Final Reflection:
Taking Art 4 has encouraged me to try new mediums and has helped me learn more in depth what art looks like. Going into this class I was worried about what kinds of project we would be doing and how I would be able to accomplish them, only having taken Art 1 and 2. Even after the first project I still kind of had this worry but as the semester went on I started to get into more of a groove with this class and I began to see improvement in my artwork. Starting the class I barely knew how to shade correctly or show perspective in a piece but, through doing many practices in my sketchbook, working with shading with different mediums I began to get stronger with this and now it comes easy. As far as perspective I have already seen improvement with this from my popcorn machine, which doesn't show depth of the machine as much as I'd wanted it to, to my ice cream cone tray which I feel I did a better job in achieving the right perspective.
One project that was not as successful as I'd wanted it to be was my reflective project. I wasn't sure how to make my face look realistic in this piece and my dimensions were somewhat off in this photo. I tried to make an image of myself in the Bahamas with ocean behind me and in my snorkel goggles is a reflection of the house my work team and I fixed on a trip there. I feel that this piece didn't do the best job illustrating this image. I think I could have shaded better and used more layers to accomplish a more complete look. I also believe I should've done more practice with how to make waves and the ocean in the background look realistic. I like the different colors incorporated into this piece but if I were to do it over I would've taken more time on it to make it more realistic.
One piece that challenged me that turned out to be very successful for me was my landscape piece. This image was also from my Bahamas trip. This was my first time ever using oil and that was a difficult part of the project, having to adjust to a new medium. I liked how smooth the paint went on the canvas and the look it gave, however I didn't like how long it took for the paint to dry. This piece was also one of my first landscape pieces and I think landscapes are now one of my strengths. My favorite part about this painting is the colors that I used in my leaves. I also like the clouds and how I used a dry brush to make them look realistic and fluffy.
Overall, Art 4 has been a helpful class and has prepared me for the next semester of AP art. I have worked with many different mediums and have discovered that I enjoy painting, oil painting more specifically, best and I will use this to my advantage as I begin my concentration. I have not only been encouraged by trying new mediums but also with the people around me in this class. Art 4 was a small class of only around 15 people and this made it easy to get close with people in the class and allowed me to bounce ideas with them and see what I still needed to add to pieces, or adjust on my piece. This class has challenged me in many different ways and I am excited to be challenged even more in the upcoming semester.
One project that was not as successful as I'd wanted it to be was my reflective project. I wasn't sure how to make my face look realistic in this piece and my dimensions were somewhat off in this photo. I tried to make an image of myself in the Bahamas with ocean behind me and in my snorkel goggles is a reflection of the house my work team and I fixed on a trip there. I feel that this piece didn't do the best job illustrating this image. I think I could have shaded better and used more layers to accomplish a more complete look. I also believe I should've done more practice with how to make waves and the ocean in the background look realistic. I like the different colors incorporated into this piece but if I were to do it over I would've taken more time on it to make it more realistic.
One piece that challenged me that turned out to be very successful for me was my landscape piece. This image was also from my Bahamas trip. This was my first time ever using oil and that was a difficult part of the project, having to adjust to a new medium. I liked how smooth the paint went on the canvas and the look it gave, however I didn't like how long it took for the paint to dry. This piece was also one of my first landscape pieces and I think landscapes are now one of my strengths. My favorite part about this painting is the colors that I used in my leaves. I also like the clouds and how I used a dry brush to make them look realistic and fluffy.
Overall, Art 4 has been a helpful class and has prepared me for the next semester of AP art. I have worked with many different mediums and have discovered that I enjoy painting, oil painting more specifically, best and I will use this to my advantage as I begin my concentration. I have not only been encouraged by trying new mediums but also with the people around me in this class. Art 4 was a small class of only around 15 people and this made it easy to get close with people in the class and allowed me to bounce ideas with them and see what I still needed to add to pieces, or adjust on my piece. This class has challenged me in many different ways and I am excited to be challenged even more in the upcoming semester.
