Victory Lies in Preparation, Pencil, Paper, Colored pencils, Chalk Pastel.
My artwork depicts one of my favorite characters from one of my favorite game franchises, Assassin's Creed. I recently began playing the first game, and it reminded me of just how awesome and cool the main character, Altaïr, really is. A few of the challenges that I faced when creating the piece were making sure to correctly proportion the head to the rest of the body, and to give definition to the rest of the body. I also struggled with finding the right colors for the piece, and trying to keep the lines I drew from smudging. When creating the piece, I imagined the scene that the character was standing in was one where he was slightly looking up, so that I could draw the bottom of his face and chin slightly protruding from his hood. I also wanted to make the nose more prominent, trying to get the features racially correct. It had surprised me just how well the original had turned out. I'm not very good at drawing humanoid figures, so when this turned out to be really nice, I was excited. I also became aware of the fact that with a plain white background, the piece looked kind of boring, so I used the black chalk pastel to shade in the back, giving it a bit of depth. |
The Girl With The Tattoo, Pencil, Paper, Colored pencil
I commissioned this piece as an entry for my school's "March Art Madness" competition. I know my skill set: good with paper and pencil, unskilled in everything else. So, I did another thing, almost exactly like Pipe Dream. I went online for a reference, and when I found it, I began drawing. The original photo was black and white, and the girl was wearing a black dress. In my rendition, there's color. The girl is wearing a multicolored dress, has red lips, blue eyes (unnoticeable in the photo here), auburn hair, and a signature blue treble clef tattoo. When I made it, I kept in mind the idea of what would impress people. For instance, I figured out that some people are taken by drawn art versus computer design because of the skill it takes to draw; I also know that having color of some kind can make a picture look less boring (however, if I had known anything about shading, the picture would have looked a bit less two dimensional). I also implemented the same technique with the hair design, making the hair on the top of her head seem like it was flowing down to all sides. Finding the subject for the photo was somewhat of an oddity: as I was looking through the endless pages of Google Images, I was being drawn to one specific picture. I have no idea why I chose it, other than what I had seen in that photo was the perfect muse. I'm beginning to wonder what other kinds of techniques and pictures I can try, because I have a fascination with paper and pencil. It's just so easy. And I hope to one day have the ability to actually draw hands! Because, even though I see them every day, and study them as much as I can, I have no idea how to draw them proportionally to the person. |
Mosaic WIP (Work in Progress), Paper and glue
With this piece, all I have are the first few rings. I plan on making more of them out of the colors that I have underneath the mosaic, and making them with even more uncommon designs instead of the normal cube design. I got the inspiration for this from my shower curtain, which has a mosaic pattern. I've always thought that mosaics were pretty cool, because you're taking hundreds, sometimes thousands, or maybe even millions of tiny little pieces and assembling them into much bigger pictures. I enjoy the time and effort that must be spent on creating these, because it is calm and peaceful. It allows me to reflect on what I am feeling at the time, and even work through the problems that are causing these feelings. A few of the challenges that come with doing a mosaic out of paper is messing with the glue and getting the paper cut in the right way to fit in the pattern. |
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Unnamed, Pencil and Paper
I am not sure why I decided to draw this. One day, I just felt...I don't know, lonely? Like, you can feel lonely without actually being alone. And I decided to convey that in a way that looks like it. A lone sailboat on the open water at night. No other boats out. No city lights. Just the moon, the stars, and the water. The reason why the boat and moon are drawn with shapes instead of being one whole piece is because I was trying to prove something to myself; I wanted to show myself that I could make something recognizable out of basic shapes. An artwork that influenced my piece is a pointillism piece that another student in my class is working on. I saw how she had them arranged into shapes, looking like an umbrella. My points are only stars, seemingly put at random. This week I actually drew and defined what parts I want and where I want them. Later on, I may either add more detail or begin to color my piece. I may just leave it as a black and white. |
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#Gamers, Paper & pencil, Colored Pencil, Computer Aided Design
I got really bored one day and decided to search Pinterest for ideas of what to draw. I kept scrolling down, not satisfied with what I was seeing, until I saw something that made me think. It was an idea that said to "Draw an English muffin," and in the picture, there had been a muffin with a handlebar mustache wearing a monocle. It had sparked an idea that I had had a couple of months ago. I kept thinking about my gamertag for Xbox live. LavishChip463. I kept thinking about what the words meant: Lavish is to do something expensively or with expensive taste. A Chip is, depending on what country you're from, either a potato chip or a steak fry. I decided to go with the European chip, because I wanted my thing to have more definition. So, I drew the real-life version of my Xbox Live Gamertag. I started to get into the whole idea of creating real life versions of Gamertags, but only the ones that made any iota of sense. I then began asking my friends what their tags were: I have a friend who's tag is "XoticPineapple" and another who's tag is "candypickle18". So, I decided to draw them. It was hard deciding on how to present the drawings, and with the LavishChip463, it was hard finding a way to add the label. At first, I scanned my drawing into the computer using a copier, and then I had to figure out a way to make a label and add it to the picture, which had me using GiMP, which was very difficult as I had never used GiMP before. |
