Game Drawings

My final game board drawing was another disappointment from me.  While I am good at the perspective part of these assignments, my poor drawing ability once again foiled my plans.  I used vanishing points to make the perspective look even better.  The Monopoly board was both a good and a bad idea to draw.  It was good because it was filled with detail and things to draw.  However, this also became a problem when I had to paint the very small details on some of the spaces.  It eventually became very difficult and made the painting look messy and cluttered.  Another problem with my painting was my use of the watercolors.  I did a poor job of blending them in together and I couldn't fix it with the colored pencils.  I failed to add shadows or make it look realistic.  If I did it again, I would focus very hard on making the colors consistent.  One of the biggest flaws on my painting was the drastic changes in value.  The most difficult part of the assignment was actually making the board look realistic and similar to the picture.  While I was working on the drawing, I learned how difficult it is to use watercolors, especially on small details. 

1. When I was in the lab, I changed the original picture into the streched out image using photoshop.  Then I copied the picture down onto paper by copying what was in each box on the grid.
2. If you transform a photo into a streched out version, it will look messed up if you look at it straight on.  However, if you look at it from another angle, it will look more like the original version of the photo. One of the hardest things to do is add a shadow.  You have to draw a shadow on the morphed image so it will look normal when you look at it from a different perspective.
3. By doing this, we learned about anamorphis.  It was more about perspective and angles than the actual picture.  It also required that you were good at using photoshop.  We just used colored pencils to add value to the pictures.

1. When I was in the lab, I selected a piece of architecture.  I picked the colliseum because I didn't think other people would pick it. Then, I changed the composition on the photo so that there was a large contrast between the dark and the white.
2. The photos I picked in the collage were all from art books.  The reason I picked them is because I liked the pieces of art.  To fill some space, I used plain text.  The pictures didn't really relate to the picture.
3. I cut out the positive space on my pic.  I did this because I thought it would be easier than having to cut out the negative space. 
4. I had to keep my fingers away from the Xacto knife.  When I cut, I kept the knife parallel to the paper, and didn't dig into the paper with it.  The biggest challenge I faced while cutting was actually cutting all the way through.  It was common for me to cut and then having to go over again to finish it up.
5. I picked yellow and purple for my spray paint.  I did this because they are two colors that go well together.  When I actually spray painted, it was pretty easy.  I had to keep the paint close to the holes in the paper, and it turned out pretty well.

Final Print

1. The balance was not up to par.  There was way more positive space than negative.  There was a lot of unity, as the whole thing holds together pretty well.  I think it has rhythm and movement as it all there is a lot of movement and it flows together well.
2. I added texture by cutting out the cracks in the desert floor.  Even though this ended up causing problems later on, I thought it was a good way to give the picture some feeling.  The cracks and texture of the floor was supposed to contrast with the spider, which was supposed to be without too much texture.
3. I used negative space to cut out the cracks in the floor and cut out the pattern on the spider's legs.
4. From a technical standpoint, the print was decently made.  While at first I was cutting too deep with my cutting tool, eventually I overcame that obstacle and did a good job with the cutter.  The drawing was a little different.  Even though it looked fine at first, the spider was hard to find once the final print was made.
6. For the most part it was a fun experience.  I liked the cutting out and designing the picture was fun.  I think if I understanded how the print would work from the beginning it could have turned out really good in the end.  The texture could have made it look a lot better than just drawing a spider.  However, all of my own mistakes made it look worse than it could have been.  A disadvantage to doing a print is that you need a lot of both positive and negative space for it to look good, which limits your options.

Print Making

1.  Texture is very important for something like this.  Since we are actually going to be cutting things out of the rubber pad, the texture of the animal will be more obvious since you actually will be able to feel it.  That's why I picked a tarantula.  It is furry and people have an idea of what it feels like.

2.  It was important to have multiple pictures of the spider because we will need more than one angle to draw it well.  We used more than one background because we needed one that fit the animal best. 

3.  Truthfully, I wasn't here the first day we drew the animals so I only had the tarantula fully completed.  However, I still think the tarantula would have been the best one to use.  It has lots of fur and using the cracked desert floor will give it more texture.  It has turned out to be harder than I thought it would be to cut out the dessert floor, but if I can pull it off it will be great.

1.  I actually really enjoyed working with the team and coming up with the idea.  My favorite part was coming up with the ideas, but drawing the mural was also fun.  It was kind of difficult to actually make the gold and fire look good, but thanks to Sydney and her art skills we actually were able to pull it off.

2.  If we weren't working together as a team, it would be much harder to come up with an idea and actually pull the mural off.  Because some of the members were better at drawing and some members were better at actually planning it, we were able to make it look somewhat realistic.

3.In my opinion, the project was very successful.  Out of all the pictures, I think ours stood out more than the others.  It was colorful and looked good when people posed with it.  Plus, there weren't bricks that weren't colored in.

4. I think interactive art is very cool.  It makes it more fun for the people looking at the art to actually be a part of it.  Making a larger piece of interactive art would be fun for the school.

My Life Like Value Portrait

1.  The first thing I did was outline every shaded shape I could find in the picture on my clear piece of paper.  I thought about what value each shape would be.  This step took me a while because one side of her face was almost completely shaded over, making it hard to find any shapes on that side of the picture.  Once I had traced these shapes, I transfered them onto a piece of paper in my notebook. I tried to shade each shape the way I had imagined them, eventually finishing the picture.
2. It was hard to find the different values in the portrait.  For one thing, there weren't huge differences in most of the darker shapes.  I would use my imagination in many of the shapes.  For Example,even though the left side of her face was dark; it looked like the hair was a little bit darker, so I shaded in the hair more than the face.
3. I did not achieve a full range of values in the portrait.  I made the left side of her face way too dark.  There were only around three differend values on the portrait, instead of five.  Parts of the face I wanted to look only lightly shaded looked dark black instead.
4. My work was executed almost the opposite of neatly.  While the right side of ther face looks good, the left side was a disaster.  I tried to draw in eyes and eyebrows instead of just letting the shading make them.  The eyes don't line up and the mouth doesn't look how it did in the portrait.   I am satisfied with the mouth though.
5. The biggest obstacle, like I said before, was finding shapes on the darker side of the portrait.  I dealt with them by using my imagination.  Another obstacle was trying to make her look like a person.  I never overcame that obstacle.

Moss Paintings

We did a moss project in art.  We painted moss onto a wall and waited for it to grow.  It was pretty cool even though the moss looked pretty gross.  That's my elbow on the left side in case you didn't notice.  Poor Ben Highfill didn't get his picture taken that day.

Master Shake

In Mr. Sands art class, we had to draw what we thought a cartoon's skeleton would look like.  I never realized how strange a cartoon's skeletal structure looked like.  Master Shake's bone structure makes zero sense. I've never been more proud.