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Alexis Perkins

Ms.Hertz

Art 2

10-19-17

   My mom always told me “Reach for the moon, not the stars”. So through this image, I tried to show my emotion and steps. To reach the moon.

To Begin, I love basketball. I believe basketball is my overall goal. To me, basketball is the moon. I draw an outline of a basketball court. You can only see it when you turn my picture sideways and actually look to understand. Next, I cut off four corners and color them in. The two top corners are red. Making the bottom two black. My first half of the picture are two flags. The first one is the flag of Trinidad and Tobago. This is where my family originally came from. The second one, the United States of America flag. Where I was born and lived my whole life. The two flags are more like a round shape because of my basketball imertagry. There is a girl on each side of both flags. To represent me. One is me with and basketball. With the words “Never Stop”. Next One is me without a basketball. With the words “In god we trust”. Now passing the half court line. Over the first flag. I have a flower with bright colors. With about four pedals slowly falling off. On the other side, I have five circles with the numbers sixteen, nineteen, sixty-two, thirty-six, and fifty-nine. With dotted line connecting them. On top of the two parts. Is an round shape from corner to corner just like the flags at the bottom. Showing waves in different colors. With a pathway with a triangle pointing up with steps on the side on it. In the middle of the waves. Then I draw a line over the top of that. With a drawing of the moon and stars around the moon.

The basketball is like the goal and always my map. The reason for the two flags is to give you an understanding where I started from. The two girls are on the to physically connect me to the image. The two quotes. “Never stop!” &  “In god we trust” is the faith in words that keep me going. The flower is to make I understand life is about chances and I must take to succeed. Some flowers are falling off because each time I get closer to my goal a flower falls offs. The numbers 16, 19, 62, 36, and, 59. Are really streets. 16 and 19 are the only two connected by a blue line. That's because they consider my safe places. 16 street and 19 street. You can say I live at both. Now, 36, 59, and, 62 are the street where I work. Because if I want to succeed I must work to get the things I need to make where I wanna be. Now the waves start with dark colors and slowly becomes lighter at the top. I kinda use that in a metaphoric way. I basically say at I get older. I get closer to my goal. Which mean my path gets clearer. The steps on the side are just a back door just in case I fall off my path. I will never give up hope. Now I cut off the corners because a lot of people judge me. So when people doubt me to the corner they go. Finally, The moon and stars are my goals.

P.S. Thank you for reading this. I hope you like it and understand it.  

Artist Statement

Jy’Aire O’Connor

For this quarter of Art we made a small self portrait the represents us either metaphorically, head on, or distinctly. My art was somewhat of a metaphor not mentioning or showing anything about me in it’s entirety. My self portrait  included one of kanye's album mascots Dropout Bear, a squid, a rainbow fish, a treasure chest, Rick (From Rick and Morty) as the sun, and outer space. For this creation I used Oil pastels, a pencil, color pencils, pen, sharpie, and crayons. I wanted my Self Portrait to be somewhat dry and not too shiny this is why I chose these tools . My portrait consist of many colors because I wanted it to be vibrant.

This portrait represents my life and my future choices. In my creation the sky and the ocean kind of collide because my thoughts on both are conflicting. I can’t choose between studying astronomy or marine biology when I get to college. For the Kanye West Dropout Bear I chose him because the character itself is ironic. It’s called Dropout Bear yet he graduated high school and earned his Bachelor's degree. Although I joke about dropping out or feel as though I want to I always persevere and pull through when times get hard. Rick being the sun shows how much the show and science influences me. The squid, fish, and treasure chest kind of point out my love for marine life and the perks that come from studying them.

I Am more of a visual learner so while drawing I pulled up images of the things you see in my self portrait and drew them. While doing the outlines of the object I made sure to make it poke out which is why I used the sharpie. I then had to rearrange the initial positioning of the objects to create as little space there was. When done with that I colored in the self portrait giving the objects distinct colors making sure no object mimicked the other. I smudged the oil pastel to fill in any missing spots. An artist that inspired me is Vincent van Gogh. His art is very abstract and he’s known for using oil tools to paint. One of my favorite pieces of art from him is “The Starry Night”.

