When Mrs. Rossi told us we were going to learn how to use oil paints I was REALLY excited. I love to paint, and I sort of feel like learning how to use oils makes you a "real" art student, whatever that means. It was sort of intimidating at first, since oils are so different from acrylic and watercolor, but I found that I really liked them. I liked how easily I could blend the colors with my brushes on the canvas itself, and I didn't have to worry about the paint drying in a few seconds. The palette knife painting scared me a little bit though. As someone who loves to blend my colors together, the idea of using only a palette knife was uncharted territory. I found that I really really enjoyed it though, I liked how you could layer the paint on thick and then add lighter colors and still blend them together. The texture on my palette knife painting turned out so cool, and it was unlike anything I'd painted before. It just goes to show how stepping outside your comfort zone can pay off in the end. I'm really looking forward to using oils on a bigger scale painting, and playing around more with new techniques in the future.
0 Comments
For our first project in Art 4, we were given the task of drawing something in Prismacolor Pencils that had reflective qualities both literally and personally. I decided to reflect the trees in my backyard in a mug of tea. I was initially drawn to this idea because tea and coffee are things that always remind me of relaxation and my favorite time of year, Autumn. I also liked the idea because it gave me an opportunity to work on my use of color in objects that usually don't seem to have color in them. For example, the picture I took originally had a white mug in it, but the mug I drew is very much not white. I really liked using colors that you wouldn't typically see in a white mug such as blues, purples and browns. I also had to layer a bunch of colors for the leaves. Most of the leaves were very orange and yellow, but some had to have reds and even purples added in to them. I think the leaves are my least favorited part of this piece mostly because I think they still look unfinished, but it just gives me something to work more on and perfect. The background of this piece wasn't originally going to be wood, it was going to be the dirt background of my original picture. As I got further into the project, however, I decided that I was not feeling the idea of this giant grey dirt background, so I took a picture of the wood on my back porch and used that instead. I also decided to add blues and purples into the wood to sort of tie together the colors of the leaves, mug and wood. Overall, I am really pleased with how the colors of the whole piece look. The hardest part of this drawing for me was definitely the reflection in the mug. I had absolutely no idea what I was getting myself into when I took this picture. There were so many little details in the leaves to draw, and I had to make sure the edges were still crisp enough to look like leaves and not just a blob of brown color. I spent quite a bit of time on it, and had to go back in and darken each part of the trees just to make sure they didn't look weird. Although it was a big challenge, I'm glad I chose it because I definitely feel like I grew as an artist and deepened my understanding for drawing. Something that helped me a lot through the process of this project was asking for advice and tips from the other students at my table. The great thing about having friends in your art class is that they will tell it like it is and not be afraid to tell you if something about your drawing looks off. You can't be shy about asking for help in a class like Art 4 because sometimes you can be too close to the picture to see whats actually going on. For example, when I started drawing my final piece there was something VERY off about the mug, but I wasn't sure about what it was. I asked my friend who sits at my table and she immediately helped me see that the shadows in the mug handle were wrong. If I hadn't asked her for advice I might not have seen it until it was too late. I would say that overall this project was a success, and something I am very proud of. I'm super excited to see what else this class brings, and can't wait to grow more as an artist. These pictures show you a little bit of my planning process for our first project in Art 4, the representational reflection project. I started by listing a bunch of different ideas for the project, and once I'd narrowed it down to two, I drew three (very rough) compositional sketches for each (left). The first idea was to reflect some of my knitting needles in my grandma's old candy jar, and the other was to reflect some trees in a mug of tea or coffee. I found that I really liked the idea of reflecting the trees of my backyard in a mug of tea, so I decided to do a larger, full color sketch for that idea (right). I also feel like this is more of a representation of me since the tea with the leaves and trees remind me of fall, my favorite season.
|
A Little InfoThis page is all of my art from Art Four, which I took my junior year of high school. The main goal of this class was to begin collecting pieces that I can potentially add to my AP Portfolio at the end of Senior year. During this class I created some of my favorite pieces, and also one of my least favorite (I'm looking at you, adirondack chair painting). I'll be retaking this class in the fall of senior year to add more pieces to learn and grow even more, and create more potential portfolio pieces. Archives
January 2017
Categories |