For my quarter 4 benchmark, I chose to model my work after the artist I chose, Kathleen Dunphy. She does a lot of watercolor paintings and I based my artwork off of hers. I created a vase with flowers and a dark background with a dark blue table/floor. The flowers were pink, magenta, and burgundy. I used simple, different sized paintbrushes and a canvas that is used for watercolor. The larger ones were used for filling in a lot of space quickly while the smaller ones were used for getting in tiny spaces a little more precisely. I drew a sketch first and then I started working with trying to mix up a desirable green that would work for the stems. I then used red and a mix of a few other colors to get a pink, magenta, and burgundy. I don’t specifically remember the colors I used for it but I got a good outcome. I don’t normally use watercolor for my artwork, and I wanted to try something new and I liked the outcome. Something I wish I did differently was me using the paint like it was acrylic rather than watercolor. With watercolor paint, you can use the already dried paint on the paper to get a certain effect or use more color. I’m used to acrylic paint because I’ve been using it since last year and I like deep colors rather than semi transparent colors so I wasn’t used to using it.

Let’s start with some compare and contrast…

On the left is an amazing image done by Silver age Comic Artist Bernie Wrightson, an amazing piece of work done for the Frankenstein comic adaptation. Witness the detail and care put into each and every piece of clutter, see the intense planning to create a cohesive yet chaotic image. On the left is Baby’s First Cross-Hatching Tutorial (my artwork, sadly), a piece much more lacking in the planning and clutter department. The table in the foreground somewhat captures what it wanted to emulate, but not in it’s entirety.

The piece of art I created is a black and white image focused on two men standing within a room together, one on the floor bleeding and the other stunned to witness the sight. Littered among the foreground is a tome bearing the Yellow Sign, along with a pendant bearing the same sigil. Along with a framed image of an unknown woman with unknown importance. On the back wall, A hanging portrait of the King in Yellow. I wanted to truly capture the feel of a Wrightson panel. The moody darkness, and the intricate cross hatching of his panels. Unfortunately I got nowhere near that, but what can you do? I went at this trainwreck with an extra-small Faber Castel pen and a Faber Castel brush pen, along with my trusty Lead Holder (with 3h lead I got for an amazingly low price) and my extremely smaller .5mm lead pencil. I started out with a basic sketch of the scene, and I ended up having a much more solid idea of the background and foreground than the mid ground where the characters would be, and that came back to haunt me later on. I went about touching up the sketch, adding in details and redrawing the dead man’s face about 20 times before settling on a mask (slightly inspired by The Mask). After that I jumped straight into inking, starting with the foreground because that’d take the most work, golly gee, book pages and wood textures are really time consuming. After that I laid out the beginnings of the background and went about slaving over the foreground. Halfway through that I swapped back to the background and finished that, then finally, finished the foreground. There’s essentially only one technique used throughout the entire image and that’s cross-hatching, where you layer lines on top of each other to achieve a dark look, it’s not very impressive within my piece, but if you look to one of Bernie Wrightsons works you’d see it in action, depth, mood and entire silhouettes are established via cross-hatching, and the masters do it well. If there’s anything to be proud of in this work it’s the foreground, the wood texture, while a true pain to accomplish. It came out better than I’d ever hoped, and the book on said table came out spectacularly and is honestly the real star of the piece. In conclusion, I didn’t learn much, maybe something about how you spend your energy on things, or something about perspective, I’m not sure, but all in all, bless you if you enjoy the look of this dumpster-fire, and I’ll try not to make something so bad next time around.

I did a recreation of a painting by jean michel basquiat I decide to do his painting because i like like his style of art also it seem like a piece of work that would like to do in the future. I started by getting a base for my painting I wanted to do it on something that was kinda hard do it could resemble walls since he dose graffiti art. After that I painted the background red since that’s how it is in his picture Next I outlined his drawing on the card stock so I could paint it. After that I outline the lines so that it could stand out more. Lastly I painted over the whole thing in yellow so it would look like the painting. From doing this paint I learned that doing painting that don’t represent something is okay it doesn't always have to have a meaning.

While I was working on this painting some obstacles I ran into was that I had to use specific colors so that the painting would be look like the original which was hard because I had to mix color together to get the perfect color.

I am most of proud of how much my painting looks the original also the colors are the same.

The artist my artwork is influenced by is Picasso he has a unique technique and his artwork is very shifting. It hard to match his design and skill. He uses water colors and blends them very well. Throughout my artwork I wanted to communicate a similar but brighter picture of what Picasso made so it could bring it out more. This artwork reflects on my person experiences because I’m an extra and hype person so this is a reflection of my action and personality. The tools I used to create my artwork was water paint, water, paint brushes and a canvas broaden type paper. I used the water paint to give off a mixer of blurred colors and tone. I usec the different brushes to get into small spot, to do the bigger spots easier and to make sure my colors blended. The water gave me the necessary component to mix the colors and add an extra bright tone. The artwork I made is a picture of a girl laying on her two arms, eyes closed, head cocked to one side as she rest her background is darker but she’s brought out by bright blues, yellows, reds and whites. The background gives you a more settled darker look. With the background being black and lighten up with bright orange to outline the door and the ceilings designs. The ladies face is mashed together with multiple bright colors as well as the blue table she lays on. This artwork relates to my previous work because everything I make I make it bright so it draws your attention. It just matches with the flow and tone of the other art pieces I’ve created. The process I used to create this is first writing my own rubric on what I was doing for my benchmark and when did I want certain things completed. Then, I googled different images from my artist. Looking at his technique trying to see what I could mock I found the artwork of the girl. Next class I figured out what materials I wanted to use and started to get started with the outline. I tried first in my sketch book then on my canvas paper. Having to make it bigger so it took up a lot of the page I finally completed the sketch. Next I looked into the artist colors and saw what I had to work with. I placed the colors on  my palate and started paint my sketch. Day by day I began to have it complete. Next I had to start working on the very detailed pattern in the background. Getting it most of the way I finally complete my art piece. The artist that makes similar work to mine would have to be the man who inspired me who is Pablo Picasso (https://www.pablopicasso.org/picasso-paintings.jsp). The technique that’s important to me would have to be the blending portion. Blending is a technique that takes lots of patience. A new technique I learned is how to fade. I was most proud of the girl in the painting it looked so similar to his work. If I could change something I would change the outline of the door in the background and my lining make it neater. In conclusion I learned that Picasso is an amazing artist with a lot of skill and art is all about patience.

