Book Carving Creations: The Road to Oz...All that Glitters IS Gold!

     For this project, we were required to create a book carving that related to a theme.  The theme I chose was simplicity.  I started by researching and brainstorming some ideas that would look nice carved out.  I thought about doing scenes from different popular Disney princess stories, and that sort of left me with a silhouette idea.  I found a reference picture based off of The Wizard of Oz, and I used interesting shapes from that, such as the two types of vines in my sketches.  I knew that I wanted to do a yellow brick road, I just needed the Emerald City for it to lead to.  Well, I didn't know how to draw that or how good it would look carved.  But one day, I was in the band room and I saw an award (it was probably from a Disney World competition) that had a simple illustration of a castle. I took a picture of that and created a similar castle for my book.  As I worked on my thumbnails, I switched around the compositions and finally ended up with a final drawing for the book.  I created a clear idea what I would do, coloring each different layer and deciding on the thicknesses so I would know what to do after I finished each one.  Since the castle and idea was simple, I felt I needed something complicated to throw into the design.  Seeing that curved lines and small spaces are more of a challenge to carve with an x-acto knife, I knew that the vines would take time and precision.  Once I started carving, I found out that it was, indeed, very difficult to carve the small spaces.  The thing that annoyed me the most was that the knife would only carve through one to two pages at a time, leaving only a vague outline for the next pages.  Therefore I was against making layers that were more than six or seven pages thick because it took so much time to proceed.  I ended up making a bunch of mistakes with the cutting, but I either ripped the pages out or taped them back together!  By the time I got to the more simpler background it was easier to do thicker layers, but the whole process was very time consuming.  A risk I took was doing those vines because they were so small and thin, always ripping.  They also became a challenge when I was adding color.  I started with colored pencil, and I couldn't get the vines dark enough because I didn't have anything to press down against.  After I used colored pencils, I didn't like the look so I tried water color.  That also did not seem dark enough to get the right feel across so I used acrylics.  After I started, I had too much green in it so I painted the castle pink to separate it from the other cool colors.  I then added glitter to make a yellow brick road and glitter paint for highlights and extra SPARKLES!!!  Overall, I am happy with my final product.  To improve it, I would do a better coloring job and I would have incorporated the theme on the cover.  Unfortunately I was pressed for time but I am happy that the time was well spent!

Mixed Media Mash-up

     For this project, we were create an art piece using different materials and amusement as the theme.  I chose to do a swing in my picture because I love swings and they're very amusing and fun for kids.  I used magazine paper, water color, pen, printed pictures of flowers, paperclips, oil pastels, and painted paper in my piece.  I connected the pieces all together by using the pastels to sort of mesh the grass and flowers, and water color on the magazine paper to blend it together a little bit more.  The visual journaling we did was cool, but I didn't use that style in my art.  I enjoyed using the different colors of tissue paper and then made my product very colorful as well.  I had some trouble coming up with ideas that I could execute well, but I kept trying to make the piece look alright.  I think it was cool because I painted the paperclips on white paper, and when I lifted them up there was black paint strokes on it and I decided to use it.  This shows that you're never done with art and new ideas can show up unexpectedly.  This was not my favorite project, and next time I'd like to come up with some more expanded ideas.

Just Noodling Around: Non-traditional Portraits

       For this project, I chose a picture of my brother. He makes incredibly silly faces, so I knew that one of his signature expressions would be fun to work on. I created a list of materials that I thought would work for this project. My favorites were sequins, pony beads, and colored noodles. I chose the noodles because they were unique and cost effective. I also knew I needed something I could work with and break for curves and small places. My choice made my project look like a bunch of random noodles up close but a person from far away. This goes along with why it's non traditional. Some risks were coloring the noodles (I didn't know how), and I wasn't sure if it would come together as one piece in the end.  My choices were very good when it came to the colors because they went well together. I also did a nice job of fitting the noodles together and filling most of the empty spaces (some were left as highlights).  Overall this was a fun and time consuming project, and now Mrs. Rossi will be buying many new glue sticks!

