Illustration Friday:Ice

A Nightmare Before Christmas: Research

Character Development

1. Title of the movie

Nightmare Before Christmas

2. Production company

Skellington Productions

3. How was the stop motion completed?  (ex. 3D printing, clay, wire, mixed media, other)

Clay

4. Who were the main people working on the stop motion of the movie?  Give a short bio to at least 1 of those people.  (other movies, education, location, what they are known for..)

Henry Selick

Tim Burton: Timothy Walter "Tim" Burton was born August 25, 1958. He is an American film director, producer, artist, writer and animator. He is known for his very stylized works with their  dark, gothic and quirky fantasy characteristics.

Denise Di Novi

Caroline Thompson

Michael McDowell

5. What is special about the movie?  (largest puppet, first to use 3D printing or style)

It’s the first stop-motion animated feature to be entirely converted to 3D.

6. Insert (not a link) a video of a behind the scenes clip.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLw-Fo8uhis

7. What draws you to this movie?  What do you find interesting about the movie? (Style, theme, subject)

The style, story, and musical score and lyrics are all extremely attractive to me. I enjoy creepier story lines and so this movie is a hit and run for me.

Illustration Friday: Nest

Illustration Friday: Weapon

Illustration Friday: Traffic

Illustration Friday:Orange

Illustration Friday: Rain

Prisma:Reflection Final

This is the final product if the reflection project.

Oil Fruit

Here we practiced using oils for the first time. I used a brush for the Apple and a palate knife for the pear. I accidentally made a bit of brown when adding colors into the Apple, but overall I like the stark difference between colors in both images.

Business Card: In Stitches

Front

Back

The Inedible project

1. Who lives in the house you created?  Is there a particular reason you picked the parts you did?
2. In the Leaning tower of Pizza, mostly tourists are the ones who visit to get a slice of the best pizza in all of Italy. The Doughnut hole in the ground Houses are home to sugar trolls who's only source of nutrition is from the surrounding architecture which they are constantly having to rebuild, and the Apple Tree House is a playground in the trees specifically for kids who want to play pretend with their friends.
3. What alterations did you have to make to make it look realistic?
4. I had to warp several of the images to fit correctly to the food. I also had to erase part of the door on the bacon maple doughnuts so that the door looks like it's a part of the doughnut. I had to also warp the pizza to fit into the shape of the Pisa.
5. If you could change anything about the piece, what would you do?
6. Well, I would finish them for one. I would add shadows and work to make each piece look realistic.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   

Oh, there's Dumbo!

1.What problems did you overcome during this project and how?
I had a difficult time getting the wings cut out nicely and then transferred over to Dumbo. Something happened in the process where they became really large and then once I shrank them down the edges were blurry. I then proceeded to work the edges so that there was not a white fizzy edge to the best of my abilities.2. If you could change anything about the piece what would you do?

I would change the wings and make sure that the edges were crisp and clean.3. Explain your animal?  What is their name/species? How did you come up with this idea?

This is Dumbo. He has always been mistreated at the carnival for being different by the other elephants, but one fateful a trusting mouse took him under his, ahem, wing and helped him realize his ears are what make him special. Then, when some crows were teasing him and he couldn't stand it anymore Dumbo used his lucky feather to see if he could fly, and he soared.

Illustration friday

(so sorry, I only just realised that the post had failed)

Mini Lesson 1: Frog Tongue

If only I could be in four places at once...?

1. What problems did you overcome during this project and how?
I had a difficult time initially understanding how to move each individual 'me'm into the background picture. Once I better understood how masks worked, I had a relatively simple time of moving each image over.
2. If you could change anything about the piece what would you do?

I'm actually really pleased with this image. I'm sure I have only done a sub par job, but I can't think of what I would wish to alter at this point in time. I like the placement of each of my clones and the overall composition of the piece with the varying placement of the clones.

Drawing Final Exam

1. My most successful project would definitely have to be my self portrait/expression project. Our assignment was to create a self-portrait that either showed expression, as a zombie, or mechanical. After some brainstorming I decided to go with the expression version of this project. When I was little my mom use to joke that I needed to clap when I changed subjects because I would go from one thing to another very quickly and without explanation leaving my listener dumbfounded, so I came up with the idea to have my thoughts spilling out from my head to show the way I think and how my thoughts are connected and disjointed at the same time. I used prismas, which I was still pretty unfamiliar with using, to make the piece colorful and lively. My greatest adversary in this project was my face. I had a terrible time making the shading look cohesive and not like I had wound up in a fight. Through my teacher's urging, I carried the purples and browns I had been using for the shading further into the face and I think it made it look much better. This piece is eye catching because the face is tilted slightly down with the eyes closed which makes me curious as to what that person is thinking, and then you see the colorful explosion that is the girl's thoughts answering your question. If I had more time or if I could change some things, I would work on making the face look even more like my own and I would add in a dreary or dark background to make the subject pop to viewers.

