stapled it down to make it look like stitches. I then took some cardboard and glued little pieces of newspaper to it. I put the heart and glued it onto the cardboard so that the newspaper was a background to the heart.

I decided to make a heart for this project because I had a great idea of how the make the heart look unique. Instead of making a regular heart, I made the heart one side healthy and the other side not. The bad side had charcoal to make it seem like the heart was dead and rotten. It also had string and staples to make it look like someone attempted to fix it but it didn’t work out. I did this because, I have got my heart broken so many times and everytime I try to start over or get over it it doesn’t help. You can’t fix a rotten heart by putting stitches in it right ?  I made the newspaper background because I wanted it to represent how my heart is publicly displayed. I make it known through my actions that I have had my heart broken in the past and I don’t want it to happen again.  

For this quarters project, I choose to do a limited pallet painting.  The limited palette painting is when you only use 5 or fewer colors of your choosing.  For my limited palette, I chose the colors: green, red, flesh-toned, brown, and black.My drawing is of a girl with her eyes with her closed and hand on her chin.  I mixed the flesh-tone and brown together, to make a light brown skin tone.  Her head is tilted to the side with light and dark brown dyed hair flowing down to her neck. With her eyes closed, I made her lashes long and full, while her nose is small and long. Her lips are full, with pink lipstick.  She also has a tribal pattern above her eyebrows.  The piece that I made shows self-reflection, and peace. It is a reminder of how you think about yourself and knowing your worth when your eyes are closed to the world.

The materials that I used for this painting was 5 different watercolors. To create the strokes on the painting I used small brushes. The surface I painted was watercolor paper.  The small brushes are used to create detail and I used them for the whole painting.  The watercolor was used with more water than the actual paint in some cases or vice versa to create the colors of the painting.This piece of artwork connects to my previous work based on having a meaning connected to me or my family.  For the first step, I looked up simple sketches of a girl.After that I got my desired paper to do the artwork on which was watercolor paper.  Then I sketched out where I wanted everything to go on the watercolor paper( I was taking a while on that) In short I began to paint in the last few class periods we had. Finally, I went over some final detail in pencil so it can stand out more.

There are also some very famous artists that have done similar work like me that have deep means in their work. Some of these people are Amedeo Modigliani and Pablo Picasso. An important technique that's involved in my artwork is the brush stroke. When painting you tend to use a light hand strokes/ movement of the had to create texture. For me, I used a light hand as well as a heavy hand to make some parts stand out more. When doing the painting I also learned about the usage of the water to the color ratio for different opaqueness of color.  When I was creating this piece of artwork, became fond/ proud of my choice in color, and how it turned out to be more realistic than I thought.  I also like the way her head is tilt, her long eyelashes, also the different colors of brown in her hair. Aside from what I think is good, I would like to change the way of her hands. I want to change them so that they can be more realistic. I also want to shade in some more parts in to make some contrast. I learned that there are many ways to create paintings with different forms of makeshift texture from the stroke of a brush and, using limited colors to create an array of things.

So, my project represents one of my favorite fruits which is an orange which I decided to create. So, on my picture I made an orange, the show how good it is and how tasty it is. In this artwork I wanted it to represent my way of eating and how good it was and how when I eat it feels like the sun is shining. For this artwork I used a lot of materials well just color pencils and then when I used a blue color pencil to make different shades and also I used gray and mad different shades I used each color pencil in a detailed way and also pencil which I used to outline. This only related to my work by how it symbols my living situation but, the other I used different materials and had fun. Vincent Van Gogh makes self portraits and has done crazy things for the people he loved so that’s why I did. I learned a new technique in art called shading along with my outline and it was the best thing to use in this artwork. I am most proud of my use of color and different shades because I think it was well done and fits great in my portrait. If I could change one thing I would change the clouds because maybe I should have kept them white to resemble more happiness in the portrait.

For my quarter 2 project, I did the still life drawing because I wanted to try something different. For my project, I drew a candlestick and an orange. I want my artwork to communicate that it wasn't easy to draw this. My current work relates to my previous work because I have done shade and texture in art before. The materials I used when making this art was a 2H, 4H, and 6B pencils. I first drew the candlestick and orange with a 2H pencil. Then, I used a 6B pencil to outline the shape of my drawing. After outlining the shape of my drawing, I used a 4h pencil to shade my drawing so it will be easier to erase parts that I mess up. After shading my drawing with a 4H pencil, I used a 6B pencil to darken the parts that I wanted. An artist who makes similar work is Zheng Chongbin. He uses a lot of shade and texture in his drawings. A certain technique that's important to the work is using a softer pencil to shade the drawing, then going over with a darker pencil to darken parts that you want. A technique I experimented more with the process of making this work is shade and texture. I'm most proud of the way my artwork turned out. I really wouldn't change anything about my project because I like how everything turned out. In conclusion, something I learned through the completion of this project is to not waste all your time drawing your object because you're not going to have enough of time to add shade and texture to your drawing.

