I am using this piece for my RISD application, so I was given a prompt to create a piece for. It also conveniently fits in my concentrations and I tottttaaallllly didn't do that on purpose. Anyways, the prompt was to create a piece based on the word "deconstruct". My immediate thought was about the deconstruction of ourselves because I have a habit to tear myself down. I began thinking of ways I could tell this story. The word deconstruction made me think of building, and my first thought connected to building was legos because what mature and wise eighteen year old wouldn't think of legos. However, in the end these legos turned into simple building blocks because i forgot to add the little circles that are on top of legos. Anyways, i decided it would be interesting to show someone breaking off little legos from their body. I chose a crouched position because the legs were a larger surface that would then make the lego hole larger and more of a focal point. In general i like the concept behind the piece. I also really like the color choices I made and THE SLEEVE OF THE SHIRT IS SO NICE. I don't mean to toot my own horn but i am very proud of that sleeve. Fabric is kind of difficult but I made that sleeve my... very nice drawing. I do however wish I took more time on this piece but I have soooo many more pieces to make that I am on a serious time crunch. Overall, I am happy with the piece, especially that sleeve.
I had a lot of fun making this piece. I love making portraits and it's been awhile since i've had the opportunity to make one. This piece in particular was one I really enjoyed making because it felt extremely personal and relevant to my life events at the time of its creation. The drawing is essentially about how we distort our emotions on a daily basis. The feelings we express are often not the true emotions we feel. For a variety of reasons, we change our expressions to fit the ideals of society. We may feel ashamed to feel the way we do, or feel the need to be strong for other people. Regardless of the specifics, we all experience this. For me personally, I had reached a point where the people in my life made my feel as if my emotions were a burden to them, and one of the things i hate most in life is feeling like a burden. As a result, I changed my expressions to fit the emotions I knew others would prefer me to have.
I really like how I chose to depict this topic. I knew I wanted to play around with the idea of hands pulling at facial features that are vital to physically expressing our emotions. However, I ran into a problem when I realized the hands were too clunky and covered up too much of the face, which is the focal point. I then had the idea of having the hands hold hooks that could be punctured through the skin and pulled to symbolize forcing of emotions. I liked this idea even more because anytime i can add a splash of blood i am all over it. I like the execution of the project as well. I think I did a good job technically wise. It was also a good experience for me to have to opportunity to create different skin tones. I generally am confined to my own skin tone because most of my portraits are self portraits because convincing people to let you draw them is surprisingly difficult. All in all I really like this piece. This piece was inspired by my pupper, Detour. He had to get surgery awhile ago, and he had to wear an inflatable cone around his neck. I always joked that he looks like he has a inflatable tube around his neck and that he looks like he is about to go swimming. Therefore, I decided to make my joke come to life. I really enjoyed making this piece. I love the color pallet I used. The blue, purple, and pink all look really cohesive and playful to match the light hearted subject matter. When I started out, I was afraid of making my dog's fur. He is all white, so I wasn't quiet sure how I was going to add darks and lights to white fur. I ended up painting an all blue base, waiting for it to dry, then adding white over it to get the depth I needed. This piece in general required a lot of layering. The reflection started out as a mirrored image of my dog. I then painted strips of color for water over the mirror image once it dried. Layering also occured in the sky. I painted a base of purple and blue, let it dry, painted a first layer of cloud, let it dry, did another layer of cloud, let it dry, and then finally painted the last layer of cloud. All in all, I really enjoyed making this and I really like the final product. Besides being well executed, it just makes me smile.
The idea behind this piece is that when were little we all have teddy bears. They are there for us whenever we need them to provide us a sense of comfort and safety. As we grow older, we grow out of them. We turn to new methods of comfot. For many of us, this means finding people who we trust, whether it be a friend, partner, mother, father, counselor, or whatever else. These people become our new teddy bears. Without getting too depressing, I found my two teddy bears. However, they recently dropped me like a hot potato. In a sense, they out grew me. Thats what this piece is about. Technically wise, I have a love hate relatonship with this piece. I love the teddy bears. I think the texture I created is really beauitful, and I love the colors I added into the fur. However, I could not for the life of me make the girl look normal. I painted over and started again way to many times. Eventually, I just gave up. Its mostly just the face that bothers me. Everything is shaped wierd, but it was just too hard to get it right when it was so small. Basically, if I just removed the girl I would be in love with this piece. Maybe later on I will paint over her and try again, but for now I cannot bear to think of trying to paint that little itty bitty girl ever again.
Originally, I wasn't too big a fan of this piece. However, it has grown on me. It still kind of looks like something I drew a long time ago, but a better executed version. I really enjoyed making this piece. The heart was so fun to make. Without sounding crazy, I really like drawing gorry things. Blood is just kinda fun to draw (I promise I am not a psycho killer). I am also in love with the shirt. The colors I used compliment the rest of the piece very well. They are bright and vibrant which contrast well with the background and subject matter. I think I did a good job getting the skin tone right. I never tought to add blues to the shadows until now. However, I am super glad that I did because it make the shadows look more realistic than if I used my classic purple. I just realized I didn't use any purple for shadows in this (besides the shirt). I think I am evolving. Anyways, my least favorite part of this is the hole. I just think it doesn't look very realistic. This is mainly because I couldn't look at reference photos without wanted to tear my eyes out and vomit. Had I sucked it up and used reference photos, it probably would have looked a lot better.