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1. Other than my self portrait which I used to answer my previous question my most successful piece was my Dumdum drawing in prismas. We were given a lollipop and asked to draw it with as much detail as possible. I decided to draw my mystery Dumdum in purples and blues to allude to the flavor being blueberry. I first drew and outline of the basic folds and shapes in white on my black paper and I tried to fill up the space with the Dumdum head rather than making it small and including the entire stick. I then proceeded to layer different shades of purple to make the lolly look round and give the folds the darkness they need to have the proper texture. The weakest part of this piece is the green shadow. I attempted to it at a different location than I had originally drawn the piece in which gave it a different shadow from where the original highlights were. Also, I accidentally drew it incorrectly and made it too wide so now it bothers me every time I see it.

2. Several weeks ago I drew a mint in pastels. The white was layered very poorly in my attempt to create highlights in the plastic. It was not very successful at all because plastic I tried to draw in over the candy using highlights was unrecognizable for what it was intended to be. The piece had little shading and value to it so it was very uninteresting.
My opacity project, I feel like, was much more successful. I drew plastic canisters full of jelly bans. Each bean has a highlight, and behind each set of beans is a darker version of the beans to suggest that there are more behind the beans at the front. I also created perspective with this piece by have each subsequent canister behind the former and the beans in each canister getting smaller and smaller. It's altogether a more dynamic and interesting piece than the hard candy because I was able to better apply what I had learned.

Self portrait features

This was my first attempt at combining all of the facial features into an actual face that should look like me. It did not turn out well. I did not understand how and where to shade the face to give it depth and make it more lifelike. I have since learned more about how to shade and how to draw noses and did a slightly better job on my final self portrait.

All things in-between- Scratchboard project

1) Recently I have desperately been wanting to go see the P!ATD concert and in wanting to see it have explore what the concert scene is typically like. Friends have said their is normally a lot of weed and booze around as well as vaping. A specific friend in my art class one day was showing some cool pictures of them vaping and i came up with the idea of using it for my movement piece because i had liked the example piece my art teacher, Ms. Rossi, had showed us with an exploding head and smoke coming out. The only thing this person required me to do in return was block out their eyes so that they could not be identified. This the idea came to me to incorporate the censored picture into the piece and use bars in the background as a suggestion of more people being present. 

2) I used hatching in the smoke to give it color and direction in hopes of creating and airy, light texture as is usually given to smoke. 

3) Initially I just had the face with the smoke coming out of nose as the center of the piece and nothing else. However, I soon decided that I wanted to have more "people" part of the piece to create a crowd so I added in the bars to create a background. 

4) I implied movement in my piece by using hatching in the smoke to make it appear as if it is moving in particular directions and by having it come out if the nose it is assumed that is in motion. 

5)I could improve this piece by having smoother lines and cleaner pieces of smoke. I added some smoke in after my initial design and I don't like the way it looks because it doesn't seem to glow with the other pieces well and looks distinclty different to my eye.

6) I used hatching to create brighter highlights in certain areas of the face and to give the smoke color and opacity. I also created bright white bars to accent the person and the crowd surrounding her. 

Clap-Self portrait

          The idea behind this piece is that when I was little, my mom would joke with me saying that I should clap when I change subjects because I would leave her confused as to how I got from one thing to another. So, I decided it was time to explain how my crazy mind works. I tried to connect different streams of thought and show jumps from one subject to another and somewhat how they relate to eachother. The values in the darks or shadows could have been pushed further to create a more realistic image. I used purples and a bit of brown to create the shadows in the piece. For the thought bubbles, I tried to use a background color that went along with the theme of that particular bubble and wrote as well as drew images that coincided with said theme. The bubbles not only portray happy, hopeful thoughts but mh negative thoughts as well which is more accurate to how I think. I wanted people to notice that negative thoughts-drawn in a dark gray and black in some places- creep their way into even the most happy of thought streams. Life isn't all rainbows and candycorn after all. I am happy in that I feel the piece does look like me to some extent and that the bubbles are interesting. This piece is original because it portrays my own thoughts and feelings connected to a picture of me. I have never seen something like this before, although I'm sure it has been done somewhere. 