If I could change one thing it’d be to add more patterns in my art like Vincent van Gogh. Just like swirls or zig zags. I hope to get better with oil tools and get close to his way of art.

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 art takes a very simplistic to my life. Overall very blunt and not ambiguous. I decided to draw a smiley face (because I’m a happy child) around four things that mean a lot to me. The first thing I added was a playstation controller. I added this because I grew up using playstation consoles. The second thing is uno cards. This is symbolic because it represents the time I spend with my friends and how we bond.I also drew food because I really like food. When I created this project I really wanted to convey my simplistic life and how I value little things.I created this project using the most basic materials. I used your average pencil for drawing and coloring pencils for well, coloring.This is to further convey the simpleness of my art style. I tried my best to merge the colors in the background to have a spacey feel to it.

I would say my friend young gravity inspired this art piece. She makes a lot of space kind of artwork and I really wanted to try out this approach. Blending colors is a very important technique in this artwork. I think so because the background is space so it being monochrome is pretty lame so blending colors would make it good looking.I most proud of finishing this project I feel like I could’ve improved on a lot. I think i should make my color blending better.In conclusion, SPACE.   

My artwork contains a faded green hill on the right hand side of the paper and it overlaps the darker green hill on the left hand side of the paper. Above the hills is a reddish purple color for the sky and then there are three clouds. They are outlined in black and are colored with purple and blue for a blended look. Coming out of the cloud on the right there is a head with their brain exposed. The brain is the same color as the lower portion of the sky and the person is looking at the grey moon and the yellow stars in the sky. The sky above is a light red that is fading out. I want my work to communicate my hope that I had to visit space. The person is coming out of the clouds because their head is in the clouds making it a dream like state. Which is why the sky is red when the moon and stars are out. It is not reality.

To make this artwork I used colored pencils, a black sharpie and pastels. I used the black sharpie to outline everything and the colored pencils and pastels to color in everything else. To make this work I drew the picture on the canvas and started off using colored pencils to color the clouds and then I realized there were pastels. I began to use the pastels for everything and blended them with my finger. One technique I used was blending with my finger and it really helped bring everything together. I am most proud of the clouds in my work. One thing I would change is the outline of everything in black. I learned that pastels aren’t as easy as they seem to use.

Artist Statement

While looking at this illustration you will see a few things that I feel represent me at this time. First, I drew a silhouette of a person that symbolizes me and the flower coming out of her hand symbolizes my love of plants and nature. I painted the representation of myself a mixture of purple and mostly blue, because they are 2 of my favorite colors and they also represent my quiet and somewhat reserved personality. In the top left corner I drew space, mostly because I really like galaxy designs and my mind wonders about the empty void out there. The old looking tv represents my childhood, I watched a lot of tv and cartoons and it would be one of my favorite pastimes. Watching a lot of cartoons made me interested in animation and art styles, and made me want to try to draw. The PlayStation logo on the tv is there because throughout my entire life I play a lot of video games on PlayStation and nintendo but within the last two years it has primarily been the PS4. Playing video games has been a good escape for me, I’ve made some really good friends through the internet and had a lot of fun sitting around listening to their stories. My portrait highlights a few of the many things that make me happy.  

In my artwork, I used water colors, colored pencils, a micron pen, and a gelly roll (white) pen, to create a portrait that I felt expressed myself. I primarily used watercolors, because I wanted to try something new, but before I began to paint I used a pencil and micron pen to sketch and add line art to my portrait. After I finished with the line art I picked out the colors I wanted to paint with and mixed a few new shades of blue and purple together and used those colors to paint my silhouette. For the TV I used brown water colors but then I colored over it with a brown colored pencil because I wasn’t happy with how it turned out. Next, I painted the PlayStation logo, I started with a bright red watercolor and filled in the “P”. I decided to let that dry and started to paint my background, I wanted to create an atmosphere and feeling of space so I mixed together darker shades of blue and purple and blotted the two near each other. Then I some black water color to make it feel more like space but it didn’t look too good so before it dried I used a white watercolor to lighten it. Once all that finished drying I painted my planets various colors, finished my PlayStation logo, and flowers. Afterwards, I took a white gelly roll pen and added a few lines to my galaxy, filled in some stars, and added dots as small stars. Once I had done all that, the only thing left to do was go over my lineart with a micron pen again. This piece doesn’t really relate to any previous work besides old doodles. I don’t have a consistent art style, but for this project I wanted to keep it simple, while still having decent details.

