Up Close and Personal! Finished Piece

          The theme for this project was 'Up close and Personal'. There were many ways to stretch this topic. Some people took it literal and made a personal piece, but others chose to use the 'Up' of part of the theme. I chose to use the 'Up' and use a balloon floating above a city. We also had to make our main object stand out more than the things around it. I chose to make the balloon bigger than everything else and I made it look like it was floating away from the city below it. I used oil pastels for the balloon so that I could do more layering than anything else. But I used chalk pastel for the background so that I could use my finger to blend the colors together because I wanted it to look more like a sunset. For the buildings, I used color pencil for the silver to make it bright, but I used chalk pastel for the shadows so that I could blend it better.

         I took two risks with this project. The first one was with the 3D buildings. This was a risk because I didn't know if they were actually turn out like I wanted them to. I ended up cutting some of them off because they didn't look right at the bottom. The second risk I took was with the background. I originally planned to have the background completely black, but it looked really plan with just black. So I decided to make it look like the sun was behind the balloon and make everything else look like the sun was setting. I made it go from yellow to a red - purple. The purple at the bottom of the picture was to symbolize the buildings casting a shadow over the objects on the ground.

          

Up Close and Personal In Progress

Whats the Point? Finished Piece

 

      In this project, the theme was 'Whats the Point?'. We had to come up with some solutions that had to do with this theme. Some of my themes were a needle, the point of a pen, an anchor and a crystal. I picked the anchor because while I was doing my thumbnail, I thought it was the easiest one to shade and have a lot of contrast. I showed contrast by shading the anchor in different places to show that there was a light source. Another thing I did was that I left the rope completely white so that it would show up better on the dark anchor. The last thing I did was color the background completely black so that everything else would stand out. 

    While shading the anchor, I used charcoal pieces and charcoal pencils. I chose these mediums because they were the easiest to shade and blend with. I also chose charcoal because I had already used the other mediums before and I wanted to use something that I hadn't used before. 

     I used some techniques that I've never used before while I was shading in the anchor. I took a paper towel and used it to blend in the charcoal better so that there were cleaner blends. It made the anchor look like it actually had real shadows. I really liked this 'What's the Point?' project because we had to make some contrast to make the object stand out more. This way you would be able to look at that object right when you saw the picture. All and all I think this project turned out very well.

Whats the Point? In progress

  

Clay Tile

Landscape Painting

          While doing the drawing of the monopoly game board I had to think about many things such as perspective, the vanishing points, value and the horizon line. My completed drawing was successful because I included shadows with my color pencils. I also had to blend in the color pencils because it made it look more realistic. But before I even started using color pencil, I had to do washes of watercolor over my drawing. After I did this, I overlapped the watercolor with color pencil. The only thing that didn't work with this project was the orange in the background. I should've gradually make the orange light. If I could do my project over again, this is what I would change. I learned that you need to plan very well before you even start watercolors or color pencils.  The most difficult part of the project was adding in the highlights on the game board.