Opacity- Bertie Botts Every Flavor Beans

1. My project is very neat. I took time to draw each individual bean and add in highlights and shadows to give it a more realistic shape.
2. My background is more jellybeans but because of the angle of the picture, each subsequent jar of beans is smaller the farther back you go. Also, I filled in the spaces between the beans with a darker shade of the same color to represent the other beans that are behind the bean that are at the edge of the container.
3. I used pretty much the same colors for the beans as I saw in the picture; however, I used lighter shades of a color to create highlight and darker shades of that color to create the background and the idea of a greater amount of beans behind the ones that are most present in the piece.
4. I created contrast in my piece by making my highlights really bright and creating a dark background to make the beans stand out.
5. I used lighter shades of the same color, although in some cases if the color was already really light I used white, for the highlight on the outside of the beans and I used a darker shade of the same color for the background directly behind the beans to create the illusion that there are more beans than just the main ones you first see against the container. I created each bean in a round shape and tried to color it smoothly to create the seamless surface jellybeans often have.
6. I chose to have the background color corelate with the color of the beans at the forefront of the image to create the idea that there were more bean behind the ones that received the light.
7. To successfully create this piece, to give the proper texture and shape to the beans, I had to understand how to blend and push the prismas to get the colors I wanted.
8. I had difficulty with creating the proportions of the beans so they look correct as the piece goes further back. I didn't want it too look too drastic. If I could do this again, I think I would have pushed the highlights of the plastic more and made each color brighter and clearer.

Final self portrait sketch

I ended up choosing to draw myself with my thoughts flooding from my head. My mom always teased me when I was little saying that I needed to clap my hands when I changed subjects because she had no idea how I would get from "A to π". So here I tried to show things I think about, both positive and negative, and how one thought leads to another then another and all of a sudden I'll jump to a new topic. I chose to do the sketch with a drawing pencil but for the final I will do it in Prisma Color.

Self portrait idea sketches

I have never really attempted a nice self portrait before this class. For the expressive category I came up with numerous ideas including the shattered mirror with me screaming, the head with my thoughts coming out, me wearing Mickey mouse ears with a goofy grin, and me holding a ton of colorful balloons. For the zombie category, I came up with a version of me with my eyes clawed out and a creepy smile as well as a version where you can see my face with a skeletal smile under translucent skin. Lastly, for the mechanical category I came up with a version of me at a side view where you can see a microchip for a brain and wires connecting to major functions. I had an easier time with the expressive category in part because I am such an expressive person.

Mint Candy: Pastels

Here I attempted to capture a hard candy in a wrapper. I do not like this piece at all. It looks very flat and the wrapper blends in with the candy. I do like the ends of the wrappers because of how simple they are, but I still think they get the idea of a wrapper across.

Egg Drawing: Pastels

For this drawing I used cool colors to capture the various shadows and highlights to make the eggs look three dimensional. I think that the shadows were extremely successful containing a good range of values, smooth transitions, and soft edges. My eggs, however, aren't as smooth and clean as I would have hoped. I believe I over blended the eggs initially so that when I tried to go back and add more color it didn't blend very well.

Dum Dum

Except for the shadow, which I did in a different place and was trying to recreate from memory, I really like how this piece turned out. I chose the mystery lollipop and worked with cool colors. This was my first time using Prismas and I learned how to layer them to create depth to a piece and how to create values using colors. I am really happy with how I used my values, and I think it looks like it is actually 3-D. I am still struggling to get around the horrendous shadow, however.

(By the way, I tried posting a picture of my drawing to the blog but it won't work, I'm not sure why. Sorry!)

Still Life

1) The lines are very smooth and precise and for the most part-save the flower- the shading is done fairly well showing a great range of values. 

2) I believe, from what I presently have of course, that my shadows and shading are very accurate. I took great pains to try to be as precise as I could following the shadows cast in life. 

3) There is a clear source of lighting. This can be most presently seem on the sock monkey's leg where you can distinclty see that the light is coming from above. 

4) The compositional sketches were very important because they showed me that I was thinking too small and I needed to widen my perspective. However, this overwhelmed me a great deal and made the project a bit more stressful and time consuming than I had hoped.

5) My final drawing is not successful because I did not succeed in finishing. I do like how the proportions are as well as the shadows look.

6) I do believe the proportions are correct. That is what I focused on for a very long time. However, the leaves are not quite accurate both in size and position, so structurally it isn't quite correct, but the rest of it is sound.

7) Surprisingly, I do believe this piece's placement is very pleasing. There are a lot of different types of objects in it that span the entire page and create an interesting and unique perspective.

8) My center of interest was definitely the lantern. I think it was well located because it is at the forefront of the piece, it is the biggest, and it is on the left where our eyes tend to go to first since we read right to left.

9) I did not manage time well at all. I got caught up on making my proportions correct that I ran out of time to add in the rest of the details which I am greatly disappointed in.

I need to get something basic down quickly and work faster next time.

10) I struggled with the lunch box's proportions greatly. I had to keep looking at the real life set and redrawing it on my page until it was satisfactory. 

11) I have learned that in drawing a still life, proportions and shadows are extremely important in creating a life-like piece. 