When looking at my work, you see a small beautiful red pumpkin that meets the eye. This is no regular pumpkin it has white dots that branch across the small pumpkin, with a bright green leaf at the stem. This specific piece shows my hard work and the beauty of it. How something ordinary can change and become more beautiful. To make this wonderful piece I used clay, sculpting tools, and acrylic paint. I used the clay to create the pumpkin shape, by rolling some into a ball. After the ball, I made the stem and leaf, but to get the detail that I wanted I had to use the sculpting tools. They helped create the lines that I needed to separate the clay and create humps. Lastly, with the paint, I used red, white, and green. When creating my work I rolled the clay into a ball. Then I put clay around a wire so that I can hold the shape of it leaning. I let it dry so that it can stay together, then decided to add a leaf. Finally, I began to paint, I started with white as the base coat then added the red so it can be more vibrant. I then added the white dots all around the pumpkin and finally painted the leaf green with some white to make it pop.  

To create this artwork I was inspired by an artist that I studied in my previous project. I studied Yayoi Kusama a Japanese artist that loves dots. When looking at her work I gravitated towards the pumpkins more and decided to re-create and add my own twist to her original design.   When doing this project I had a lot of trial and error but,I realized that you need patience, also a good structure. With having a good foundation for your work it will help everything go more smoothly. As I continued to work on this piece I learned a new technique that helps me the rest of the way. It was having the newspaper to help create texture and take away excess clay. As t neared the end I grew proud of my unplanned leaf and how it pulled the pumpkin together. For this project, I don’t think that I would want to change anything. I liked the way that my idea came together in the end. I learned that I liked adding my style to a previously own idea by a famous artist. With me adding my style to the original and seeing the difference showed me what I can achieve.

This quarter I enjoyed working on the project because I have felt stressed about the quarter since it started. I really wanted to work on something that wouldn’t stress me out because I was learning how to use the new materials or how to draw something complicated. I chose to work on something that relaxed me and helped me think as I was drawing and coloring.

My project for this quarter was to draw a tree with the four different seasons. It was supposed to show how the tree changing throughout the year correlates with how we also change. We change a lot as the years go by and when we think we already know enough about life, we don’t. Trees change also as the year goes by but they are still the same them. We are still the same but with knowledge and wisdom.

I most proud of taking my time and being very organized with this project. I was in charge of making my own time and schedule to turning in my checkpoints. I think this was a really good way in learning how to be organized without having the teacher be on your back about the assignments. It was a way to give us a little taste on how college life might be.

In conclusion, this project went really well and I am glad I got to work on something that relaxed me throughout this entire quarter. A lot of people helped me out with my project too by giving me insights on how to make it better. I was able to do a even better job on it.

My project shows two men relaxing and conversing by a tree these men our abstract characters and have strange bodies. I want this to show how us people are peaceful, loving and kind creatures. It also shows how we relax and chill. For this artwork, I used colored pencils and a pencil. I used these because they were the best option to make light and dark shades for my drawings. This relates to my previous work by how I was using different shades of color however, I used multiple instead of just black. To create my artwork, I first started to replicate the image by sketching it. As I did more,  I shaded it darker until I was able to color. Then I outlined it in color pencil by pressing hard after I just colored it in. Melike Kara made this work and this inspired me because of the Abstract art. The technique, sketching is important because if you make a mistake it’s easy to erase and makes the process better. I am most proud of how good I replicated this work because of the sheer difficulty the style of drawing was. However, that’s what I wanted. I wish I could change how long the arm was and the eraser spots on the project because it makes it look like a mess. I learned a lot about my artist Melike Kara and how her artwork is amazing however, the artwork is strange and hard to read. However, that’s what I like about her work.

For my quarter 4 final project for art class, I decided to create a self portrait of myself. I choose a self portrait because the artist I researched (Frida Kahlo) was known for her phenomenal portraits of herself. To create my work, I used plain thin white colored paper about 12x13in wide. I wanted a natural soft appearance of the portrait so I used light pencil to sketch it out and colored pencils only to fill it in. This relates a lot to my other work being a lot similar because my motive is to always keep it simple which means my supplies are similar to my other projects supplies, processes as well. Creating my project, I set up checkpoint for myself so I could receive the best product possible. I created a rough draft, fixed up my flaws, started my final and began adding final touches and color. I received a peer review as well. Frida Kahlo inspired my work for this project. It is very similar to the art she creates and to her portraits. I am most proud of my finished product of my art work and I am most proud of how I managed my time. In conclusion to my artist statement, I learned your artwork is what you make it and that you can create anything you put your mind to.