A new technique I learned was dividing my colors. Before I blended and changes the overall look of my portrait, the silhouette was blue changing to purple. Being able to keep those colors noticeably divided can be a challenge. I experimented more with blending and I feel like that came out alright. Im most proud of how my entire piece came out, it could’ve been better, but I’m really happy with the outcome since I pretty much never paint. If I could change anything or redo this project I’d probably do a similar design but changed a few things like details and maybe the layout. In conclusion, I can always get better and improve my skills in art, but for the first project that i’ve done in a while, I don’t think I did half bad.

My drawing depicts man vs nature. The man is in a city, with the city in the background. There is also a small island in the background with a futuristic soldier statue on it.  The nature side depicts a small animal in a luscious forest, with a deer in the background. The green in this goes throughout the whole piece as does the blue.I don't really want it to show anything other than my skills as an artist. I’m not trying to portray any certain message.

 For materials, I used a pencil to lightly sketch and then I rew over it with a micron pen. This is so the lines are thicker and won’t smear or erase like a pencil would. I then erase my pencil lines and began to color. The only thing I used to color were colored pencils. This isn’t my most diverse piece of work, referring to materials but it came out a lot better than previous things I’ve done in class. I was inspired by an artist name rodgon on youtube. His artwork is phenomenal. The way he captures emotion in his characters and always has correct anatomy is enviable.

 The technique that is important to this piece was simply drawing. If I couldn’t draw on the level I can it would be severely lacking. I didn’t learn a new technique from this. I’m proud of my ability to color since I never do it because it’s tedious and takes to long. If I could change one thing I would make my characters clash to add more excitement.

In conclusion, I had a lot of fun completing this project. Although I didn’t learn anything new along the way, I do think I became a better artist. I really am proud of how well I improved with my coloring and hope I will continue to do better.

William Sigler

Ms. Hertz

Art 2 Elective 2017-18

A message that I think this and the next few generations should hear is just to humble yourself and if not then there are going to be situations that will do so in the future. I faced it earlier than most which helped me to mature and push myself to do for myself. Over the course of my life that forced me to give off a modest mentality and just respect hard work as it is.

When looking into drawing this I just thought to myself something that is cohesive yet perfectly imperfect. I wanted to make something that look free-handed yet put together something organized . I feel like a tribal piece that is modernized was something that could help display the message while keeping the background busy. I purposely didn’t include eyes on my center piece, neat line work nor did i color completely in the lines, but did fill the space with designs that followed a singular pattern.

First, think I did made a couple sketches and until I found details and pieces of each sketch that I wanted to be in my final product. Secondly, I gathered all of the supplies I wanted and needed for my piece. I then started to draw on my paper with a light-handed pencil stroke for each pattern. While I was sketching the face and finalizing all patterns, I was also testing out all of the water colors that I was going to be using for my artwork. I made my own colors mixing and matching while also using some of the normal colors in my watercolor tray. I started to group colors that I liked together and imaging which colors I was adding to the patterns and started to mix my human’s skin tint. Finally I started to mix colors and apply the colors as I felt necessary.

I faced trial and error a couple times which was perfectly fine with me because it just made the final result even more like I had imagined. The first great frustration that I faced was the table being moved while I was trying to make the precision lines for my art work. Another frustrations of mine was the oversaturation of the skin tint in my human because when first applying to the paper seemed very orange. Although I faced some barriers I am still confident with my final piece.    

For my Portfolio project, I decided to make a brain with the emotions that I show the most inside the brain. The way it looks is that the outside is completely black to make the brain stand out more in the portfolio, then inside the brain is various colors. Each color has an emote that describes the emotion. The tools that I used for this drawing is charcoal for the outside because I like how it looks on paper compared to a regular marker or colored pencil, and it’s easier to use and color in the spots unlike a regular pencil. For the various colors inside the brain, I decided to use color pencils because I believe it gives it a nice contrast with the charcoal and it’s not too much for the eyes to take. Lastly, I used a sharpie marker to help bolden the outline of the brain.

