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!

Juxtaposition of Textures

I came up with the idea for this from my like for rain in the fall. I love how the leaves look and how everything smells and how everything looks like it's painted in watercolor. So I decided to take that idea and use it to paint leaves as if they were dripping down from the tree like water droplets rather than holding the typical shape given to leaves.

Translucent

This piece, done in broken glass shards, is representative for how someone can feel when they are depressed or grieving. The idea is that the glass figure is the other side of a mirror which actually shows how we feel inside. The broken and hollow figure represents just those characteristics, brokenness and emptiness.

Broken Beauty

I have recently been working in creating a glass sculpture made of colored broken glass. The idea of this sculpture is to show what someone's emotions would look like if someone felt broken and empty inside. I have finally finished cutting the glass and will hopefully be gluing the pieces Monday. During cutting the glass I did end up with a few cuts but I cannot wait to finish this project.

Is art without meaning decoration?

I don't know that art ever contains absolutely no meaning. Just as "one man's trash is another man's treasure", one person may find meaning in a simple piece of art that the artist maybe did not see. For example, in the article the author displayed a picture of underwater wall art for a child's room as " decoration". While this type of art may mean very little to adults it can mean an entirely different world to a child. Or it could simply bring joy to someone who enjoys the ocean and recalls fond memories because of it. Art simply cannot contain no meaning whatsoever, I can't believe it. One person's point of view on a piece cannot be universally accepted by the whole as fact when different people see different things. I have a painting in my room given to me by a dear friend that says "Faith, trust, and pixie dust". To some people it is just a decoration. To me, it reminds me of the person who cared enough for me to put time and effort into creating something beautiful for me while the contents of the painting remind me of the happy memories I have of watching Peter Pan and feeling invincible! So as you can see, art is in the eye of the beholder.

Art 1 Portfolio

2) This project was extremely difficult to complete. The complex lines and values are very preside aswell as giving the drawing movement and texture. I had to work on drawing realistic faces in order to understand how to draw her face well. Also, I had to work extremely hard on shading so that the shadows contrasted against the white dress, but if I messed up, it would not be something easily covered up. Overall, this was definitely my most challenging. 

4) This new way of teaching is really helpful to artists. Some artworks take lots of planning but don't take nearly as long to execute, such as my hand below proves. Other things, such as the wedding dress picture, take an enormous amount of time to plan and even longer to complete due to all of its finite detail. Thankfully, I didn't have any deadlines rushing me so I was able to work longer on things that needed to be worked longer on, and also if I completed something early to work on something else after. 

2) I also had to overcome obstacles in this peice of artwork. It is very stylized so I had to work very hard to make this actually look like the type of art it is modeled after. I had to emphasize certain points and had to make the charecter bold. I was eventually able to make it look anime and I happy with the results.

1) Honestly, the hand I did for the project I think is my best work, favorite rather. The assignment was to draw a picture of our hand but to also make it unique.  After thinking about what to do for this project, I thought I should do something to it that I do all the time on my hand, which is draw fake tattoos on it. All of the tattoos except one have to do with my faith as well which is what inspired the different tats. I used a smudged tool to create shadow and shape to my hand and I use smaller lines for the wrinkles in my hand. I created value by using different line types and shading to make the hand come alive. Also, I made the tattoos extremely bold so that the message and kind of happiness created from the messages in the different words was emphasized and also contrasted from the more real life hand.

3) This drawing demonstrates the growth I'be had in drawing hands and realistic artwork. Older sketches looked more like blobs with an undefined shape. This drawing is very presise and accurate to how my hand actually looks. The form has improved and so has the value within the drawing. So, as you can see, I have definitely improved from when I first started.