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.