Reflection: Final Project and Then some

For the final project I tried to focus more answering a question I had for myself, why was I having such shitty luck? It just seemed like everything that could have gone wrong did, McMurphy's law. Just today I got locked outside my friends house and was stuck in the freezeing cold for 30 minutes ordering another Uber because my previous Uber was too afraid to go Downtown. Not only that, but I was 20 minutes late to my Microeconomics final exam. Yet, the real icing on the cake the that my dog is currently extremely sick out of the blue. So as I'm writing this I'm also running to go check on my little brother. Unfortunately though, this isn't the only day like this I've had this semester. So I guess this project for me was just a way for me to find something to blame. When coming up the idea for the project Ganesh immediately popped into my mind. I have several statues of him in my room for good luck and have even been to a few festivals and prayed to him. Ganesh is a Hindu Elephant God who removes lifes obstacles grants wisdom and good fortune. So I just kept thinking "maybe ganesh is tied up somewhere an that's why everything seems to go wrong.". That's how I decided I was going to make my own personal Ganesh and he was going to be imprisoned and that would explain my bad luck. For this project  used colored pencils, thread, beads and broken necklace chains. Beading Ganesh's crown piece proven to be much more time consuming and challenging then I thought. Ultimately I'm really happy about how my project turned out. I think it was a good choice to makes the Ganesh on black paper so the colors would pop. I also like that i put him in a physical prison but i think if given the time i would have maybe got different less distancing jar. I think the writing on the jar takes away focus from the main piece. For the side projects unfortunately, I missed the day of class where we made a wax red string tthing (?) and something to do with paper (?). But i was however there for the texture portion and the collage to follow after. The was my final piece. I picked to create a more grainy, crunchy texture. They I tried to say true the leave I found and cut out leaves but choose to kept them smooth in order to match the original collage. Then for one last layer I twisted black paper into vein like figures to represent the veins on the leafs. All in all, I really enjoyed this class. I like how it challenged me to try different mediums that I probably wouldnt have before.

PROJECT 6 & CLASS EXERCISES; JUAN P. TORRES

 

Reflection: I had an initial vision of a landscape painting, but i wanted it to have my style integrated with it. I used a 16x20 canvas with acrylic paint. I first started with painting the purple sky because i wanted to do a dark vibrant piece. I later painted a few cannabis plants because they are naturally beautiful plants and i enjoy putting texture in the leaves, and proceeding with the hairs, ending with sprinkling the thc crystals right on top of the rest of the ganja plant layers. When i started i was doubting myself because on the third day of working on the project, i was still stuck figuring out how the plants would look and how i was gonna lay everything down around the land, i only had the few orange clouds, mountains, and a bit of grass. It was until i left the classroom that i then got inspired when watching Bob Ross paint on youtube. I struggled a great deal painting this because i had never painted any landscape before, this painting was a process of me learning new techniques such as using brushes to add different textures and using varying blending processes, also using paint in a different way to make a more realistic scene. When watching Ross he made it seem so simple that it actually motivated me to use my limited painting skills, and stay up most of the night because i just got lost in the painting. This pushed me to do what i had never done before, which was painting straight on canvas with no sort of plan. Painting always relaxes me and it's also real meditative, its healthy whenever i am stressed. Overall i had fun creating this and I'm proud of what i have created here. I really digged this canvas painting, but i'm gonna try to sell it soon. If i can't I'll just hang it around my room,

Class exercises

Reflection: These in class assignments were interesting because i had never done anything like them and it helped develop creativity throughout the class sessions, it helped open my mind more, regarding possible future experiments. I forgot to take more pictures of the string exercise as well as the background with textures. I never got around finishing my collage, but i do have an abstract texture filled sketch. 

Final Project

     I chose to attempt to recreate a tarot set. However, it was obvious that the universe had other plans and throughout trying to work on the project my set got destroyed not once, not twice, but three different times, as well as several disappering along the way. So, I gave up on trying to make it (mostly because of time restraints at that point) and this is the result. These are the remaining cards and much to my dismay they aren't even the ones I really liked.

   
      Out of the ones that made it out alive though, these two are my favorites. I just wish that I had some of the others to show on here.

Exercises - Jessie Kim

String of Chance

Paper Emotions

                

 

                

Texture Practice

       

Texture Collage

Black Paper Texture Collage

These exercises were fun to do. The string and the texture exercises were cool because I like different textures and exploring them and for the random string placement, I don't think I've ever used that wax material/medium so that was a cool experience.

Final Project and Exercises - Julian Chastang

Reflection: I had a hard time trying to figure out something intresting to do, but i did know that i wanted to do something using materials that i haven't really used. Since i still had a set of colored pencils that were a birthay present i never bothered using, i pretty much went with that since i haven't really used colored pencils since the 6th grade. Mostly at home i've been practicing some figure drawing and trying to get a better understanding of human anatomy so my drawings can be more realistic looking. I haven't been sketching as much as i want to, so progress has been really slow lately and i haven't seen much improvement. I also haven't felt as creative as i was last year, because of this whole year feeling very chaotic and strange. I tried not to use much reference material for the figure sketch and go from what i know already, but i only used a wooden doll for the pose.

The rest i tried to pull fro my mind. The clothing was inspired from some different leotards and other clothes worn by dancers i've seen before. I don't think this turned out too well, but i know it will be a while until i see improvements. Like i mentioned in class, some of the artists that inspire me are people like Shirow Masamune, Jack Kirby, Katsuhiro Otomo, and Jim Lee. Some other artists i like include Yoji Shinkawa, Frank Miller, Jamie Hewlett, Leonardo Fernandez, Todd McFarlane, John Romita Sr. and John Romita Jr., Steve Ditko,  George Hull, Geoff Darrow, Leonardo DaVinci, and Kazuto Nakazawa. I try not to pull anything from their works, but maybe if i did i may learn a bit more?

The second drawing was a quick sketch of part of my room. Using some of the one point perspective techniques i learned, i drew this from just my memory. I tried to see if i could convey some ideas of what made me think of home, but i feel like this was not sucessful either, Although i feel like i could have added more detail to it, that will be another thing for me to practice. For these drawings, i used 2mm drafting pencils, Sakura pigma micron pens, Prismacolor colored pencils, and 11x14 bristol board. Also if you want to know what books i've been learning from, they are Figure Drawing: Design and Invention by Michael Hampton, Dynamic Anatomy by Burne Hogarth, and Drawing On The Right Side Of The Brain by Betty Edwards

Exercises:

Project 6 and Exercises - Emilia Nawrocki

Project 6

 

Reflection: I had the idea of doing some paintings of various poses of the body for a while before we actually started working on the project in class. The two bodies I painted were based on pictures of my own body that I had taken. I find it interesting how different the same body can look when you change your posture or pose, which is what I wanted to show in these two. The body on the left in the main photo was when I was standing up straight and sucking in my gut, while the body on the right was me relaxed, while having my leg up on a sink counter. I think that the body on the left has a better technique when it comes to how the paint was applied, but I don't dislike the other piece. I would like to add more pieces to this and make it a series in the future, since I had a lot of fun doing them.

Exercises

Reflection: I enjoyed most of the exercises we did in class, I thought they were pretty interesting. I wish I had a picture of my string art, I think that exercise was fun even though it was pretty simple, but I ended up losing the string piece somewhere. Sad face. 

Paper Exercises

This was an interesting exercise.  I've never really worked much with paper as the only medium.