This month I mainly focused on concentration stuff again, along with a couple pieces for Valentines day. I finished up the third piece of my concentration today, and I’m really proud of how it came out! I was originally struggling with it, since I was so frustrated with it taking so long, but in the end I found myself really appreciating the detail I put into the piece. I already have ideas for the next one, and will hopefully start that up after break is over.
As for the two other pieces I did, I used similar but different techniques for either of them. I wanted to make the first one double sided, since I was brainstorming ideas to make a unique gift for my boyfriend for Valentine’s day, and I ended up holding the paper to the window to trace the sketch, making sure to copy the pose exactly like how I did it on the first side. In a way, I kinda improvised my own lightbox? For the other piece, I wanted to test out some new pens I got to see how they work with art making. While I do like how they write, I do not like how they look in my art. It ended up giving it a weird, lineless quality (since the pens are different colors) that I wasn’t going for. I’m probably going to keep these pens for writing rather than drawing.
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The beginning of 2019 brought a lot of ambitions for myself, so e of which involve art but all of which I’m stressing my ass over. However, one of the first things I wanted to do was invest in a new graphics tablet, and I did that! As of last monday I am now the proud owner of a Huion KAMVAS pro 12. This meant that I could finally begin digitizing my concentration pieces, and I finished up the one titled Depression earlier this week. I’ve also been doing a couple pieces for myself, partially to break in the new tab but mostly just for funzies. I drew Link and Pit again because I’m a sAP,,
Also, I’ve been slowly but surely working on the comic book that I plan on turning into my senior project! I took a break from page sketches to work on concepting the characters and their color palettes. Overall, I’ve done a lot more art “work” this month than art for myself, but sometimes you need that as an artist. It’s important to get these things in order and actually get motivated for things you need to do, which is cool. I’m still learning techniques, and I kinda have to “relearn” digital art through the new tablet, since I’m so used to using a pad tablet as I have for the fast few years. I like it a lot, I do, it’s just going to be a while before it stops being so foreign to me. December is usually the busiest art month for me, and this year was the exact opposite than an exception. I made, in total, twenty seven drawings to give as presents, because I’m broke and can’t afford to buy everyone things like a normal person. I took pictures of some of my favorites. By looking at these it’s obvious I didn’t spend too much time on them, and the quality in them is a bit sucky, but keep in mind that I made twenty freakin’ seven of these bad bois. Through doing his I learned that sometimes, for big projects like this, you have to sacrifice quality for quantity. I wouldn’t be able to submit the majority in a portfolio as it is, for the majority of them feature my friends’ favorite copyrighted characters. The mistakes aren’t even that bad, either, just things like “oh this line is a bit shakier than I wanted” or “I could’ve colored that background in a way to make it look neater”; stuff like that which my friends and family won’t notice. In addition, I made a digital piece for a secret santa that I’m participating in on instagram, and after I finished the last christmas piece yesterday, I drew a quick sketch as a cool-down drawing , and also because I barely made anything for myself this month. I deserve to do things for myself after this. Along with that is a quick digital doodle of myself that I did last night, because I dyed my hair over the weekend and with every dye job comes the obligatory narcissistic self portrait. Hella.
In the span of this month, I was able to create several pieces not only for this AP class, but for myself. In fact, the only real thing that I did for the class was the watercolor piece I call “Let’s Take the T In” (figure 1). This is a piece I’m proud of, for I was able to focus on creating a background of a city, which is one of my greatest weaknesses when it comes to illustration. I took these practice skills and created original art with them to develop a piece that I’m pretty confident in.
