For our final project of the class we did a mixed media painting inspired by Luke Miller Buchanan. The place I chose for my painting was Joyner Service House on campus and the corner on which it is located. I really liked the lamppost and the fence and the beautiful bricks. For this painting we were supposed to work more all over the painting instead of painting and working on one section until perfected. In the third painting you will see some of that technique because I stained the areas without photos all at once instead of working on one area then moving to the next. It adds more fluidity to the piece. I enjoyed the technique since it was different from what we usually did. I went out and took lots of pictures of the house and surroundings from different angles and viewpoints. The key was to have some visual hiccups in the painting when we laid down the pictures and painted. Luke Miller Buchanan's work often has these visual hiccups and while at first glance it may almost look like a picture, on closer inspection his paintings have various things that make it obvious the piece is a mixed media 2-dimensional painting. While this painting is still in need of improvement I really like how my painting is turning out and I hope to finish the project when I return to school in the fall. I will post a final picture of the painting when I complete it!

Still Life-Mary Cassatt Inspired

In Painting we were assigned to paint a still life painting and incorporate an artist of our choosing by using that artist's style or color pallette, etc. I chose Mary Cassatt for my artist and I particually liked her color pallette and how often her painting were very upclose and cropped. The viewer was in the painting. To begin the project we took many photos of various objects set up together. Then we chose a photo and went to painting. I personally liked this project the best because my color pallette was very bright and the subject was interesting. It took some time for me to get used to using different colors for objects instead of their usual like a brown or black desk. I actually changed the color to a vibrant purple and it worked really well. In the end I think this painting came together really well! The first picture is the one I chose to paint.The next two paintings are by Mary Cassatt and were my inspiration.

Human Right to Water Painting Project

For our dirty/messy type of painting we were to choose a quote about identity or social justice and portray that quote through a painting. I chose the quote,"Access to safe water is a fundamental human need and therefore a basic human right." by Kofi Annan. I had done a project in my design class last semester that was about the same issue and I wanted to do more on the subject. I decided to find pictures of all of the people that are affected by having no clean water and these pictures became my background in the painting. I then covered them with a tan paint so it gives the illusion of a dry and parched surface. I found a beautiful picture of hands and used those and extended the arms slightly. The water took some time to perfect but eventually it felt right. I really enjoyed this painting!

Still Life Value Painting

This was our first project in Painting 1. The goals of this still life project were to paint the five objects that were on display from our perspective using only black and white. This is called a value painting. We were supposed to create a painting that had a feeling of a logical single light source and to bring a wholeness between the figure ground relationship. We did this by having at least 3 to 4 values in the painting and in the objects. We could only use black and white oil paints for this project and could not add any other objects or take any out. This project was a lot of fun and really a great learning experience when it comes to value range and an introduction to painting. Of course looking at my finished piece there are improvements I could still make. The shadow of the dark pot is slightly darker than needed and the background needs a little more solidity. Overall I am pretty happy with my final painting for this project.

Metamorphosis project

For our metamorphosis project we had to chose a social justice issue and then find inspiration from photographs to create our designs. The issue I chose was Human right to water, meaning that it is an inalienable right for humans to have clean and free drinking water. We had to take one image and morph it into another. If needed we could morph twice. I chose to only morph once. My first design is of a water faucet that has been locked by a corporation. This reflects the many businesses and corporations that are trying to own water and make people pay to have clean drinking water. I then morphed this image into a group of children and a woman who are filling up their water jugs. I left the faces off the people so that they could represent all of those who are affected by corporations restricting water supplies.

9 grid project!

For this project we had to do 16 compositions in a grid of household objects that we arranged into different positions. each square had to have something going off the edge at all four sides. After completing these 16 we then had to narrow down to 9 squares. Then after choosing our 9 drawings we then enlarged them from 3"x 3" to 4"x 4". Once the enlargements were done we then opened up the squares on each side by erasing some of the border to let the white space flow. The final 9 grid was inked in pen. For this project we were supposed to focus on the principles of Gestalt. These two pictures of my final piece and the draft below it show how I dealt with Gestalt in my own work. The bottom is a draft of my 9 grid that had some gestalt groupings. The paint brushes in the 2nd row and 3rd row on the left were very similar. The other grouping was the the middle square and the square below that both of which had large rolls of tape. In the final draft I rearranged my drawings so that the grid is seen as a whole instead of certain groupings of similar objects. This project really taught me how to recognize Gestalt principals and work toward making the whole of a piece the focal point instead of it becoming the different groups in a design.

Shape Project

These two pieces come from our second project that dealt with shape. This project required us to take a 4 inch black square and completely cut up and destroy it and then create four different designs, three non-objective and one abstract piece. Above are two of my four designs. The first is the abstract piece which depicts a kite flying high up in the sky. The second is a non-objective piece that I made. In the first design I used strategies such as abutting, mutual tension, and interlocking to obtain a visual relationship between the pieces of construction paper. In the second design it is obvious that abutting was my main strategy for this piece, however there is some mutual tension as well especially with the middle top piece.