Looking Forward

For my independent project, I am just going to work in my sketchbook. I was already behind on it anyway, so this works out well. Instead of my usual logo design things I am going to experiment with some optical illusion drawings and designs.

Reflecting at the End of the Year

This course has been a little bit up and down for me. I haven't always enjoyed it, especially the drawing from observation. During those times my engagement has gone down and with that my grade. My artistic strengths are drawing 2-dimensional things and making collages. My challenges have been pretty much everything else. This class has shown me that I don't really like painting or drawing, so it has lead me to choose sculpture next year which should be good.

Sketchbook Archaeology

I'm not that artistically creative, so it's been hard to come up with new things to do in my sketchbook. I feel like overall I have done a decent job in it. After I finished all the required parts, I just began to look up logos online and sketch them, and I have repeated that many times. The most repetitive things is the logos, and I think a couple of times I have pasted things inside to make a collage sort of thing, or just because it looks cool.

Symbolic Portrait

I am doing my uncle Arthur. He loved to play the saxophone, he was in the army and air force, he was a doctor and he loved animals. An idea I had was a big saxophone on the left, then the army and air force symbols coming out, followed by a symbol for a doctor and a dog.

Paper Cranes for Japan Project

Some of the images that stayed in my mind after I had closed my computer was one of houses in cars swamped with water with one house in the middle on fire, and another was a picture of the actual tsunami hitting land. 

3 Wishes For Japan

1. For people to be reunited with their families

2. For the destruction to be cleaned up and houses rebuilt

3. For the radiation to be controlled and not spreading to the rest of the world, no one getting sick from it

Getting Back to Materials

I chose brown paper bags for my self portrait because I remembered making puppets with them when I was a little kid and I thought it would work well. I didn't really get to finish mine, but my idea was to do a traditional paper bag puppet. My process was to just try to put body parts on one by one. I clearly didn't get very far. I do not like the finished product much. First of all it isn't finished, and also I regret choosing paper bags as a material. It just ended up looking something like a monkey.

"The Journey"

End of Term 1 Reflection

The first term of Art Principles was pretty good. It wasn't perfect for me, I was bored at times and that affected my engagement and performance. I've learned many new things this term, like techniques for drawing, what the principles of design are, and how to make a good collage. I don't think I like or dislike art anymore than I did at the beginning of the term, however I do think I have much more knowledge about art and different types of art then I did before. What has surprised me this term is that I'm not bad at all aspects of art. I think my final collage project going great, and my found objects sculpture was good too. My biggest success so far is becoming more engaged over the last couple of weeks. My biggest challenges have been finding ways to stay interested in what I'm doing so I pay attention and do well. If I do that the outcome of my work will probably be better. If I were to give myself advice it would be to do what I said earlier from the beginning, to try to find something interesting about what I'm doing. To continue to grow as an artist I need to find a part of art I like the best and continue doing that.

Chair With Coat

I think it was less complicated to draw the chair and coat than a pile of sticks, but it was still difficult because things were more defined so you had to draw them right. I don't think I used any skills developed over the past few weeks because I don't think I have any.

Glass Half Full Project: + and - of Sleeping In

The concept for my Glass Half Full project was to draw two drawings: one showing the positives of sleeping in and the other showing the negatives. The process was relatively easy, I had an idea quickly and knew pretty much exactly what I wanted to do. I was mostly happy with the way it came out. Not completely, but I'm not the best drawer so it wasn't too bad. I got some feedback saying I should add some color to select elements of the drawings to emphasize them more. I used that advice and found that it worked well. The aspects of the project that I think were most successful was I did the best I could and was focused more than usual.

Top: Positive

                                                                                    Bottom: Negative

Principles of Design Research

The piece of work I looked at today is called "Nighthawks" by Edward Hopper. Hopper made good use of the Principles of Design to support the story and message of "Nighthawks". There is good balance in it with use of asymmetry. He uses emphasis in the picture with his placement of the bar in front of the other things on the street. He shows movement with the leading lines of the streets. He uses good proportion by making things in back of the bar smaller to show that the bar is closer than the rest of the street. Also the people are proportionate to the bar and street.

Pile of Sticks

It was extremely difficult to draw the pile of sticks, even when I wasn't trying to draw the individual sticks. Drawing is not my strength, and it felt awkward to try to draw the sticks. The outcome wasn't very good, it looked like a smudge with things sticking out of it. I think I needed to add more detail to the middle of the pile.

Found Object Sculpture Reflection

 

Mister Pierce

The concept for my sculpture was to make some sort of person. The idea came from the broken in half shell of a hand-held fan. The shape reminded me of a small person. I looked around for small objects for the nose and eyes, and I ended up finding other things that I could use for the rest of the body parts. Finally I thought I was done. I had feet, but it wouldn't stand up. So I found a piece of plastic that could be used as a base, then put rocks and shells on it so it wouldn't be so plain. I didn't really encounter any struggles, I think I was the first to be finished. Just because I did it fast doesn't mean I rushed through it, I'm happy with the way it turned out.

                                 

Pour Painting Drawing

Mid-term Reflection

For my engagement, I think I need to find things that I'm interested in. If I'm not interested, I will be much less engaged and pay less attention to the class. That also goes for the projects I've done. The ones that I've been interested in, like the sculpture and the drawing of the forest, I did better on, did them more quickly and I wasn't bored. The other projects didn't come out as well because I was bored and didn't put much effort into them. The sketchbook I think I'm doing fine on, it's actually kind of relaxing just to sketch anything you see. The drawing on Tuesdays I'm not always engaged in because standing up and drawing for half an hour really isn't my favorite thing to do, so I end up not paying attention to what I'm doing.

The Changing Still Life

To make this changing still life look good you had to draw kind of quickly and draw lightly as well so you could erase things easily. You also had to get the shading right to distinguish colors. I didn't do any of those things, because I didn't know at first that there was going to be things added. By the end of the drawing after erasing and drawing and re-erasing things, my picture basically looked like a huge grayish black smudge. You could hardly tell what anything was anymore. The way I would do it next time is draw lighter and get a good eraser.

Found Images Collage Reflection

"View"

The idea for my collage was a view from the cockpit of a plane. The view would show a futuristic city with other planes and roads in the sky with cars. The process was relatively easy, all I had to do was find images from magazines that fit what I needed and paste them onto paper. I didn't really struggle with anything, but it got pretty tedious after a while. I discovered that my idea actually wasn't all that bad. I think it coming out the way I wanted was the successful part of the project for me.

Found Images Collage

My group told me that it was a cool idea, to add more things and objects in the sky.

Three Forms Drawing

Drawing can be very relaxing, especially when your are listening to music, which I did today. I felt like I did a pretty good job on the cup and the block, but I struggled with the pinecone. Drawing what you see is much easier said then done, especially with things that have odd shapes and angles, like a pinecone. What I learned from doing this is that you have to be patient with yourself while you draw. Go from broad to more specific, that will make it a lot easier.

Extending our findings from The Pour Paintings

My idea was to make a drawing of a forest. I ended up drawing some trees, a stream and a few deer. I didn't get a lot of feedback from my group, but they did say it was abstract and I did good on filling up the entire page.