For Future Generations

We were given a word to work with (My word was Renew) and the whole idea of this project was to create a box that illustrated that concept. It took me a while to come up with an idea but I had some inspiration from the movie Cinderella (The 2015 version). In the movie she had a box that she kept hidden with all her most prized possessions and it almost looked like a time capsule. I had a box that I had stored in my closet for about 3 years that I couldn't thrown away because it was way too pretty and I knew I was going to find a good use for it someday because at the moment it was currently holding a bunch of my old drawings. So then I decided to put more things into it to pass down to future generations therefore I had renewed it's original purpose to a more useful and personal purpose. It contains some of my old drawings, some of my favorite quotes and songs, and a few small drawings as well as recipes and magazine clippings of fashion styles.

My Tropical Paradise in a Box

For this project we worked with texture, we had to construct a box that had texture and some drawings that went along with the theme. So I began thinking it's the middle of February and it's freezing cold outside, and I want it to be summer already. I thought of the beach and the sun and came up with a beach theme for my box and as for the invented and implied textures I decided to draw/paint what you would find at the beach or in the ocean.

The Depths of the Unknown

This drawing is meant to depict depth which you can accomplish with value. The task for this assignment was to create a composition with a limited amount of shapes and lines while trying to create depth. My solution I came up with to create depth was to make a vanishing point and have the shapes get larger and larger as they moved further away from the vanishing point. Something that I learned while creating this composition was that you can turn it any way and it will have a different picture everytime, so in other words there are multiple ways of looking a piece of art.

How many times do we have to use line?!

 These drawings are about line, one is an Ebb and Flow (Which creates depth with lines curving in a back and forth motion) and another one is supposed to describe the word tense. I used broken glass to represent tense because anything broken makes me think of sharp edges and it therefore makes me feel tense and uncomfortable, although strangely sometimes it looks cool.

"Coffee awakens the mind therefore it gives me energy for finals"...wait a minute hold that thought

"Bing" Light bulb goes of in head. I got an idea for my final project! Personalized coffee cups. Caribou coffee is known for their fun cups (as well as their coffee) that present a question and have other people answer them on a chalkboard and sometimes even print them on the cups! So I decided to follow a similar concept! The outer part is the chalkboard where people write their answer and for this I took to Facebook and asked them 3 Questions, "What is your favorite song?", "Who is your celebrity crush?", and "What do you stay awake for?" (The last question is Caribou's most famous question). The white is the chalkboard ripping open and revealing my answer on the coffee cup.

 Materials used:
-Charcoal
-Micron pen
-Coffee
- Blue watercolor
-White Conte Crayon

 Materials used:
-Charcoal
-Micron pen
-Graphite pencil
-Pencils 2H- 6B
-White Conte Crayon
-Blue Watercolor

Materials Used:
-Charcoal
- Micron and Ballpoint pen
- 2H, 2B and 4B pencils
-Blue Watercolor
-White Conte crayon

"Welcome to New York!" Wait! This is Minnesota!

1989 Taylor Swift's newest album, and what better way to celebrate than to create a drawing out of it? It's just what we artists do create drawings from things that mess with our emotions. Our task was to create a collage out of drawings or paintings out of Sumi Ink and so this was what I came up with.

 Problem: create a Collage out of drawings.
Solution: Taylor Swift and 1989 Album inspired collage.

*The album came with fake Polaroid pictures that she took that describe different songs and I decided to incorporate them to my collage as well as some of my own pictures that I soaked in coffee to make them look older.



This was a painting that I did with Sumi Ink that I thought about incorporating in the collage but then I realized that it didn't really fit the theme so I just kept it as a separate piece.

Wow that's an awesome eagle drawing, wait that's a sketch?!?

To answer that question, yes that is indeed a sketch for my texture drawing we had to make, but unfortunately for this blog, I too gave away this away as a Christmas present to my father, but here's a peek of what it looked like.

Drawing with lines? Awesome!!

For this project we got to experiment with lines, Contour lines, Cross Contour Lines and Line as Value (Not Pictured) 3 drawings in total. (I gave away My Line as Value drawing to a dear friend as a Christmas present but it was 3 elephants. It starts off with a small elephant facing to the right and it grows larger and larger the last elephant is facing to the left looking at the smaller elephants. The way I incorporated line to this project was to add a wooden texture to the first elephant and once it reaches the trunk it faded into stippling and the middle elephant was done with stippling as well and then it faded into the wooden texture again and then came the last elephant which is made with the wooden texture as well.)

 This was a contour line drawing of a watch I have.

Problem: Create a contour line drawing with marker or pen using thick and thin lines to add value.

Solution: Watch contour line drawing with marker and ballpoint pen.

Problem: Create a Cross Contour line drawing that has value.

Solution: Cross Contour line drawing of my shoes with micron and ballpoint pen.

Look Ma I'm in College!

So now that you've seen all my early work things are about to get more serious because it's college time! By this point I had changed my major from Bio-medical Sciences to Art Education, what a big leap right? I'm currently enrolled at St. Cloud State University and I am finishing my first year of college, but lets back up and rewind to Fall 2014 my First Semester of college and my first Drawing class ever, Foundation Drawing 1

 This was the first drawing we made in this class and it was based on a still life because we all know how exciting they are (cough cough not really cough cough) but it was a good starting point since the majority of my class had never even touched charcoal.

Problem: Cover a sheet of drawing paper completely in charcoal and draw with an eraser, but you can't add any charcoal.