For my art project I did the limited palette project. I choose up to 5 colors and from those five colors I can only use them for my whole project. I could mix them together, or use them by themselves but I had to use my choice of colors. My portrait is a painting of a black woman's silhouette. The portrait t shows her neck up, so her dark brown hair with her bold red lips. I didn't draw any eyes or nose of that nature.I believe that one of the notable features of a black women is her hair and lips. I just wanted my portrait to communicate the black culture. I used acrylic paints colors including: brown, pink, purple, and white. I also used a mixing palette and a palette knife to help me mix all of my colors together. I did my painting on a piece of cardboard. Now looking back on it I wish I used canvas because I predict that it would have looked better. One of the most important technique of this project was mixing for me. I had to thoroughly go in and use my palette knife to mix my colors together to create a new color. If I could change one thing about my project I would change one of my colors which is purple. I really didn't use it as much in my painting. In conclusion I really did enjoy doing this project it was really fun and studying when I was mixing the paints together.

When I first began this project, what came to my mind was, “How was I going to express my message to the viewer, the audience?” It took me a couple days before beginning it in order to realize what I truly wanted to say in the form of strokes. I finally was able to map out what I wanted my message to be and finally, it came out to be, “Messages can take the form of colors.” This statement was able to guide me through the whole project as it allowed me to only purpose my message. The colors were there to convey it and have the ability to communicate the message to the viewer. Before coming to this high school, I was able to conduct a deeper analysis of the arts and literature. During that time, I tried to find the meaning of the art besides just dismissing it with, “oh that looks nice.” There is more to the piece than what we make it be. During this project, I was able to analyze an artist who I am really fond of and produced my own style in the process. For this project, I decided to do Limited Palette. Limited Palette allows the artist to only use 5 colors. I decided to use watercolor paint rather than acrylic paint.

A technique that I had to develop was trying to “stitch” using the paint brush. I am uncertain as to what the technique is called, however, it played huge contribution to my work. The technique allowed me to display the leaves of the trees and make value into the piece. The technique is essentially using simple “x” strokes across the canvas. However, you want to make sure you have a small brush if you decide to make the image further away. This is a mimic from one of Bob Ross’s own technique I saw on his tv show. As such, his art has inspired me to do something similar, creating the beauty of nature using just 5 colors. Techniques are very important to the work and especially the artist. The artist needs to develop a technique in order to make the work consistent. A consistent story can tell a story whereas a dictionary cannot.

Present in my work, there are trees scrambled all over the place. However, there is one tree that seems to be close to the viewer, located on the right. Finally, there are mountains in the background, coated with a lot of colors. For the project, I decided to use Permanent Light Green, Phthalo Blue, Burnt Umber, Brilliant Red, and Chinese White. The Light Green was used primarily on the leaves, and I knew I could make the paint more transparent due to the fact that this is water coloring. Phthalo Blue was used more on the sky and the mountains, with some on the ground. Burnt Umber was used mainly for the trees and giving texture to the wood. Brilliant Red was also used for the mountains. Finally, Chinese White being used mainly for giving definition. I mixed the colors Brilliant Red and Phthalo Blue to get a similar purple color. Personally, the color looks like the many visible colors in the galaxy. Thus, I decided to use it on the mountains because it felt “distant” enough. At first, I watered it down to get the concept of what I pictured the base to be. Then Mrs. Hertz instructed me to use less water to get more of the colors into the piece. For the trees, I used a mixture of Burnt Umber and Permanent Light Green. Mixing the colors gives a very light brown and it was very good to give the contrasts of the trees. The stitching technique was very useful for the trees as well. I was able to stitch leaves into the canvas using the technique. I even combined Phthalo Blue and Permanent Light Green together in order to paint in the ground, the hill. This work is very similar to my previous work. It had trees and hills, however, lacked the mountains in the background.

In conclusion, I have learned a lot through the process of this project. This project allowed me to explore the many colors and possible combinations to get a different result. The Limited Palette was very challenging, but it makes the artist improvise when producing his/her artwork. Throughout the challenges I had to face, I could say that I am very proud that I was able to use colors to make other colors stand out. However, with many warm accomplishments, I also wish I had done things differently. I wish that I could have made the grass more visible rather than being transparent. The difficult of water coloring makes it very challenging to make things stand out since the water only makes the colors more transparent. I also wished I had not used such a big brush as it started to ruin up my canvas by giving it visible “cracks”. Overall, I am very proud of my work and the project was very challenging but fun.

For this quarter I decided to do a Still life Image . My art had a story behind it just a light one though not to crazy.My Still life image included a Mason Jar, Mortar and Pestle, and Grapes. For this creation I used shading pencils, regular pencil, eraser, and a color pencil. I wanted my Still Life Image  to be somewhat dry and not too shiny this is why I chose these tools . My portrait consist of no colors what’s so over making it bland but detailed I really like this because the art really speaks to you. The colors don’t throw you off you just sit there and look at it.