The step by step process is pretty simple because the first thing I did was to try and create an outline of the brain. Then, I made little boxes in the brain for each emotion. Once that was done, I realized that it was pretty bland, so I wanted to add color; so I made different color for each box and decided to make the outside color black. Overall I actually liked my picture because I’m not a good artist and it looked pretty good to me. One thing that I would fix if I had another opportunity to do this project would be to make the emotes look better because in the critique, my reviewer said it kind of hard to tell what some of the emotions were, but other than that I believe I did a good job.

My art represents a younger me that is coming face to face with her present and future problems that begin to overwhelm her and drown. I drew a crack in her face so you would know that her problems are coming from within. I added lighting storm at the top because I thought it was creative. With the “problems” pouring out her and the fact that they’re black, it shows that I go through and that I'm going through something heavy that is hard for me to handle. The materials I mostly used were colored pencils and sharpies.  With the “ocean” that are her problems that she faces, I trying to mimic the actual ocean. 

No one really inspired me to do this piece, I was just thinking about the problems that I'm facing school and in my personal life so I thought I would draw it. I’m not really an artist so I didn’t use any special techniques, just I guess you could say my feelings and experiences were my special techniques. I learned that you should draw the waves of the ocean first and draw darker and lighting to get the picture of the ocean. The only thing that I'm proud of is that I got it done one time. I wish I was more artistic so I could be more detailed and creative, I would change my whole picture. 

In this project I did a portrait based on the city of Philadelphia. In this project I drew what I thought would represent Philadelphia. In all there is the love sign, the Philadelphia zoo balloon, city skyline, a train station sign, the Philadelphia Phillies symbol, liberty bell and more. I wanted to communicate the idea of Philadelphia to others because this is the city I live in and I see these objects daily. For this project I used a number 2 pencil, a black sharpie, different colors of colored pencils and an eraser. My current portrait relates to other building drawings I have completed in the past and other portraits. With the completion of this portrait I started with sketching in my sketchbook before making a final copy and planning what exactly I wanted to draw. Then, I made measurements on a final cut paper with my final draft sketching with a pencil. After, completing this step i went over the pencil with a black sharpie erasing any other extra pencil markings. Finally, I colored in the portrait with colored pencils like blue, red, light brown, and more, shading to get different effects on the artwork. This provided link is an artist who draw buildings; http://www.stephenwiltshire.co.uk/.  An important technique is putting a certain weight on the colored pencil for the depth of the color. I learned  more about other  art materials and how to exactly use them. I am most important of completing this work. I would incorporate more into my project like people or something more inside of Philadelphia. I have learned how to try to really get the point across with the project and expressing it within the portrait.

My artwork shows a girl in highschool reading a textbook. The girl was an orange shirt with long brown hair. Over towards the left side of the photo show her thoughts. For this project, I use modge podge to find words and images from magazines. For example, the word “colleges”, “school” and a picture of a Blue Cross Blue Shield sign. The girl’s thoughts represent the daily thoughts that go throughout my mind. The background has black swirls that represent daily confusion and frustration. I used a pencil to begin my sketch. For this project I used sharpie marker, color pencils, and modge podge. For the more detailed parts of her face, I used an brown color pencil. For the larger parts that needed coloring, I used a brown sharpie for her hair and an orange marker for her shirt. I am most proud of using modge podge very neatly. The modge podge was used for pasting words or pictures that related to the everyday thoughts that go throughout my mind. This current art work relates to a previous work that I did during my sophomore year. I created a self portrait with creating the background out of newspaper. Throughout both projects, I used words from articles that related to the things I think of or found interesting.