Landscape:
I used oil pants for my landscape project. I'd never used oil pant before so this was a whole new medium for me. I really liked using the oil pants and liked how smooth it goes onto the canvas. I also like how it blends into the other colors. One thing that I dislike about using oil pants is how long it takes for them to dry. This is a medium that cannot be rushed and sometimes that makes it difficult to finish in class at a quick pace. My favorite part about this piece is my leaves and branches. I feel that I did a good job with adding different colors into the leaves as well as making the tree trunk look textures. One thing that I could've done better is made the trunks of the trees a little bit skinnier. I feel that they look a little wide for palm trees and that is something I'd change if I did the piece over again. I was very hesitant to do the shadows in the sand because I really am not used to doing shadows and they are so obscure and odd looking, even in the actual image. I think that my shadows really ended up making the picture look complete. In the slide show below the last two images I put in look totally different just because I added shadows around the base of the trees. Overall I think this is one of my best pieces and I am very happy with the way it turned out, especially for it being my first ever oil painting.
Ordinary to Extraordinary:
I chose to turn ice cream into pool balls for my ordinary to extraordinary project. I used acrylic paint and did this project on an 8x12 canvas. The hardest part about this piece was getting the perspective right for my ice cream cone tray. I spent a lot of time on this part of the piece and I think it turned out really good in the end. I also spent a decent amount of time, and was challenged by figuring out how to show texture in the ice cream cones and actually ice cream. I feel that I did a pretty good job on this as well because I watched several videos about how paint realistic ice cream. This project was a light and fun piece with lots of color and I am happy that I chose it for my project. My least favorite part of this project was the cones. I don't really like how they turned out as much because I feel that they look kind of unrealistic. If I could do this piece over I would have done the whole painting the beige color that I chose for the background and then painted the tray and ice cream, rather than trying to do the background around the main pieces of the painting.
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Interior Spaces:
My interior spaces piece was done with colored pencil. I chose this medium because it is the easiest for me to work with and with the wide variety of shades in the popcorn machine I was able portray them with the many colors of prisma. At first it was really hard for me to get the depth using the colored pencils so I began to work on the background and then came back and made the darks darker and the lights lighter. I chose to do a popcorn machine because we own one at our house and it's something that my family snacks on a lot. I chose a light and fun background to bring more color to the piece and to help in showing what the piece was, considering some people may not know what a popcorn machine looks like. Overall I am very happy with my machine. I added lots of color to help with the perspective of the machine and to add depth but I feel like I could've done a little bit of a better job with the perspective of this piece, especially in the beginning.
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Self Portrait:
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For this project painted a self portrait with acrylic paint. This was my first painting and my first portrait. First we learned from different videos and from Mrs. Rossi how to construct the facial features. These were not easy, especially the nose but with time and practice I feel like I got better with them. We also did practice on skin tones by taking clips of different tones out of magazines and then using primary colors to make the skin tone. I chose this picture because it makes me look happy and I was at the beach at one of our good friends weddings so it brings good memories. In order to do this piece precisely, I looked at my reference picture and sketched in pencil on my canvas before painting. I then did an underpainting which helped when doing the lights and darks of my final piece. I feel like because this was my first portrait I would definitely have changed the way I did somethings if I were to do it over again. For instance, I worked on the background first, I feel like this messed up my hair and limited me. Next time I will work from the inside out. One of the main challenges I had was the facial features, especially the nose. I feel like I still have a lot of work to go with my piece and I certainly have room to grow but overall, for this being my first painting I feel like I did have some strengths in it. Placing my facial features in the right positions I feel like was one of my strengths. I used the eye to measure where most of my facial features went which made this process super smooth.
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Reflective Project:
Final Piece: |
This project was about finding things in my life that are reflective of what I enjoy doing as well as objects that actually reflect. I chose to do myself snorkeling underwater because this summer I took a mission trip to the Bahamas and we snorkeled a lot there. In the goggles I decided to fleet one of the houses that we helped to rebuilt while on our trip. This trip taught me to care for others before myself and I wanted to bring that into my art piece.
The medium I used for this project was prisma colors which are not my favorite to use. I find that it is hard for me to shade correctly with prisma. I learned that I need to do lots of layers and be patient while trying to shade certain areas. For my the hardest part was the water. I think that's the main thing that I could do better if I redid this project. My water does not look very realistic like I wanted it to. I also feel like my goggles need to be bigger to make my piece more realistic. Overall for this being our first project of the year I feel like it turned out okay but I look forward to other prisma projects later in the year to improve upon my skills. |
I practiced using colored pencil by drawing an avocado. I used highlights in the middle and to the left of my avocado to show where the majority of the light hit the object. I shaded under the avocado pit in order to make it stick out and look more realistic. I also darkened underneath the whole avocado to show the shadows. It was kind of hard to show shadows on the black paper.
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