For my artwork, I was inspired to create a silhouette drawing that I got inspiration from Kara Walker. I  drew a women with long curly hair that is surrounded by a colorful and bright background. I wanted to make a contrasting theme. I want to communicate the piece by showing how a person’s environment is what brings color to oneself and I feel like I did that really well for the piece. To create this, I have made it with pencils, erasers, spray on adhesive, tracing paper, micron pens, watercolors and acrylic paint. I sketched everything with the pencils and and touched it with the eraser for the centerpiece. I then painted it with black & white acrylic paint. I then used thick paper to draw the design for the background, outline it with a micron pen after coloring it with the water color. After paint the rest of the piece, I used the spray on adhesive to attach the cut outs of the water color piece. I found that I really enjoy the silhouette drawing with a colorful background. I feel like it’s a style that i really enjoy.

My process was honestly easy to follow. I know I wanted to draw a person with flowing hair and and mostly gained some inspiration from the movie Pocahontas for the song color in the wind. I took the song title literally though. IK drew a girl with flowing hair and created a colorful background. This made me want to create something light and colorful to fit the image that I wanted.For the watercolor, I learned that less water was better for the color to flow on the paper.  It made the color look more smooth. I learned how to use the spray on adhesive for the first time if I even decide to do it again. I’m proud of the overall outcome of it. I feel like it looks really good and I improved from the last time I did this. I wouldn’t change anything at all for this drawing because. In conclusion, I feel like I learned how to get more confident with doing silhouette drawings. I feel like this can be one of my styles for when I draw just like Kara Walker. I won’t always draw this but then at the same time it isn’t a style I would do all the time.

Ali Mohammed

Ms. Hertz

Artist statement

   For this project, I created a piece of drawing on a big sheet of paper which is based on the artwork of great Cuban artist known by the name of Armando Marino. His artistic capacity and talent are highly appreciated in all parts of the world. Almost all of his arts are based on media reporting issues such as immigrants, wars, economic crisis and other related issues. His arts are so amazing and based on facts. He was born in the end 1960s, that era was historically one of the worst situations, It was a time when the civil war was spread all over the countries, and the economy was bad. I chose to study his him and his arts because when I was doing my research I was looking for artists who do arts based on immigration, and refugees in order to relate his art to my life. There fist thing I did was draw the chained hand as big as I can with pencil, After the drawing was completed I used pencil colors for coloring. I have drawn two chained hands, brought together as one hand are locked. The palms of the hands are big and used different colors to beautify them. I used different pencil colors, mostly used brown over it red pencil color, and for the forearm, I used brown over green one. For the chain, I used blueberry pencil color over it a red color. And all the colors I used were, red, orange, blue, blueberry, brown, red, and pink.  If I had to do this project again I think that I would have drawn an image of refugee or people protesting and being beating. This project inspired me to participate more in art classes and courses.

   I have learned many things from his wonderful arts, his arts are self-evident, you can understand the heavy message behind them. One thing I liked the most about his art is that they are directly connected to social problems, such as protests, immigrants, violence etc.. and these are of deeply rooted in my life. His artistic works have influenced many people from all over the world. This project inspired me to participate more in art classes and courses.

My artwork is a replication of one of Piet Mondrian’s painting, the Composition II in Red, Blue and Yellow. Piet Mondrian was a dutch painter and theoretician. I chose to study Piet Mondrian because I’m fond of simplistic paintings and his idea behind his artwork. Mondrian’s style was a use of basic and abstract lines and shapes to reflect on the “underlying spiritually of nature”. He saw the world as clear and visible. He portrayed this in his art by simplifying the objects to basic elements and shapes. Mondrian wanted to create an equilibrium of nature and the universe.

The painting is split into seven small and large boxes divided by thick and bold black lines. The most eye-catching color of this painting is the bold fiery-red color in the largest box. Followed by two squares of bright yellow, one box painted a bold royal blue, and three white boxes. To accomplish this painting I used acrylic paint, thin and medium acrylic brushes, and paint block tape to achieve the straight bold black lines.

A new technique I used was the paint block tape. I placed the tape on the canvas before painting and removed after. However, it wasn’t as straight as Mondrian’s lines. Some of the lines were crooked. I had to go over several times with the tape to achieve the best lines I could. If I could do this project again I would I try to have straighter lines and a better painting technique.

Overall, I proud of my artwork. It looks like a good replication of his Mondrian’s painting. I’m glad I learned about his art and ideas.

The wet eye

One evening when I was in Ethiopia in a refugee camp called May-Ayni I was watching a movie and there were many people watching too, suddenly we heard screaming, shouting and crying. Everyone rushed the door and got out of the cinema center. We saw many immigrants lined up and began prostrating with loud and strong voices of screaming, others crying. I was shocked to See the crowd and that condition and have no idea what was happening and why they were there. After few minutes I saw a woman lamenting, and mourning bitterly uttering few words “My lovely, you have gone from my sight forever” My life is nothing without you, death is merciless” I watched my two eyes filled up, I understood and said to myself that there should be a boat that is sunk or something like that. And in my guess, I was right because it is not possible to see immigrants prostrating in streets wildly. After some time the speech was given telling the crowd that there a boat was sunk and there were about 300 of Eritrean people in it. The tears of a woman in the evening are one of the memories that I carry in my mind. My art was an inspiration of that moment.

I art is drawing “the eye” that  I was on that evening filled up and dropping tears down from it. A wet eye that can show you the wrong and violent condition of life that is imposed on those immigrants by their own government and leaders. Immigration is not something that can be chosen but rather it is imposed through different acts of violence of human rights, oppression, hunger, imprisonment, torture your land and most of the time by your leaders. And the only solution that you can do think of is just cry out, yell, weep, lament and grieve and all of these can solve nothing.