Tribal Mask, Paper Smache, red and black acrylic paint
I don't remember when I had wanted to make the mask. I just remember that I wanted to. Not to wear, but to hang or display in my room. I don't have any ties to any mask wearing peoples of the world, and the designs on the mask have no special meaning to me. They are just there to enhance the look of the mask and to make the white expanse a little less bland. However, I love the way that the dark, almost blood-like red contrasts against the stark white. It makes me feel as if the designs were made with blood, something I tried to capture. I also did not want to add any anthropomorphic features like a mouth, lips, defined nose, or eyebrows because I wanted it to be a little disconcerting to look at. You see a face that looks eerily similar to a person, but it does not share any other features besides a general shape. A few things that were difficult when forming the mask were using a model to form my mask to. I had to find and borrow a Styrofoam wig holder to use as a head. I then had to keep adding and molding the paper mash to the face, which had a whole slue of problems, like cracking when drying due to shrinkage, falling off of the face, and making the head heavier on one side, meaning that it was difficult to balance the head while the mask was drying. Mixing the paint was difficult too, because I had to find the right ratio of black to red. At first, I had mixed in too much black, turning the paint into a weird burgundy color, and not the crimson that I needed. I had to mix the paint for a second time, this time with less black, and managed to find my color. I am satisfied with my mask, and will now try to find a way to add some string or wire to the back of it so that I can hang it on the wall in my room. |
The Last Airbender Is Penguin Sledding, Paper and Pencil
I had recently found a show that I used to watch a long time ago called "Avatar: The Last Airbender." I had found the first season floating around Facebook, and had decided to save it so that I could watch it later. After finding the first season, I figured that I should look to see if they had the other two seasons somewhere. Lo and behold, I was correct, and I decided to save the other two as well to watch. I began to watch the first season a while back, and I noticed that the animators had drawn some very funny character designs when they had to make a few of the scenes, one of them being the time when Aang, the Avatar and the last person able to control the power of the air, is sledding down a hill on the back of a penguin (I know that, in the picture, it does not look like a normal penguin. The designers made their own versions of animals for the show.) I thought the face that he made was funny, and I decided to take a screenshot of the scene and save it for later use. This is not the only screenshot that I have taken, and there certainly will be more to follow later. A few of the things that I noticed that were going to be problems right away are that I am not very good with making colored images. My only success in that area was with Stitch. I had to figure out a way to use only black, white and grey to represent the different color values. Which gave rise to another issue: solid lines separating different areas of color. I couldn't let that happen, so I had to learn how to use blending tools to try and smudge the lighter and darker areas together, so that it transitioned between light and dark without having a solid line between them. My only other struggle was making the background, and trying to show the snow trailing behind Aang. This is another instance where a blending tool was used, and the lines between different values were smudged. |
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Air Force Graduation Cap Design 13 May 2019, Felt, Wax paper, Paint, Paint - Fabric Medium
Well friends, the time is almost upon us. Pretty soon, I will have the honor of having my name called, and walking across the stage to collect my diploma, and then continue to work towards and live the rest of my life. So, to commemorate that moment, I decided to add to my cap the logo of where I will be going right after high school: The United States Air Force. For a long time now, I have been speaking with a recruiter about what I can do after I graduate, where I can go, what opportunities that will be available to me. She said that, through the Air Force, I could literally do anything that I set my mind to. Now, after taking all of my tests, going through all of my inspections, and a very long wait for a waiver to be passed by the Surgeon General them self, I can happily say that, after graduation, I will be an official member of the USAF. For the actual decoration, it was a long and complicated bit of design process, cutting, adhering and painting. I had to cut out a 9 1/4" by 9 1/4" piece of card stock paper so that I could accurately cut out a piece of 9 1/4" by 9 1/4" piece of felt, the fabric that the design would go onto, and a piece of wax paper to use as my stencil. After the stencil was drawn onto the wax paper, I used an x-acto blade to carefully cut the design out, and then I ironed the wax paper onto the felt. Mrs. Niesen had doubts that the felt would work, and actually thought that it would melt, but because felt is not a synthetic fiber, but a wool product, the process with the iron worked amazingly. After ironing on the stencil, all there was left to do was paint the design. I mixed together some blue and white acrylic paint, which took quite some time to get the mixture correct, and then added some fabric medium that would allow the paint to stay on the fabric. I then began painting, and after a few days of finishing different sections and then going over it all with a second and even third coat, I finally finished the decoration. I will say, from personal experience, nothing is more satisfying than peeling off the wax paper from the felt. The way it just pulls away gives me goosebumps. |