Project 7 - Independent #2 - "Gears 2"

Project 5 - Woven Paintings - "The Fountain"

The prompt for this project was to take an image, whether you were the photographer or not, make two identical paintings of opposing color schemes, and then weave the two paintings together. Like the last project, I got my hopes up from the very beginning because I thought I had an awesome and unique idea that would turn out great. However, I was disappointed when I realized that my idea would not work after all. My original idea was to make the two paintings mirror images of each other instead of being identical. My reasoning behind thinking this idea would work was that since the woman's body was curved and met up at her head and everything else was either greenery or part of a fountain, it would turn out looking cool. My plan was to make the colors of the woman's dress, skin, and hair the same on both paintings so that when I wove them, hopefully the onlooker would be able to tell what I had done. After realizing that this would most likely just look confusing, I decided to just weave one of the watercolor paintings with the picture I had printed out of the fountain that I had used for reference. I also found this to be a problem because the watercolor paper I used to paint on was much thicker than the printer paper that was used to print the actual picture of the fountain on. I then had the idea of scanning the other painting, flipping it, printing it in color, and then weaving that with the same printed picture. This did turn out to be a lot easier to weave, but for some reason, when the painting was scanned, something happened with the colors, as if the ink in the printer did not have the same color as was on the painting. After finally weaving the two printed papers, I had to go in with more watercolor to fix the colors a bit. I then took a sharpie marker and outlined the black and white parts of the paper that was showing and put gloss medium and varnish on top to make it glossy and get it to look more complete than it did before. Again, like the last project, I was not as satisfied with the end result as I would have liked to have been, but since this is the first time I have used this technique, I know that if I ever do this again, it will only get better.

P.S. Here is the original picture and one of the watercolor paintings which I am proud of:

Project 4 - Image Transfer On Textured Paint - "Hey, I Think You Have Birds In Your Hair."

Although I was very excited to start this project, the end result did not live up to my expectations. Acrylic paint and india ink were used.

Project 3 - Quick Charcoal Drawing on Masonite - "Layers"

I can only say I somewhat love this piece. I feel as if because I only spent one class period on the charcoal drawing it isn't worthy enough for me to say that it is the most successful composition I have done while having Brandt as a teacher. I have never been able to make a good piece of art in a short amount of time in my opinion. However, that was sort of the point of the project, to make a compostion quickly, as in making quick marks. Without time being taken into consideration, I do love it because everything seemed to make itself work. Although it appears as if I purposely spray painted the brick color in strategic areas or purposely made the brick column at the top slanted to help the drawing flow, I really didn't. They were both just "happy accidents", which is a continuing theme amongst my successful pieces.

Project 2 - Stick Drawing - "Book Man"

I'm not really pleased with the end-result of this project, most likely due to the fact that it was my second attempt at using a stick to draw with india ink. Despite that, I am somewhat pleased with some of the elements in the drawing and am really interested in exploring the technique further so that I can be happy with the end-result.

2010-2011: Project 1 - (Fake) Erasure - "Childhood"

After finally completing this piece, I still can not decide if it was successful or not. I wish i could have made the tires appear more realistic. As well, I wish I could have blended the background a lot better. I do however love the way the actual tricycle turned out. I also love the way my painting conveys the message I wanted to send, at least to me.

Gray on Gold

Overall, I am satisfied with the way this piece turned out. The mediums used were acrylics for the grayscale paintings and spraypaint for the background. The prompt for this piece was to create a pattern with the casted shadow of any given object. I misinterpreted the original intentions of this prompt and instead tried to create a pattern by repeating the casted shadow over and over again. Despite this, I like the way the pattern created by repeating the casted shadow of the subject turned out. I think the best thing about this was the contrast between the gold and grey tones.

Cardboard as a Class

This is our most recent project - cardboard relief. Instead of doing individual projects, the entire class collaborated by taking individual squares and putting them all together to make a very interesting mosaic. The two squares outlined in red are the two squares that I designed. I wish I could have added more detail to my squares, which is what I would do if we were given more time. My favorite part of the piece is the water tower on the right. Erin, Cynthia-Rae, and whoever else had a part in the water tower did a fantastic job.

Precisionism - My Best Piece Yet

For this assignment we had to illustrate the concept of precisionism by using industrial-looking subjects. I chose 3 separate pictures to do my piece, although each picture is just a different angle of the same radio tower. I am very pleased with how this turned out, especially because I spent a lot of time just choosing the right color schemes for each individual piece, as well as the entire painting overall. I think what I like most about it is that I was able to make very detailed lines as well as have a progression of colors from left to right starting with more monochromatic, darker colors on the left, a mix of varied dark and bright colors in the middle, and bright pastel-ish colors on the right. I truly think this is my best painting, if not my best piece period, to date.

Inspired by Peter Max

This painting was supposed to be inspired by the work done by Peter Max. I really do not like how this turned out. While other students chose to do self-portraits, I wanted to take a risk and do an image transfer of an outdoor sculpture instead. Even though the original picture I had used was a nice photograph, it did not translate well for this project, mostly because it is hard to determine what the structure is unless you have seen the picture before. I also do not like the way this turned out because I think I could have done a much better job with the color scheme. Overall, this was definitely unsuccessful.

Below is the original picture.

Logo Project

For this project we were supposed to create a logo for a food company. My company's name was Zora Appliances. We did this assignment as 3 assignments in 1. The top line was supposed to be any 3 kitchen appliances, but simplified as much as possible, which I chose a pizza cutter, a pepper grinder, and a cutting board. The second line was intended to have one of the previously chosen kitchen utensils and then orient it in different ways to make it look interesting and give us ideas on what our final logo could look like. The final line is the finished logo. I do not like how my final logo turned out because it looks too dark in the upper right corner. If we had more time to do the project, I would have added some highlights to the letters in the upper right, as well as made the word 'appliances' bolder on the bottom to make it stand out more.

Mediums: Acrylic, Sharpie

This is the first project that we did this year. I liked doing this because the it was not just a plain painting on top of a canvas. It was different because of the textured paint which I think adds depth and interest to the piece. Overall I think I could have added a few more elements to this piece to make it successful. However, I love the colors I used in the background.

Mediums: Acrylic, Textured Paint

Patterned People.

This is my finished project for the pattern assignment that was due on March 5. My original medium was colored pencils, but since I wanted to add a unique touch to this piece, I decided to take a picture of my artwork and edit it in Photoshop. The three figures were the only elements that I did not use Photoshop to create or alter. The flowers in the center were drawn by hand, then were enhanced by using one of the electronic drawing tablets. The background was created solely using Photoshop. I think this project was successful because of the way the patterns were used to draw attention to the individual body parts of the three figures and the amount of space between the foreground elements and the background were used appropriately to create visual interest. I also think this was successful because of the lack of competition between the foreground and the background. The only thing I think I could do to improve this project would be to make the figures different sizes so that they do not compete for attention.

Illustration for "The Scream", A.K.A. Absolute Crud. This is only left on here to remind myself not to half-a** (more like 1/5-a**) something.

This is an illustration I submitted to the 2010 Comporium Terrific Tales Illustration Contest. I created this piece by using oil pastels for the background and cutting out shapes from a piece of paper I painted various colors on. I dislike the fact that the top left corner has open space and was not effectively used. Otherwise, I like this piece because of the ambiguity left by having the faces of the young girl on the left and two women on the right be blank.