I had to go through different processes to complete my art project. The first thing was choosing four watercolors, and they are red, black, yellow and blue. I had to mix these colors to see what colors I can get when they are mixed in pairs.  I used the black for eyebrow, pupil, and iris. Yellow for painting the whole paper, red for areas below the eyebrow and below above eyelids and to represent the tears. And blue I mixed it with black to paint the Irish of an eye. This project is a new technique for me because I am using art to communicate things that are happening in the real world also I thought that my art also would represent different things besides that it was intended to communicate. One thing I can change would be colors or the size of the art.

In my humble opinion, I have learned that art is peaceful which gives us a way to communicate anything and everything.

My artwork is a crown. This was apart of the mixed media project. I created a crown to explain royalty and the feeling of being  a queen. A queen feels the sense of love, worship and amazement. Looking at my crown you notice the glitter showing the idea of happiness. Also the sturdiness reminding you of the strength from the people around the queen making sure she’s safe and happy. I used cardboard, glue, glitter, pastel, construction paper, jewels, and puffballs to create my crown. I wanted to portray the idea of someone's confidence and readiness to conquer anything by wearing my crown no matter if it’s appealing or not you can still wear it and be confident. Having confidence that you’re still great in a bad position no matter what you look like on the outside.

My work connects to my culture because me being African American and I believe that they are African queens who resemble royalty through my crown.   knowing that there are African queens my crown resembles the royalty and connection to the culture it self. It also connects to my live and experiences because everyday you go on you should always feel a sense of royalty like you’re a queen or king and are great. Also as though you should be respected just as well as anyone else. The way I used my tools is the glitter throughout the crown to show a cheering mood. I used the pastel to spell out neej on the front knowing that the crown is specifically mine. I put jewels around the tip of the crown showing the wealth of a queen. Lastly, I used the construction paper and the cardboard to create the crown and it’s sturdiness.

This compares to my previous work because I have confidence in everything I make and this shows the confidence I am not the best artist but I try and believe in my work. An artist I connect to is Johannes Vermeer because looking at his artwork you notice a pinch of blue in every painting and blue is a color showing royalty. A certain technique that helped me was making sure I used my materials together and try everything. I’m most proud of the purpose of my crown. I would change the look of my crown make it a solid color. Throughout this project I learned that you should work at a certain paste and maintain the same ideal look all the way through.

The inspiration for my project came from a saying, “The Tree of LIfe”. I painted a picture of a tree in the middle of empty land. The tree is painted normally and it has a background that is dark blue with paper clips hanging from it getting shorter as they go with intentions to make the clips look like steps but they are supposed to be tree swings for the context of the painting. I decided to to paint this picture because I felt that it currently represents my life. The steps are meant to represent the different stages in life that I have been going though. This project is a mixed media project and for my different medias, I used wood in which I cut myself to use as my canvas. I then used white paint to cover the entire piece of wood and I continued to paint my tree and grass using green and brown. I painted my background dark blue to make the tree pop and because I felt that the color was mysterious, like life itself. Compared to my previous work, this is somewhat different because of my choice to paint. I usually draw or color everything but, as far a conveying a message, I always try to convey a message. When doing my work, I noticed that the way I painted was an important technique because cleaner strokes made my art look better in my opinion. I’m proud of myself for sticking to my idea and I surprisingly, I’m satisfied with the outcome, so, I’m proud of myself for beginning to have confidence in my work which is something that I've learned to do, love my work because it is my creation and I’m sometimes too hard on myself. As always, if I could change anything, it’d be to manage my time better and try not to miss classes because it affected how much of my project I was able to get done. I found a painting by Vinsan that somewhat reminded me of my art because of the painting techniques and focus on nature.

My work is called the tree of life through the use of only 5 different colors (White, Blue, Black, Red, and Yellow). The basic description of this work is that it is a sitting tree in a moon, on space. With Astor bodies (meteorites) and stars surrounding the tree. In the backdrop of the painting it has a blue-ish shine to the tree. I want for my work to represent the ever living tree of life, ruler of life and space. I am very scientific and because Earth is the only planet in our universe to have life I wanted to put the tree of life as a celestial being of some sort - Making the tree special in a way. When I was painting the tree I used a pencil to trace the tree and overall design of it, I used three different brushes from thick to thin, a canvas (made of wood), a pallet, and five colors (blue, yellow, red, black and white) which I mixed in order to make any other color I wanted. My current work can relate to my previous one in a sense of location/ scenery. They are both located in space and have a “spacy” theme. My colors are different however, as this current one is more eye popping then the last due to the variety of colors.

When I was making the painting I first started with a drawn outline which I could then color with paint. Then I used a thick brush to make the outline of the moon and space, after that I painted the tree, making the roots and small details of it. After that, I painted the astro-bodies to give depth to the painting, which worked however, currently they pop- too much, which is something I want to fix about it, and that was how I made the painting. In my personal experience, outlining a painting with a pencil should be the very first step that you should take as it would make your work easier to make and you won’t have to think how to do “this and that”. I am most proud of how I managed to make good astro-bodies and a very nice tree. Which was something that I had always had a hard time with. If I were to redo or change this project I would probably delete some stuff of the drawing like the moon and stars, even though it would give it an emptier theme. It would just be more organized and neater. In conclusion I am proud of this project and would likely follow the same steps that I made here, in future projects.