For this project, I first began to sketch out a drawing of a girl reading a textbook and a thought bubble of things she would think of daily. Then I started to look through newspapers for key words and pictures that related to thing I thought of on a daily. Once finding around 5-10 things, I mixed white school glue with a small amount of water and began to paste my words and pictures. After letting it dry, I began to color and outline my drawing with sharpies and color pencils.  An artist who inspired me https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/smiling-student-open-book-thinking-21365118.jpg

A certain technique that was important to this work was the size brush that I use. I learned that using a smaller brush allowed my modge podge to lay better. A new technique that I learned is using a smaller brush and not a lot of your water for modge podge will create a smoother surface. I am most proud of the modge podge that shows my thoughts. If I could change one thing, I would add more detail in the face. In conclusion, for this project I learned to think outside of the box. Usually, when making projects I tend to finish fast because I only do the basics. For the project, I went outside my comfort zone and tried new things.

In this portrait a created a visual representation of a crime scene. I used regular pencil for the outline of the whole portrait and a black sheet of paper to transfer the portrait from my sketchbook to a small sheet of paper. I included a chalk outline of dead body surrounded by bright yellow caution tape and picket signs. The picket signs read “Black Lives Matter” and “City of Brotherly Love”. I also included a police car because I felt the crime scene would be empty without it. I used color pencils to give the objects its main color and markers to trace over the different objects and bring them to life. I used a needle eraser to draw the white outline and make it look as realistic as possible. I used a black pencil to color in the ground surrounding the chalk outline. I used yellow pencil and marker as well as black marker to draw the caution tape and the headlights on the police car. I used brown pencil and marker for the handles of the pickets signs and black marker for the writing on them. I drew the police car with blue and red pencil and marker for the body, sirens, and writing on the side. I used black pencil and marker for the tires of the car.

The point of this portrait was to highlight the trend we see in today’s society where a black person is killed by a white cop and suddenly “black lives matter”. However, when a black man is killed by someone of the same color, suddenly black lives don’t matter. I included the picket sign titled “City of Brotherly Love” to contradict the black lives matter sign because I feel as though we can’t say white cops are the problem when we are out killing each other everyday.

I want this to portrait to make people reflect upon themselves and see that we need to address the core problem of black on black crime before we address the problem of police brutality.

The last I created a portrait with this much detail was when I drew a famous car from “The Great Gatsby”. Just like my current portrait, it started off as a pencil drawing and then I added color with the help of color pencils and markers and brought the drawing to life. It is a portrait I am most proud of because I put a lot of effort into it and was very satisfied with the end result. I am proud of my current project because in my opinion it makes a statement I think the whole world needs to hear.

One technique I learned while creating my portrait was the use of a needle eraser. It allowed me to create my chalk outline as neatly as possible. I feel being neat and precise is an integral part of creating art. There is honestly nothing I would change about this project because of the amount of freedom I had to create whatever I wanted. An artist by the name of Edward Rhea Hemphill inspired me to make this portrait. His work can be found at http://art.blacklivesmatter.com/blackfuturesmonth/. In conclusion, this project taught me that art really can speak to you if you listen with your eyes instead of your ears.

For our first quarter project we had to draw or paint a portrait that represented a meaning behind it. For my project, I choose to draw a picture of a ram, the reason for this is because i had a hard time and struggled figuring out what I should draw. Ms. Hertz suggested choosing a drawing I already had in my sketchbook and converting it onto the piece of paper. I went through several attempts with drawing something new and different, until I decided to go with the last option that I had and use a drawing I already have.

The drawing is a ram with a third eye, and human like features, the idea behind this drawing itself is that I was relating it to me. Reason for that being is because I am an Aries and I wanted to draw something that reflected my zodiac sign, and also the power of being open minded. Another reason why I just choose this picture is because it was something I had already completed, and it was just a good drawing in general. Color wise I choose, to leave it as a black and white drawing, so I inked it in with, black sharpie pen, copic marker, and a black sharpie. I'm used to drawings thing a lot usually in black and white, it also focuses things more on the details of the picture, without to much color distracting you. I didn't have any real inspiration for this project but only, something that comes from within, and there wasn't any artist I got an idea from to create this.

If i could change one thing about this project it be the time i spent working on it, it didn't take me long to get the drawing done. But it did take me long to come up with something, and because of that I missed a lot of checkpoints, that could have boost my grade up.