Scratchboard

For my scratch board piece I 

1. For my scratch board piece I decided to draw my favorite animal, a fox. In this scene the fox is galloping through the snow, which creates the movement, with trees visible in the background. I felt that snow would be a lot less overwhelming then the texture of a bunch of grass around the fox. 

2. The two major things in the picture are the fox and the background trees and that's where I had to make the texture count. For the fox I layered fur adding more on some of the edges and at the tail to emphasize a highlight and create depth. And as for the trees I made a few thick marks in the wood on each and then filled them in with non-straight lines to give the illusion of a wood grain. 

3. To make the piece look balanced I put an object with a lot of texture in the front and some in the background. The fox catches your eye first and then it transitions to the trees. I didn't do a dramatic middle ground around the fox because I didn't want to take away from the fox and have too much texture going on.

4. Movement is implied through the fox. I drew the legs to look like they were galloping vs. standing still. You can also tell the fox has been moving because of the foot prints trailing behind in the snow.

5. I feel like the piece could be improved by adding more to the ground around the fox and maybe a different landscape and then putting something in the sky behind the trees. I was a little afraid to go big and create something with a lot of texture because I tend to do artwork that is very light and doesn't have a ton of contrast. If I had branched out and added more objects with texture I think the piece could've turned out a lot better.

6. Most of the shading is within the fox. I shaded the body and legs and tail according to their shapes keeping mind where the highlights and shadows would hit. I shaded more where there's most hair/longer hair to make it look more layered too. The slopes of snow are also shaded to create the shape and it fades out as it hits flat land.

Self Portrait

The style of this piece I guess could be classified under "zombie" but I was going for a look of deterioration. I wanted the face to look like it was deteriorating and skin was breaking off. I also wanted to create a somber aesthetic about the piece. To make the piece gloomy I used pencils as my medium making it black and white and made her grab her face like shes feeling for where her skin went. As for the skin I had to add depth to create the illusion that what you saw was actually underneath the skin where it had broken off. Around the sides of the skinless patches I shaded darker so it looks as if the skin is peeling up on the edges. For the rest of the face I shaded according to the shapes of my features. For example my cheekbones are high up so I shaded higher up on the side of my face. It's hard to tell in this picture but above the eyebrows I shaded in creases on my skin to add to the more worried facial expression I was going for. I think my piece turned out pretty well but there's definitely a lot I could work on. I'd like to get better at shading the face to create its shape, making more realistic looking hair and drawing hands. I'm not gonna be too hard on myself though because it was my first portrait and I shouldn't expect it to look just like me. I know my eyes and nose and mouths and such will get better with practice and same with the hair. Everything gets better with practice!! My favorite part about the piece is the concept of deterioration I think it can be interpreted in many ways and is very metaphorical.

Skull Drawing

This assignment I think helped me better understand exactly where on the face the facial features go. It was very helpful having the shape of a head already laid out for me because not only was I figuring out where the features fit but also trying to understand the proportions of everything. I've discovered that hair is very hard to draw and getting the shapes of the person's features correct is hard.  Looking at the picture on my screen now I see I could've maybe done the eyes a little larger and the lips look crooked. Overall it was good practice.

Opacity Project

1. Overall I don't think my piece came out as well as it should've. Chalk was very challenging for me and I had difficulty blending and making certain lines well defined. Some of the bottles blend together making it hard to tell that they overlap. If I understood how to work with chalk and overlap what I'm drawing I could've produced a better quality piece.

2. The soda cans, soup can, milk carton, ect. are what make the piece look  more like the inside of a recycling bin. By putting cans and such underneath my clear glass and plastic bottles I incorporate opacity and make the items look layered and staggered like in a recycling bin.

3. The colors I chose were based on the colors of common recyclables such as popular soda brand. There are a lot of greens, blue, orange, brown and of course white for the opaque bottles. I tried to spread the colors out to create contrast within the recycling bin.

4. Like I said before I spread out the colors I used and put dark or bold colors next to the light and bland colors. I also tried to put different type of bottles or items around each other to create contrast through what was in the bin.

5. I had trouble adding shadows because it came to a point where no matter how many times I went over the paper with chalk no more color would come off on the paper. The shadows I put on the bottom silver of the soda cans made them look more three-dimensional. Also the shadows on the soda bottles and beer bottle made their shapes more round. The highlights on the plastic bottles created the plastic and 3-D look.

6. I chose the dark green background because that is the color of recycling bins and it's a dark contrasting color that would make the objects pop more.

7. After this project I get why it's important to understand the media and how to use it to create a successful piece because if you don't you can't achieve a realistic look. You have to know how to layer and blend and not add to much color at first. I think practice and experimentation is key in this situation.

8. I had trouble layering color and adding as much color as I wanted. For example you can still see brown paper in the background behind the green because the green stopped coming off on the paper after a certain amount of layers. Also I couldn't draw over an object with a different color, especially with white, because the colors just ended up blending and looking like one. If I understood how to layer chalk pastels my piece would've turned out a lot better.

Facial Features

For this exercise I learned how to draw and shade facial features to make them look realistic. To do an eye you need to make the eyeball look spherical by shading around the edges. You also need to shade under the eyelid to make it look like it's standing out over the eyeball. For the ears it's key to shade dark in the insides of the ear and light on the parts that stick out. Also to make the ear look round you need to shade around the outside edges. To draw lips you first need to draw the outline of them then draw what looks like hair coming out either side of the middle line. After you do that you can shade making the area around the middle line and edges darkest (depends on where the light source is) and the middle of each lip lightest. For the nose you first draw the outline of the nostrils and bottom of nose then you can begin shading. To form the rest of the nose such as the bridge you just shade according to wear the light source hits. This exercise has reminded me that shading is necessary to make something look realistic.

Smarties

This assignment had to do with opacity and learning how to create it on paper. Everyone was given a smarties and the task of drawing it in chalk. Personally I don't like using chalk because I find it hard to layer and work with without all the colors blending together or smudging. The individual smarties inside the wrapper had to have value to create a three dimensional look. The wrapper itself wasn't too hard to draw but figuring out how to create all the folds and twists I saw on my smarties was challenging at times. Drawing highlights on the wrapper over the candies was also challenging because the white wouldn't show up in some spots. Overall I enjoyed this project because I gained practice with creating opacity which is an important element in making a piece look realistic. I think my piece could have come out a little better if I had more practice with chalk but it's a good start.

M&M's

For this project we used Prismacolors to draw a candy wrapper of choice. I chose a brown M&M wrapper but drew it in yellow. This project was a challenge for me because I couldn't get the shading and the creases in the wrapper right. The highlights look like random lines and the shaded regions didn't create the depth I was looking for. The M&M is the only part of the wrapper I like. If I were to do this project over again I would take more time figuring out how to draw folds and creases in a wrapper especially because I struggled with the same thing for the fabric drawing.