This was my first time painting a pallet knife portrait, and I love it. I think that the proportions, skin tone, and shadows make it look very realistic. If you stand far away it actually looks like the person. Starting off, I was very worried about it not looking like my friend. Normally, I draw myself, so if I mess up its not a big deal. However, because this was my friend and not me I didn't want it to look ugly and make them feel disappointed. This being said, I think it looks just like him, and he agrees. Honestly, I am just very proud that it actually looks like him. I also love the texture of the pallet knife. The combination of the color of the background and the texture creates a very soft feel. The organic shapes and texture suits the fact that the piece is a portrait considering the human body and features are organic. The one thing I wish i could change is the eye shape. I feel like they should be more curved and not as close to his brow bone. I also wish his eyes had been open but I didn't want to pester him for more pictures. However, I also kinda like that his eyes are closed because it makes the painting feel somewhat somber which is why I chose to add deep blues and purples in the skin tone and keep the background muted. I also kind of think its boring. Most of my portraits have some kind of alteration or distortion, so it feels weird to make just a plain portrait. However, because this was my first time using oils and a pallet knife to create a portrait, I thought it best to keep it simple. Overall, I really love this piece. It was surprisingly easy, quick, and enjoyable to make.
This project was quite the rollercoaster, and I really don't like rollercoasters. I am never going to draw bricks ever again. Drawing each little rectangle over and over again made me go insane. It was as if each rectangle that I drew dragged me closer and closer to hell. This being said, I actually really like the end result. I love my color pallet. Its very different from previous color pallets I tend to gravitate towards. I think the toilet could be better, but by the time I finished the bricks I was too worn out to care about the toilet. The perspective is kinda off, and it sort of just looks kinda weird. Overall, my favorite thing is the subject. Drawing a nasty bathroom stall sounds exactly like something I would do, so props to Allie for giving me the idea. Because it's a nasty bathroom stall, I am glad that I didn't use realistic colors. The bright colors make the nasty bathroom stall look less nasty. It also brings more interest to the piece because otherwise it would be all grays and kind of sad looking. Also, the colors make me think of space, and it's a space theme bathroom. The shadow coming from the side wall is also another favorite feature. I think it looks very accurate to the actual picture, and it shows that the side wall is not as tall as the back wall (if that makes sense?). It really adds the depth to the space.
This is my intokber monster man. I don't really know what I am supposed to say about this, but it was amusing to make. I remember making one of these in Art I, and It was fun to take a little throwback. Making this with my mentee was quite the experience. Liam is quite a character, and we basically trash each others work but it's all in fun. I mean it's just a cute little craft. Not really much to say.
This was my first real oil and pallet knife painting. I have recently been going through an art rut. Nothing really seems fun to make because I am considerably bored with the subjects I have been assigned to create. The idea of an "everyday objects" project bored me to death. I mean nothing against still lifes and everyday object art, but I am very conceptual and how in the world was I supposed to make an everyday object conceptual. However, I made the decision to use the pallet knife for this painting. This was the best decision I could have made. The pallet knife sparked an interest in me and made making the piece a lot of fun. Knowing I planned to use the pallet knife, I chose to paint nail polish bottles because they are basic shapes and there isn't a lot of fine detail work. At first it took a little bit of getting used to the thick layers of paint and having to be careful not to smudge. Also, the fact that oils take FOREVER to dry was also very irritating, especially because when using the pallet knife layers of paint tend to be thicker. Creating clean lines with the pallet knife was also quite difficult, but I think I did a fairly good job in doing so. I really like the color choices I made. However, I wish I had used a slightly brighter pink to stand out more from the deep blue. In general I think this is quite good for my first pallet knife painting. I am super excited to play around with it more and find new texture techniques and work on getting cleaner lines.
I struggled a lot with this project. From the very start I ran into complications. I couldn't figure out what to make. I spent several days wandering aimlessly around my house trying to spark some kind of inspiration. I came across a piggy back which made me feel nostalgic. That's when I realized what I wanted to do. I decided my piece would reflect my emotions. As I grow older, I become increasingly excited for college and my future in general. However, part of me still craves the simplicity of childhood. I mean who wants to deal with life when it gets hard. Sometimes I would much rather go back to my crayons and construction paper days. This longing for my childhood is symbolized by my hand reaching out to the various items (sock money, piggy bank, Jenga) that are representative of my childhood. I really loved this concept, so at first I was really motivated. Because I was super motivated, the sock monkey came out really nice. I think I did a good job adding all the small details to really portray the texture of the monkey. However, as time went on I got decreasingly motivated and my drawing and quality of work suffered. By the time I got to the Jenga blocks, I hated the piece. Everything looked so boring to me and I felt like I made wrong color choices for the hands and blocks. I pushed on and started the background, purposely avoiding the piggy banks because I had no clue how to make the reflection. After I made the background, I hated it even more. Due to this severe hatred, I took a week break. Taking the break was one of the best decisions I made. Coming back from the break, I felt motivated and confident. After seeing how one of my classmates created a reflection on a similar material, I had a rough idea of how to make the reflection. In the end, the piece grew on me. I really like the reflection in the pig and I still love the concept. My one major problem is that I forgot to add the second foot on the piggy bank. I guess it's just going to have to deal with having only three legs.
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AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
June 2017
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