Besides that, I did some other school projects and projects for myself. I created a moral compass for my philosophy class with colored pencils (figure 2) and presented it to my class as a way to portray my outlooks on life and what I personally abide by when it comes to decision making. It’s a cool way to represent myself for many different reasons; all of the symbolism I included reflects myself in some way or another, and I’m really proud of how the Eye of Providence came out. Besides that, I created several pieces for myself. Figure 3 is a sketch of two of my favorite Nintendo characters, Link and Pit. And yes. I ship them with each other. Fight me. Figure 4 is another drawing of these two because I’m a loser. Figure 5 is a digital drawing of Pit that I used to develop my skills with perspectives, especially with his arm. I’m personally really proud of how this one came out. Figure 6 is a silly little Legend of Zelda comic I created based on a fanfiction that I’m writing. Again. I’m a loser. I’m actually real proud of the colors, tho. Lastly, Figure 7 is a watercolor doodle of the Hylian Crest, also from Legend of Zelda, that I did to test out a new set of Pheonyx Student Grade tube watercolors I got. I was very excited to use them, especially since I put all the work into putting them in half pans along with my metallic Prang watercolors. I really love how this one came out! Image 1) I'm participating in Inktober this year, and so far this is the piece I'm the most proud of out of that set. The prompt for this was "Bottle", and I thought of an similar image I had drawn last year. So, I redrew it. It was challenging because working in entirely ink with limited colors of sharpies was difficult to me.
Image 2) Instead of creating a charcoal portrait like the rest of the class, I took the image given to me from the photograph and painted my biggest fear all over it. This was challenging because the paint wasn't very opaque, and I did mess up in areas that I had to cover up by matching a color to the background. Overall, I am pretty proud of this. Image 3) I think this is my best piece so far. I took one of my inktober doodles (for the prompt "flowing") and made it a much bigger, refined piece using watercolors and acrylics. I like the presentation of this one, and I'm thinking of submitting this for that scholastic contest. Image 4) for our first homework assignment, we were told to do some blind contours. I did some of my snail. I love my snail. My snail is the best boy. So good that I went back and colored some shapes around them to refine it. For our next assignment, we had to create distressed paper on which to draw realistically on. I developed skills while exploring with charcoal and toned paper. Specifically, I learned that charcoal is a medium where it can look good even if the drawing isn’t 100% realistic, unlike some other mediums I’ve explored such as graphite. I expanded my global awareness of art because I learned how to distress a paper bag into a workable toned paper that was actually very nice to work with. I created original art by going outside the box and drawing my three cats instead of just creating a normal still life. Finally, I collaborated and reflected by helping introduce other people to charcoal as well and studied other people’s own pieces and their styles.
For our first assignment in AP art, we were to create a group of Hexagons portraying some things about us. I developed my skills by practicing with drawing in a smaller space, blending colored pencil, and constructing paper hexagons as frames. I expanded my global awareness in art by looking at everyone else’s hexagons and seeing the complete different styles of each person. I created original art by making my own hexagons and placing them with everyone else’s. I collaborated and reflected on my artwork by standing back and seeing it compared to all the other pieces hung up on the wall. Overall, I feel pretty proud of this.
I think this is my best piece yet! This took about a week and a half to make, and I hope that shows. I combined elements from each of my % prompt brainstorm pieces into a piece that I think reflects my skills as an artist. I made this using crayola and prismacolor colored pencils, along with Faber Castel fineliners and a kneaded eraser. This piece is currently in a gallery at the public library!
If I had to change anything in this piece, it would be minor details. For example, I would probably change the border around the figure, for I don't like how it came out. The gears could be neater, the stuff inside his head could have more dimension, and I probably should've given the little "I WANT YOU" flyer a scarier face to portray the emotions of the piece more. (This character doesn't belong to me! This is fanart for the Ratboy Genius Dreams Minecraft series on youtube!) This unit was probably my favorite! While I don't think any of my brainstorm pieces are amazing, I still love how they ended up contributing to my final piece which I will post after this. Basically, we were given one prompt a day to draw something for, and then combine them into a final piece in the end. For some of these I had some good ideas flowing, but for the majority of them I had major art block and couldn't get myself to create something I was proud of. Luckily I was able to create something grand in the end!All of these pieces were done using pencil and ink.
I actually really liked this unit! I loved the fact that I was able to draw semi-realistic work without stressing over the fact that it has to look photo realistic. We were originally supposed to color using oil pastels,. but my sketch ended up being so detailed that I resorted to using Micron ink and colored pencil instead. I'm happy I was allowed to make this alteration, because Micron and colored pencil is what I'm used to as an artist anyways. I definitely think I will draw more in this style in the future, and I think this piece looks like some of the really detailed and delicious food you see in a Japanese anime. |