This was the painting I submitted for the SRQ airport contest where I humbly received a certificate of appreciation. I decided to do a landscaping scene and I did it with watercolor. I also decided do the piece in blue monochromatic. I am personally a huge fan of shades of blue and I really enjoy painting in just different typed of blue. The piece started off with just the mountains and then I decided to add in a lake because I wanted to work with reflections and the texture of the water.
I have discovered that I am absolutely horrible at composition. It could possibly have a "S" composition or maybe even a "U" composition?? I also can't decide if I'm bad at creating a composition or just finding composition in a piece of art. A principle of design could be unity, I think the whole piece flows nicely together especially with it being monochromatic. Proportion could also be another principle, the mountains are all proportion, nothing is unrealistic. There is also rhythm in the mountains as well, with how i decided to do three mountains and not just one.
There is literally no meaning behind this piece at all. And if were are being completely honest, almost all of my art is never personal. I just saw a drawing of a mountain on pinterest and I really liked how they did the shading and how to showed depth through simple line work. So I took that idea with the mountains and just rolled with it, adding as I went. I looked at little references for this piece, other than the occasional example of lake reflections.
I think this piece turned out quite nicely, I really like the whole monochromatic thing going on. I think I could work of adding more depth and just not adding a line in between the mountains and lake. That line haunts me. On another note, I am quite proud of how the reflections turned out, I was effy at first with them but looking at them now, I think it turned out pretty decent.
This is my whale that I created for the Heart and Soul competition. It is a mixed media piece, I used wood, silicon, acrylic paint, air dry clay, and resin. I just started out with the whale itself and just built up as I thought about it more. This was actually my first time using resin and it honestly was a complete mess but the results were totally worth it.
For composition, there could be like a backwards "L" thing kind of going on, with the whale being mainly straight at the top and then the fin extending down. Emphasis is a clear principle in this piece with the whale being the main focal point of the whole piece. There is also proportion in the whale, nothing is weirdly sized compared to the actual blue whale itself. Unity is a principle, I think the whole piece flows really nicely and nothing seems out of place.
I originally got the idea for this piece from an article I read about a dead blue whale washing up on the shores of California due to head trauma from hitting a ship and just something about that struck me and inspired me to make this piece. I mainly just wanted to address the topic I suppose and interpret in a way that maybe made people want to look more into the blue whale and how we as a species are single handedly abolishing this world of its largest mammal.
I would be lying if I said I wasn't slightly proud of myself for how this piece came out. I was a little wary of it at first but as it progressed, it really started to grow on me and I especially like how the water came out, I think it really helps make the piece. The only growth I would say is just to have better planning when it comes to using materials like silicon and resin where once its down its not coming back up without completely destroying the whole piece.
This project started out as a simple class painting but I decided to continue it and make it into a full blown project. It is all done in acrylic on matte board. I started but sketching out the moon and the lines and then just started to go at it, only using the lines as guides. But if we are being completely honest, I barely followed them.
Rhythm is present in this piece throughout the lines flowing around the page. Unity is principle as well, everything flows together and nothing looks to be out of place. There is emphasis on the moon, with it being in the middle of the page and also because of the contrast between the light gray tones and the purple surrounding the moon.
I believe the purpose of this exercise was to practice blending and if that is the case than I think I did pretty well at it. I focused mainly on color mixing and just trying to make my blending as smooth as possible. I generally started out with the dark purple and working my way to the light purple because I found that it worked a lot nicer because when I tried it the other way around, the light purple always got too dark.
Something I need to grow on definitely is the moon, I do not like how the moon turned out at all. I don't really even think it looks like a moon at all, I need to add craters and have everything more circular in general. I really like how my blending looks on the rest of the piece but I do think I needed to add more of the light purple and less of the dark purple.
This was my first project of the year, which had to be a watercolor and I decided to paint a tree landscape. I simply just drew out a sketch of my idea and then just worked lightly with the watercolors and progressively got darker and darker as I tried to add more depth and detail to the landscape.
There is clear emphasis on the two trees closest up because they take up most of the page and they are also the most detailed part of the painting. There is good proportion in each of the trees, none of them look unnatural or top heavy. Rhythm flows all throughout the painting with the repetition of the trees in the entire painting.
My inspiration mainly came from my appreciation for nature. I might not like to go outside at all, at least in Florida, but no matter where I am, I do appreciate nature. I just really wanted to work on detail and depth for this piece. I tried to add detail in the close up trees and then create depth by making the background appear further back.
I am not in love with this piece but that does not mean that I hate it either. There are certain things I like about it, such as the detail but what I don't like about it is that line that just goes distinctly through the background, I feel like it makes the piece flat. I definitely would work on depth and also the color of the trees didn't come out correctly so I would try and work on that as well.
This is the latest painting I have finished for this class. It is a watercolor piece that was inspired by the honeycomb. I used all watercolor and also used a hexagon stencil to create the design all over the page. I made sure to use different shades of yellow and orange to the piece to make it more interesting and have more depth.
Rhythm is clearly the most distinct principle throughout the piece, with the constant repetition of the hexagon design over the whole page. There is a nice balance between light and dark with the honeycombs progressively getting darker as the design goes down. Unity flows throughout the piece as well with the hexagons fitting perfectly next to each other and coming together, creating a design.
I was inspired by bees for this piece. Not too long ago, the bee went on the endangered species list and that is a really big deal, at least to me it is. Earth relies heavily on bees and if they were to become extinct, we would all be screwed. According to Albert Einstein, the human species would only live for about four years after bees went extinct, which is not a lot of time at all.
I am quite happy with this piece. I really just wanted to focus on color mixing and texture for this piece and I think I did pretty well at that. I would say that if I were to do this piece again, I'd try to make it neater but I actually feel like the messiness of the piece actually adds something to it.
