Concentration: Serpent in Shackles/Old Theater Bird

 I drew this digitally with my tablet originally, but I printed out the sketch and traced it onto my marker paper in pen and then colored it with a combination of marker-pen and colored pencils for the final image. There's a lot of things I don't like about this image, but one thing I do like is the contrast of the silvery blue and the brown. I learned from this piece that drawing chains is a pain in the butt.

• This was very simple to draw. After a sketching session with pencil, I just drew over it in pen and then shaded it with my marker-pens. I tossed and turned over the background, but in the end I am very pleased with my decision.

I am working from home now because of medical issues that caused me to have to be taken out of school, which was making my condition immensely worse. So I have to apologize for the quality of these pictures and the rest of my portfolio to come.

Concentration: Roaring to go

Everyone knows that cheetahs run fast. That's all I really have to say about my specific choice of subject for this piece, other than I think cheetahs are pretty. My concentration is going to be(I think) anthropomorphic animals. I like drawing them, what else is there to say? I was asked if I was anthropomorphizing animals for my concentration, and while technically that's exactly what I just said I'm doing, I like to think I'm finding the animal in human, not the human in animal. Anyway, this is colored pencil and pen. I have a digital version of this too that I like a lot better, but I think our concentrations are only supposed to be traditional media(so we can work on them in class and all), so I had better learn how to do pencil, crayon, brush, or marker.
I referenced this piece heavily. Here are my sources: woman and cheetah

Sketchbook Kitchen Objects: Space

The following are for another sketchbook assignment, this time we were to create a series of three drawings based on one theme using found kitchen objects as our reference. All are drawn in pencil. I had trouble with this but after setting up a few things and discovering they reminded me of a satellite, I concluded a good theme would be "Space". Another interesting note to make is that they are all drawn in the same location, but from slightly different angles(in reference to the table)

• Here I have a glass bottle and folded napkin on my kitchen table to form a rocket. I like this one the least because it seems too simple and doesn't really strike people as being a rocket when they see it.

•  This one is a bit more successful I think, meant to look like an alien's flying saucer. I made it out of two plates and a clear glass bowl. Everything was sitting on some books but I didn't draw them, to give it a flying effect.

•  And finally, my favorite, Sputnik. There are some obvious proportion mistakes on the fork and the shadows are a bit off in some places but I like it the best.

Spraypainted Stencils/Apple in a Bag

These two are very different in technique and design but are both assignments I took on with the Art3 Honors class at the beginning of the year.

• For this one I cut a triangle and a random floopy shape out of some black construction paper for stencils, and then took them outside and spray painted over them on a white sheet of paper. I didn't really have a goal for this, but I like how it turned out. It kind of looks like pieces of glass layered on top of each other to me.

• This was a drawing we did to practice stippling and cross-hatching shading techniques. We wee originally supposed to try only one style, but two worked well in some images and I wanted to try it. I learned that I really hate cross-hatching from this. I hated this a lot when I finished it, but looking at it now I see that I did partly succeed in some areas. I also notice that the apple looks a little oddly shaped. Overall... meh. 

No brush: Winter Wonderland

This painting is acrylics on canvas. I used a sponge instead of a brush, for the texture when stamped and the similarity to a brush when dragged. I love winter settings and the colors you can get from a sunset, so I found a landscape that combined both of these elements to be the reference for my painting. I found it difficult to separate the colors in my head so I could paint them in layers, so I took the photo into a digital art program (SAI) and separated the image into layers of similar colors. This made it a lot easier to paint, but I got to a point where I was happy with the painting even though I saw improvements I could make and ended up just calling it finished where it is now. Mixing the colors each time was also a pain and often I had to go over the entire painting again because I couldn't get the same color again. Though it could be improved greatly, I like it. It also got some compliments in class so that's good.

Creativity with Playing Cards

I do not like the subject of this piece. After seeing what others in my not-class did, I feel really unoriginal in that all I did was cut up the cards into a sort of interesting composition and then draw them. I feel like I should have been able to do something more creative with this assignment, but playing cards... are just playing cards, to me. I have trouble seeing them as anything else. Anyway, this is done with sharpie(red and black) and highlighter(yellow). I felt only markers would be able to provide the shockingly bold and bright colors I desired for this piece. I struggled a lot with the perspective and details of the cards, as I am bad at both. My eyes are either too close together or too far apart, because when I stared at the cards to draw them, I saw two images barely overlapping instead of the one, 3-D image. I probably need glasses. Ugh. I stippled some shading on this after I drew the cards, and I think it gives it a nice look. Though I don't like the subject of this drawing, I do like the results... it looks pretty, if nothing else.

No Brush: Fruit

 I used mostly a palette knife and a little bit of plastic knife to paint this piece, using colors I mixed myself out of only the primary colors; blue, yellow, and red. I believe I was told this was only for practice, but it turned out to be much more than that for me, and I consider this to be one of my all-time favorite pieces. I love the stained-glass feel and the warmth of the colors. I think I actually enjoyed using the spatula more than I would a brush! I don't think I originally intended for this to look like a smile, I just wanted to have varying colors that would not require me to paint a complex pattern. However, in the end, it does look like a very happy fruit monster, and I'm not unhappy that it does look that way. I LOVED this project, and hope to do more like it.