Lets take it from the topWhere do I even begin? The start seems like a good idea. If you didn't know from the multiple times I have written it in earlier posts, I have already taken art 4 before. I'm glad that I had taken the class before because it gave me a chance to create a couple of good art pieces to use in my portfolio and to get an idea what to expect in workload for the AP class. I only knew of two people that would be taking AP art this year and it turns out that both of them didn't even have art 4 first period. I was so nervous that I wasn't going to know anybody and I wouldn't know where to sit. Thank goodness there were quite a few people that I knew, and I'm even happier that Mrs. Rossi assigned seats.
It took a couple days for everyone to warm up to each other and be able to talk to anyone about each other's art, but as soon as we did I felt a click. I knew that all the other kids in my class were talented and that they would push me to make my best art and be willing to give me helpful suggestions/ criticisms. I can say without a doubt that my first period is my absolute favorite class of the day, and it's not just because of the art. I'm so sad about the kids that aren't continuing to take AP next semester they are so awesome and talented and really should be taking AP. DON'T THINK Y'ALL WONT BE MISSED! Moving on to the actual art reflection of the post. None of the projects surprised me, but having done them all before helped me figure out what worked and what didn't. Probably my favorite piece of the semester was my first piece, the reflections project. If you still didn't know, I love to jump rope, but I didn't want to make all of my pieces related to that. Last year my reflection's piece was crystals I had won at a competition reflecting some of my jump ropes. That piece was a literal and symbolic rendition of reflection. I had never drawn glass before and had only used prismacolor pencils only one time before, so I think it was a little too ambitious. Learning my lesson from that piece I wanted to keep it simple enough, but mostly symbolic. Over the summer I had started to play around with prismacolors on toned paper, and I quickly grew to love it and never want use any other paper for colored pencils. I choose to reflect my love for hockey with a picture of hockey gear and a jersey of my favorite team. Starting the new school year definitely kept me motivated to finish this project and not rush through it. I hate to admit it, but the two mediums that I thought I would hate are probably my favorite now, prismacolor pencils and oil paints. Which brings me to my other favorite piece of the semester, the oil painted apples. I know, I know so many apples will I ever get away from them? The answer is no, they just happen to show up everywhere. I love the way that oils blend. I am prone to make many mistakes, especially when I paint, and oil paints help me hide them a lot better. As the semester went by I noticed that the ideas and compositions of pieces that I wasn't as thrilled about or were on the fence were the pieces I tended to do a lot better. For example, my self portrait. I'm not a big fan of selfies let alone them having dramatic lighting or an interesting angle. After playing around with the colors of the pictures and the compositions, Mrs. Rossi picked the one I liked the least. For starters I don't like self-portraits and two; I don't like the color pink, but guess what the majority of the piece was going to be: pink. Even with all the dread and dislike for the composition, the piece ended up being one of the best pieces I had done this semester. It's not my favorite, but clearly it's Mrs. Rossi's since it's the highest grade I had ever gotten in her class :). Same with this concentration idea of ... the art of canning (food), not what I wanted to do, but I like the piece more than other concentration idea's piece. I learned some new mediums of art, some I liked some not so much. I love watercolor since it's easy to manipulate, but turns out I really don't like gouache. On the other hand I learned I really like scratch board. My interior spaces was done in gouache originally, but I disliked it so much I went over the entire piece with watercolor pencils and markers. Safe to say that wasn't my best piece. Another epic fail of mine this semester was my terrible time management during the weeks around Thanksgiving. I'm not sure how it happened, but I was supposed to finish my landscape and pet portrait before Thanksgiving and that never happened. I managed to get the dog done shortly after Thanksgiving, but the landscape was a different story. I wanted to do it in oil so I knew where ever I started it would most likely be where I painted all of it. This is where it all went in a downhill spiral. I started to move onto the next piece at school while painting the landscape at home. The issue I ran into was that Mrs. Rossi wanted to see the piece in person but my painting was so wet I would have to wait for it dry to take it in, and vice versa going from school to home. I quickly realized I needed to get things back on track and my plan for next semester is to manage my time better. I feel like I have made this reflection one giant rant, so I'll just wrap this up. I think I have really improved as an artist over the last few years. I feel like if you look at my current pieces this semester that isn't so easy to see, but having taken the same class twice I was able to tell. I got a kick at looking at the difference in my oil painting practices that were a year apart. It's easy to see that I have improved over the past year. I know that my compositions are very different from the ones last year but I like that I can tell that the way I have interpreted things have changed as well. I'm excited for the next semester to come and see what art I have in store. I can't thank Mrs. Rossi enough for all her patience with me and helping me grow as an artist. Alright this rant is finally over!