Sticky Situation: Slippery Steps

     For this project, our theme was Sticky Situation and we had to incorporate repetition.  I thought of many ideas for this that were actually sticky, such as gum, candy, food, mud, and things figuratively sticky like police lights and a dog with a newspaper full of holes.  My ideas at the end of brainstorming were banana peels on a tile floor and a creepy staircase with lots of holes and darkness.  It was very difficult to think outside of the box because a lot of people were coming up with very similar ideas.  I ended up combining the banana peels and the staircase to come up with a sort of abstract idea of a sticky, or in this case, slippery situation.  I added in the repetition by painting multiple banana peels, steps, and stripes on the walls.  A lot of the shapes and patterns are also repeated.  I chose acrylic paint because I know how to manipulate it and the different colors and shades for value.  My favorite parts of this piece are the shading and values in the bananas and stairs.  Although I found it difficult to keep mixing browns that would work with the other shades, I found a way to make it work.  I like how this is unique and an interesting concept that leaves you guessing about what actually happened to get the banana peels on the stairs and where the mysterious door leads.  The mini lessons were important because they helped me practice with the different mediums, water color and acrylic, and they helped me to decide which one I would be better at working with.  I am happy with the outcome of the final product because it is different than my other creations.

Up Close and Personal: "Eggquisite" Eggs!

For this project, we had to use oil pastels, chalk pastels, or colored pencils to draw something up close or zoomed in.  I developed ideas for this by looking up pictures on Pinterest.  I found a lot of interesting things like flowers, dogs, pencils breaking, and more.  I narrowed it down to a horse nose and apple and a birds nest.  When I drew my sketches, the birds nest had a  more interesting composition so I went with that.  I demonstrated emphasis in my work by making the eggs the most interesting point in the drawing.  They have the brightest colors and highlights because I used pink, purple, and white, and that makes them stand out inside the nest on the tree.  I decided to use oil pastels because when I practiced with all three mediums, I thought that I was most successful using them.  I've had experience with all three mediums, but I love the oil pastel texture and how you don't have to be so exact but just layering colors and shapes will give the desired effect.  My risks in this piece were just trying to work with the oil pastels in a way that would make the birds nest look like a birds nest without have to draw any individual pieces of straw or anything.  I also had to work hard to make sure that I included a lot of highlights.  Even though it feels weird adding those bright lights and darks and colors, it does make it look more realistic and more like the picture you're trying to draw.  Another risk was bringing my own oil pastels in because I'm so protective of them and I was really worried I would lose or break them!  I used medium as a technique of art in this drawing because the oil pastels worked really well in my picture and their colors and properties brought a lot more to the drawing than a colored pencil or chalk pastel would.  They brought much more texture that you can see.  This was a fun project that didn't take so incredibly long, and I liked it very much!

What's the Point? Popping Perspective!

For our first project in Art 2, we were required to brainstorm ideas for the theme "What's the point?"  When I brainstormed, I came up with ideas such as point of no return, breaking point, arrows, pencils, perspective, and point of view.  I selected perspective and point of view to elaborate on and drew a sketch of a tree from an ant's point of view, yet my final decision was to draw a picture of Disney World using perspective.  I drew Main Street, USA in Disney because it was an interesting location.  With perspective, every line is drawn with a ruler and goes back to the "vanishing point," thus explaining where the "point" relating to the theme comes from.  Also, a lot of the buildings and the Cinderella Castle have points on them.  I drew this in pencil because I knew it would take a lot of erasing and redrawing to get it perfect.  This way I could also add shading to show contrast.  The contrast is easily seen in the road lightening, the black Mickey Mouse balloons, the roof, windows, sides of the buildings, light pole, shadows, and trees.  I tried to exaggerate the lights and darks, but I know that this is something that I can keep working on because I tend to use a lot of similar greys, not "black" or "white".  But that will be a goal to keep working towards.  My techniques for this piece were just shading with a pencil, darkening and whitening areas to give the picture a realistic look.  I did not take many large risks, but it was a risk doing the whole perspective idea to start with.  My only experience with them is two drawings at the end of Art 1, so I don't really know all of the odds and ends of them.  Furthermore, since I was drawing from several pictures combined and it is an actual place, I wanted to include as many details as I could.  With trying to get the view perfect, I ended up taking my sketchbook home every night and just drawing a few lines or squares took almost twenty minutes!  I think you can really tell that the message in this drawing is that Disney World/ Main Street is a beautiful place that is only the beginning of a wonderfully fun and terrific vacation destination!  It was a time-consuming drawing, but I think that the end product is totally worth it because I look at it and see my dream home...Disney World!!!