The creation of my artist study displays an inspired japanese bridge hovering over a pond filled with lily pads. The background of my artwork is a gradient of light colors representing foliage. When creating this artwork, I wanted to convey a sense of scenery and tranquility that I receive when I look at nature and specially ponds.

When creating this artwork, I wanted to originally use oil paints to stay true to my artist style, which was Monet. However, I ended up using watercolor for my piece. Regarding tools and materials, I used three different kinds of paint brushes, a water cup, watercolors, a watercolor palette, newspapers, frog tape, and watercolor paper. I used frog tape to tape my watercolor paper to my table so the paper doesn’t curl upwards. I feel that this work is something new and different from my last project which was my still life. I say this because my still life was only done in pencil and had no color or values as opposed to this piece which has different layers.

My first step was to do brainstorm what I actually wanted to draw. I did two outlines of my final product but both were at different angles. One being close up while the other being zoomed out and showing more of the landscape. I ended up choosing the close up perspective of the bridge. I then started to do my rough draft and figuring out different color combinations I wanted to try. This was followed by me starting my final piece. I first did a light wash of the base color and continually started to layer color on top of color to add more depth. This project was inspired by the artist Monet, specifically this artwork which can be found here.  

When watercoloring I think it’s important to be patient with your work when you’re layering different colors. If you decide to add more color and the last paint didn’t dry yet, then the pigment will just go everywhere. One technique that I learned was how to ombre colors, so they look that they flow smoothly in together. As well as freely painting. When I usually paint, I get scare of overpainting and accidentally brushing a color onto something that it wasn’t supposed to go on. Overall this was a fulfilling experience that made me want to paint more in the future, I also found it relaxing and eased my mind.

The creation of my media and design project was an image edit. I titled it, “Dogs in Spring”. The basic premise of my edit are dogs in a beautiful cherry blossom photo.  All images are not mine, but are copyright free. The goal that I was trying to achieve in this project is to make something that I could use as my desktop and something that would be fun to look at and would make people go, (“wow that’s hella cute!”)  I also wanted to brush up my skills on image editing using the program pixlr.

When making this project, I first had to come up with what I wanted to accomplish and what pictures would be appropriate to add towards my goal. I went on a copyfree website and found a beautiful cherry blossom scenery picture that I would then use as my background. I also found someone’s dog and I scooped that picture. I then uploaded both pictures on pixlr. To combine the pictures into one, I cropped out the dog from its original photo using the lasso tool and paste it on my blossom background. At first, I didn’t know if I wanted the dog to be just in the background or up close in your face. I decided to put the dog up close because it adds that extra emphasis that I was aiming for.  I then blurred the outline of the dog to make it seem more nature in the picture. After this, I thought that something else was missing and I decided to add another dog to my edit. I chose to put the dog more in the background and ideally have him chilling in the shade. This gives the edit some contrast because the dogs are at different proportions from each other. To make it more realistic, I used the brush tool and at 17 opacity added some shadow on the dog to make it look like he was actually under the trees and in the shade.

I didn’t really have a hard time because creating my edit because I already had some basic knowledge on how to work the editing program pixlr. However, one thing that did trouble me was cropping an object out of one picture and pasting it on another. This was hard since sometimes I would crop too much out and it didn’t look quite right. Since this project, I feel that I have gotten better at cropping images out because I figured out that instead of drawing with the lasso tool, you can actually just do multiple clicks when outlining the image you’re cropping out. Overall, I learned that you have to be patience when image editing. Editing a picture is not something that you can rush and get done right away. Also be able to share your edit to people to get feedback. Even after the peer review, I also went out to other people to figure out ways to improve or add to my edit.

If I had a chance to do this project all over again. I feel that I would do the same thing

because I enjoy how my image edit turned out. For those who want to pursue this project, keep in mind that you’ll be getting frustrated a lot because sometimes a tool doesn’t apply to your edit, or a tool won’t work altogether. However, I feel that if I used any other tool besides pixlr, it would be even more difficult, such as photoshop, because I have no clue how to work photoshop. Finally, I want to do more edits that I can send to my friends.

Images used:

Dumat, Maja. Flickr: Shiba Inu Kazumi, 29 Sept. 2012, commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:A_Shiba_Inu_head.jpg#/media/File:A_Shiba_Inu_head.jpg+.

Tawashi2006. Tawashi2006, 28 Mar. 2002, commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cherry_blossoms_at_Miyagawa-Tsutsumi02.jpg#/media/File:Cherry_blossoms_at_Miyagawa-Tsutsumi02.jpg+.

My Art Statement :

When you search my name online. The only thing that pops up is “Sahara Sams” the waterpark in New Jersey. When people type in my username, they find my twitter. On twitter i appear as just a girl that mostly retweets other people's tweets. I think people perceive me as just a normal teenage girl that has a twitter honestly. When I’m considering what I post, I mostly think about what my friend’s will think, but I do take in consideration of what if my parents or teachers would see it. So I don’t post anything offensive or insulting on my social media. One of the pros of sharing online is that you can share things easily with friends or can even make friends online. Yet one of the cons is when you post something online and delete it. It’s still on the internet, and can stay online. You can also have complete access to people. Lack of Control, Permanence, and Immediacy have ruined people's lives and affected the way people will perceive them.  When it comes to background checks on potential employers, I don’t really mind if somebody checks my social media since i don’t post anything I should be ashame of. I believe your employer is allowed to search up you up because it’s your choice how you present yourself online, and since it is online everyone sees it anyway. Free speech is the freedom of speaking, however you cannot say everything that you want to say. Things like speaking your own mind are protected, but if your opinion is offending or hurting someone or picking a fight, that is not protected by freedom of speech. A internet troll is someone who finds entertainment of making people frustrated or angry. They can make mocking posts and offence people just for the fun of it. To stop people like this, we can spread more ice comments around to people, and when if people are trolling you, ignore it. When posting anonymously online, a pro is since nobody knows who you are, people can now talk about sensitive and non-talked about topics. A con is people can leave mean and hurtful comments and nobody would know it was them. My three tips of using the internet are: One ) Treat people the way you want to be treated. Two ) If someone is having a bad day help them out. Three) If you see bullying happening report them immediately.