Solution: I used a variety of erasers ranging from the eraser of a basic school pencil to a giant pink eraser and a kneaded eraser, and as for erasing mistakes I would just rub of some charcoal from a different spot and transfer it to the area I wanted to fix.

 This was a project further down this class and it was when we were experimenting with space. I decided to create my own space for this project and it was on a staircase.

Problem: Create a drawing with charcoal that creates space.

Solution: I made my own space and used a a white conte crayon to highlight and create more constrast.

Pop Quiz!! Yes, in art pop quizzes are drawings not fill in the blank questions.

Problem: Draw 1/3 of the still life with either, pen, pencil, or charcoal with in 1 1/2 hours.

Solution: Still life in charcoal, and pencil.

Oh look it's a Head Bust, Wait is...is that Josh Hutcherson?

In Advanced Ceramics I got to create a head bust out of clay and I decided to create Josh Hutcherson's Head. This was a long and tricky process because you start off with a whole bag of clay and you start forming the head shape, the jaw, and all the other facial features. The tricky part was to keeping it wet for a month, but everytime I added something I made sure I soaked it with water and wrapped it all up with paper towels and put 2 bags over it to lock in the moisture, but I learned that if there are other parts that are wetter than others they will take longer to dry and you want it to dry altogether (his chin was still a little wet and when it went in the kiln it came off). The funnest part of this assignment was splitting it in half (Vertical way) and hollowing it out.

 Problem: Create a Ceramic Bust, hollow it out and glaze it.
Solution: Josh Hutcherson Ceramic Bust

 This is what it looks like on the inside, I used a fork to create those holes so it could dry faster.

Down by the River

Problem: None
Solution: "Elephant by the River in Color" Techniques: Salt, Wet on Wet, Dripping, Scratching, Splatter, Blowing paint.

Oh the Wonderful World of Watercolor

Problem: None
Solution: Recreation of "The Fault in our Stars" movie poster for fun. Scratching technique, wet on wet, wet on dry, dry brush.

























Problem: Create a Juxtaposed picture with Photoshop and then paint it using watercolor.

Solution: Spiderman+ Beach+City = Juxtaposed picture. Watercolor Techniques: Drybrush, Scratching, Gradient, wet on wet, wet on dry.

Problem: Find a portrait of someone and paint it with ink

      Solution: Shailene Woodley Portrait in black ink.

Painting with water

In my painting class one day we experimented with watercolor and as you can see I liked it alot! I did my final project with watercolor (Which was based off the painting from Pierre Renoir called "Discarded Roses") I also did a "The Fault in our Stars" movie poster in watercolor, a Juxtaposition of Spiderman, and an Ink Drawing of Shailene Woodley, and in my free time I painted a silhouette of  an elephant by the river.

Original by Pierre Renoir

Repainted in watercolor

Problem: Research and Artist and take a look at his or her work, paint in the style of the artist or repaint one of his/her works.

Solution: A repaint of "Discarded Roses" in watercolor using wet on wet, wet on dry, scratching, dropping color on wet, and dry brush techniques.

Let's Get Serious (Suicide Prevention)

My final project for Sculpture class was on a more serious topic. It had to do with suicide (More specifically suicide prevention). I choose to do this topic for this project because I know a few people that were considering suicide and that used to physically harm themselves. Part of the project was also to use plaster and cast your hand in a position that reflected your topic.

Overall Project

Problem: Create sculpture that today's society faces problems with.

Solution: Suicide and preventing it. The top half has encouraging quotes and words, the bottom half has words that real live people that suffer from suicidal thoughts and self harming have used to describe what they think of themselves. The hands represent recovery because they are putting band-aids over the cuts and therefore are choosing to continue on and live life.

   
                                                                           

This is the hand gesture I choose which is putting band-aids on cuts or scars which symbolizes that "Wounds will heal and so will you."

Do you see that Giraffe or is it just me?

This was one of the most stressful and expensive projects that I've ever done. We were assigned to make a wire sculpture out of chicken wire and form it into an animal. There was no size requirements (at least I don't think there was) so I decided to make this project a challenge, I was going to make a 8 foot tall Giraffe! This was also around the time when the Annual District Art Show was coming up so I had to get this done in a few weeks. When it came to critique time I only had the skeleton part done because I decided I wanted to paper mache and spray paint it for the art show. Which was in less than a week, but you know what they say if you can put your mind to it you can achieve anything!

It even made the front page of the city newspaper!

Problem: Create an animal wire sculpture using chicken wire and paint it.

Solution: 8 foot tall Giraffe that was covered in paper mache and spray painted.

*Alfred lives in the Media Center at Monticello Middle School.

FOOD!! Oh wait that's a sculpture...

Yes food as a sculpture, this by far was the hardest project to make because well it's food and it didn't help that I had this 1st hour. For this project we had to make a plate and food to go with it. We also had to have a theme to go with it like Dessert, Lunch, Breakfast, Dinner, etc. To get some inspiration we were shown these pictures. Yes by this time my stomach was yelling GIVE ME FOOD!!

The Sundae and Donuts are By Peter Anton
He makes large food sculptures.
























After these yummy inspirations I started brain storming, and I thought that since it's almost summer why not make fair food.

Problem: Create a plate full of food out of clay then paint it.
Solution: Fair food Lemonade, Popcorn, and cotton candy. Plate is a part of wooden bench.