This Still Life Image has a short story behind it. The creation of grape juice and what not.. In my creation the mortar and pestle are shaded more because they’re behind the Mason jar and for the grapes they’re resting on the mortar and pestle causing the top part to be shaded as well. The story is the creation of grape juice of course. Mortar and pestle are used to smash herbs and make medicines and what not. So basically you smoosh the grapes until they’re all mushy and nasty with mortar and pestle liquidate it and then pour it in the Mason Jar.

I Am more of a visual learner so while drawing I pulled up images of the things you see in front of me as well as had the physical objects in my general direction. While doing the outlines of the object I made sure to make it poke out which is why I used the shading pencil. I then had to rearrange the initial positioning of the objects to create as little space there was. When done with that I used different shading utensils giving the objects distinct colors making sure no object mimicked the other.. An artist that inspired me is Willem Kalf.. His art is very abstract and he’s known for doing Still Life Art.

If I could change one thing it’d be to add more color, add a surface, and redo the grapes. I hope to get better with the shading.

All in all I feel as though this project went really well. I learned a lot while doing this such as the different type of utensils as well as multiple ways you can use them. I also learned that I have a little bit of artist in me. I was actually proud of my art it looked great! I also learned that something so basic could come out so complicated or be considered abstract art when lots of time is put in.  I hope to use my experience now for projects later on in the future. I can’t wait to do more projects close or similar to this one and see the improvements.

 My artwork is a drawing of two warriors that are ninjas but they are out of uniform. They have elemental abilities and supernatural powers in general. I didn’t generally want my artwork to communicate anything, it wasn’t a deep peice that makes you think. It was just something to look at, that I think looks cool. It does show my personal interest though. It shows that anime and cartoons influence me a lot. My project involved mixed media as well. I used charcoal, color pencils,a pencil and a micron pen to add depth and feeling to my drawing. The charcoal was used to shade and add a sense of tone and shadow. My color pencils just gave the drawing color and I went over the drawing with the micron pen.

 This drawing was similar to my other artwork because it started out with a pencil sketch. It also uses the same process as my artwork in the past. The theme was very similar as well. I used to frequently draw super powered warriors with elemental abilities. To create this drawing I first started out with a stick figure base of how they would be posed. After that I flushed them out, adding muscle and more details like facial structure and features, then added clothes. I went in with the micron pen and outlined the drawing. I then chose my colors for my characters and colored them. Going in with the micron pen was important because it stopped some of the potential smearing that the pencil, color pencil and charcoal could have done. So I believe it was important to use it. I also learned how to use charcoal. For example you can spread it with your fingers opposed to coloring the whole thing with the whole charcoal stick/pencil.

 An artist that inspires me is akira toriyama the creator of the dragon ball series. Other artist of popular series like naruto inspire me. A youtuber by the name of Jazza inspires me a lot. His artwork looks more western, he has a comic book style. The thing I’m most proud of is my character with the low cut face. It came out exactly like I wanted it too.

For my Q2 project, I decided to make a charcoal drawing. This drawing is supposed to be a man with wings looking into the moonlight.

M.Stones

Hertz

Artist Statement Q2

For my quarter two project we had to create a still life drawing, we would pick one or more objects then draw them from different angles and viewpoints. I choose to do a banana because bananas are one of my favorite fruits to eat, it all seemed simpler and easier to draw while being nicely detailed. I first picked the banana i was going to draw, part of my first step in my process was sketching it out and then drawing it. I did that then I had to draw it from another angle, and as my final step I drew it at another different angle sitting on my hat. I had no real artistic inspiration from any artist only from the fact that I want to draw a deeply detailed banana. I used different pencils for shading and lining, when it came to thinness and darkness in lines, and dark areas.

Still life in art is depicting objects that are placed together naturally, this is what I did for my quarter two benchmark art project. I wanted my still life work to be different from others, so by doing this I decided to put random objects together that does not match, by doing this people will see there’s no limit on art so they should try their best to think out the box. I had to draw it three different times before I did the final drawing and that made it perfect. The first two drawings were horrible, but when I did the third one I started improving.

Before I started drawing everything, I thought that the star would be the hardest thing to draw, but it was actually the base of the candle holder. The star was a little challenging but all I did was payed attention to get it right.The candle holder had multiple curves in it, so I had to make sure that they were all even and look the same. I enjoyed the process of drawing everything even though it was pretty time consuming because I wanted it to be perfect, especially the string/rope with the beads took up the most time, but it was worth. I definitely got better at shading and creating more depth within my drawings.I would also add more shadow to the candle stick,because the starfish was the only thing had a shadow on it.

I must say I really like this type of art and I’m looking forward to working on more pieces like this.