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I'm a RebelYeah, so I was supposed to do the project nature turns mechanical, but I have already done that and I didn't like it one bit. I decided that I wasn't going to bother with doing the project at all this time. Instead I thought since I can't pick which concentration I wanted to I'll do one project from each. One of my ideas was telling the story of my dogs life. She is a hurricane Katrina puppy so I wanted to tell they story from there. The only issue I had is that she is a rescue puppy so she came in a truck to a local pet rescue so I never saw where she was. I know that she probably wasn't all by herself since she had a sister but I had an idea to convey a specific mood in the piece with the composition and color choice. Going to back to me not knowing where she came from means I don't have any reference pictures of her. This piece was going to be made by compiling a whole bunch of pictures together to get the composition I want. I had an idea of having my dog in a deserted street that is completely destroyed by hurricane Katrina. I did quite a few rough sketches to get an idea what this might look like, then I thought it would look good if she was sitting on a boat in a flooded street, but the angle I drew I didn't like and then scraped the whole idea instead. ProgressSince I didn't have any reference pictures I knew the piece was going to be more cartoon like than realistic. I didn't mention earlier in the post but I knew I wanted to do a watercolor piece so I based the project off the look of the watercolors. As I was fooling around with the sketch of the hurricane and the puppy I played around with different shades of brown and blue. I liked the color combo, so I thought I would limit my palette to blues, browns, and grays. By doing this I was hoping to create a tone of sadness/blueness if you will; to show the harshness of hurricane Katrina. Like the landscape project, this one fell into an awkward time period so it took a while to find times to work on the piece. I liked the initial sketch I had on the paper because it was more realistic. As I started painting I quickly learned how terrible the watercolors I was using were. Unlike the pieces I had done in the past with the watercolors I was looking for darker and solid colors since I wanted to embrace the cartoon look. That's when I noticed the chalkyness of watercolors and all the brushstrokes on the paper. This frustrated me and caused me to become reluctant to finishing the project. I decided to fill in the areas with solid colors rather than trying to add texture with harsher shadows. I still didn't like the way the piece was turning out, so I added the black lines to make things stand out more. The outlines made me like the piece better and help the piece come together.
PlanningI went to Seattle the summer between my freshman and sophomore year and went hiking at Mt. Rainier. I thought the mountain was absolutely beautiful and wanted to draw one of the pictures I took for my landscape last year. Somehow I didn't end up doing the mountains last year, so I thought now was a good time to revisit my pictures. I had Mrs. Rossi go through all the pictures I had and she narrowed it down to a few for me to choose from. I didn't think about the medium too much that I was going to use. Somehow, I don't know how Mrs. Rossi did it, but she got me to really like oil paints so if am going to paint on a canvas it's gonna be oil. ProgressSo, this piece kinda fell out of my mind very often. This time every year I start to get a little behind with all my work with all the holiday breaks and testing going on. I meant to paint this over thanksgiving break but that never happened. Once we got back from break we had to move on to the next project. As I moved on the next project I started this one at home. I decided I was going to try another technique of oil painting when doing this project. I wanted to lay down some base colors for each section and then add the details after that first layer dried. That idea didn't end up working out the way I planned and all my greens looked the same. The next problem I ran into with this piece is when Mrs. Rossi wanted to see it. I would go a week or so without painting the piece since I wanted the first layer to dry and then Mrs. Rossi wanted the piece at school so she could see it. If I ended up painting some of it at school then I had to keep it there till it was dry again and drag all of my other project home. The painting of this piece didn't take a long time but finding the time to paint it was the hardest part. FinalOverall I really like this piece, I like all the colors and how the go together. In the reference picture there is a whole lot more detail and normally I am one for detail, but I like more simplicity in my oil paintings. My landscape from last year actually was an oil paint as well and that time was only my second time using oil paints. I really struggle with brown tones and paint, not sure why I just do. My goal for this piece was to make it a redemption from my last landscape. To do this I tried to simplify the shapes to capture the essence of the picture without all of the detail. I feel like I did a pretty good job with that since the color of the mountain is so drastic from the rest of the piece it makes it stand out like it does in the reference picture. To redeem myself with the browns I pushed my self to add browns for the shading of the green areas even though there wasn't brown in the ref picture. I love the mountain itself the most, I like the shape the different shades used and the snow in it. The purple was a good idea for the shading since the background is blue. I do like the trees as well. What I could do better is the water. The water in the picture is flatter and browner, but I didn't want it to blend so much with the trees and grass. I think I could do a better job blending the water to the grass so the ground doesn't so flat. Other than that I really like how the piece turned out.
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January 2018
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