Progression Of A chocolate Bar

1) Value is extremely important in any real-life drawing because that is what gives your piece value and depth which makes it more realistic. 

2) Since I did not finish this all at one time, each time I retrieved my chocolate bar it looked different having new creases and shadows. I tried to draw the outlines if everything for each panel the first day so that I wouldn't have to deal with new highlights and darks.

3) It was very important to me to have clean, crisp edges for my wrapper because the wrapper in real life had very defined edges and I wante d my drawing to look as much like the real thing as I could make it.

4) My interpretation of texture, a smooth bar and a crinkled wrapper, guided how I went about drawing my piece. I worked to create smooth, albeit not always very successfully, transitions in value in the bar itself and quick, defined transitions in the wrapper. Without the differentiation, it would be difficult to tell the two aspects of the piece apart 

5) If I could draw this differently, I would push the darks more, create more defined creases, and create ever smoother and more crinkled textures where they apply. I learned that you must use your values carefully to capture the 3 dimensional part of the piece and create smooth transitions to have a cohesive drawing. 

Shading shapes

Here I started learning the basics of how to use a light source to give objects depth and make them seem three dimensional.  I need to make sure to use all of my values; use really light lights and really dark darks with soft and subtle transitions in-between.

Composition sketches for still life

Here are 8 small basic sketches of our still life setup in an attempt to figure out which once I will enlarge and draw in detail for the final.

Fabric Drawing

1. I feel like my piece shows a variety of values with bright highlights and using the paper's color as my darkest dark. The middle section could use more variety in it's range if values, but the two end folds, I believe, show 9 values.

2. Practicing drawing the fabric several times before using several different materials and colored backgrounds allowed for me to study the fabrics texture carefully and figure out how I had to go about capturing it's shadows and highlights. I specifically liked using the white charcoal pencil which is why I used it for my final.

3. For transitions from light to dark, I had to press extremely hard to show a bright highlight and slowly release pressure as I created shadows throughout the folds. I then used my finger to blend the charcoal to give the piece a smoother and softer look.

4. My interpretation of texture is what allows me to capture it in my owl style. Because I wanted less sketchy lines and smooth transitions I worked to create a soft piece by blending and fading my transitions. 

6. If I could recreate this piece I would work to add more detail to the middle section and make sure to add more of my 9 values to that particular section aswell. 

Shading: Ribon

In this practice, we used white prisma color pencils and white charcoal pencils to color in highlights rather than shading in the shadows. I prefer this style to using graphite pencil or dark charcoal to color in shadows. 

Contour: Backpack

This was the very first big project we did in drawing class. One continuous line makes up the entire piece. I was lucky enough to have this fun backpack as my model! I'm proud of how this piece turned out since I hadn't done contour before, but next time I need to make sure to add in all the details where there is empty space.

Contour:Hand drawings, modified and bling

These are my practice contour hand drawings. I'm particularly fond of the second one. However, I need to make sure to make the proportions more accurate next time and make the line continuous and smooth. 

Hand drawing

This was my first attempt at shading in drawing class. My proportions seem fair, however I need to make my lines stronger and the shading smoother in it's transitions. I also need to make sure I fully shade the palm. 

Contour:Room draft

This was my attempt of a contour drawing of our art classroom. (I wasn't able to get much dine on it) I need to make sure to adjust the angles as I draw horizontally according to where I am sitting. I also need to make my lines smooth and clean. The proportions also need a bit of work for this to look better.

Contour:Final room contour drawing

1) For the most part my line is very fluid. There are a few points where dark little dots can be seen where I hesitated trying to figure out my next move but for the most part it is very smooth and not very sketchy. 

2) My practice contour line room drawing and the back pack contour drawing helped me better understand how to pay attention to details and when to get to them.

3) An outline drawing just has basic shapes and no details whereas the room contour has details. 

4) My interpretation of line is normally very sketchy. However for the contour drawing, we are supposed to use fluid lines so I worked to make my lines smooth.

6) I learned how to work in small areas at a time and to use my lines to create perspective. If I could recreate this piece I would fix the table on the left and make it look cohesive to the piece. 

Homework: Contour drawing of a plant

For this drawing, I drew a contour with branches coming down in the fore ground and full trees in the back with the house on the property. I did this drawing based off of my neighbor's yard because I found their weeping willow to be absolutely beautiful.

Final Critique

My absolute favorite project so far is the grey scale ribcage painting I am close to finishing. It's quite different from anything I've ever done. However, I do think that it needs more highlighting to contrast the ribs from the background especially since everything is in shades of grey.
My least successful art project has to be the glass mirror sculpture I was working on. I need to work on creating a sound structure and then it will be perfectly alright. Hopefully I will be able to fix both if these pieces so that their original design can shine through!