Symbolic Clay Sculpture Portrait

I chose to make my sculpture resembling my best friend Mel. She is extremely funny and very loud. She has a great sense of humor but is serious and helpful at the same time.
Based off of Mel, I am making a sculpture of a monkey. Monkeys are funny and entertaining, just like Mel.
I would put the monkey in a yoga studio. You would never expect to see a monkey or Mel in a quiet and calm place.

Symbolic Portrait

I plan to make a portrait of my great aunt. She is my role model and an amazing person. She lives in New York City at the age of 97. She has a great humor always has a positive attitude. I am going to put New York City in the background and add bright colors as a symbol to a bright/positive attitude. My great great aunt always wears bright pink lipstick with blue eye liner so I am going to incorporate those colors into the painting. I may make a sunset in the background with blue, yellow, and pink. Also, she used to be a dancer and still goes to Alvin Ailey to watch the dancers so I may put Alvin Ailey some where in the painting or add dance shoes to it.

Visiting artist: Hamlett Dobbins

I really like this piece of Hamlett Dobbins work. I like how it has many shapes and has a modern feel to it. Also, looks 3D in a way because the zig zag likes are getting smaller as they move backwards. Another thing that caught my attention was the yellow rhombus. The detail within it is very interesting and unique. The color choice in the painting is very good too. It is good that the zig zag lines are pink and red because the colors go together. Also, having the rhombus yellow makes it stand out more. This painting fits into his others because all his pieces of artwork have something to do with shapes and colors.

A question for Hamlett Dobbins: What inspires you to do the type of artwork you do? Why chose this over realistic drawing?

Reflecting on Group Work

Working in a group on one artwork has been more difficult than I expected. I thought because everyone in my group is friends and we all have our own strengths it would be easier. We all have our own ideas and what we think would look good which makes it hard. When you make art on your own, you can do whatever you want to it and use all the ideas you have in your head. With a group, you have to be able to compromise and admit that some of other peoples ideas are good and better than your own. Even though it has been hard, there are many great things that have come up while working. Once my group stuck to a plan and idea of what to do, we knew we wanted to make it happen. We all agreed on a specific plan and had an idea of how to work with everyone's strengths and weaknesses. We were able to mix colors correctly to a shade everyone agreed on and work on one paper all at the same time without getting too frustrated. I feel like I have helped the group out with ideas. I am a very organized person, so when I knew something would not look right or would not look good I was able to say it. Once we started the mural everything came together and as of right now, I really like how the mural looks!

Start of a Long Lasting Ritual

End of Term 1 Reflection

At my previous school, art class was a joke. I didn't know what to expect coming to Beaver and knowing art was a major part of this school. I did not enjoy art as much as I do now before coming to Beaver. I believe that my skills have grown since the beginning of the term and I have learned what materials I am best at using. From all the projects we have done, I have learned many things. For example, I have experienced drawing from observation. I learned how to shade objects and try to make them look like their actual shape. Also,  after using all the different materials, I realized that I really enjoy using pastels. I like being able to smudge the colors into each other. Also, I was surprised to know that I like using charcoal and being able to use the white charcoal to shade the colors into each other. I didn't think I would like the charcoal because I am a perfectionist and using the charcoal means you are going to have smudges and marks on places where you don't want them to be. My biggest success and the piece of artwork that I like the most was the extending our findings from the pour paintings. I drew a flower out of pastels and had each of the petals different colors blended together. I have learned over the course of the term that I need to be able to let loose and go with the flow. I need to be able to say that it is okay if I do not like one of my artworks and be able to move on.

Overall, I have learned a lot about myself as an artist over the course of the term and am excited to see what the next term will teach me!

Chair with Coat

I found today's drop everything and draw less complicated compared to the last few weeks still life's we have had to draw. Even though the shape of the chair's headrest was not perfect, i was able to shade it to get the feeling that it was a headrest. The white paper, sticks, and fabric was much for difficult than drawing the chair because it the other still life's had many aspects to them. For example, in the past weeks, we have had to draw multiply sticks over lapping, whereas this week we only had to draw one simple object.

I used the skills of shading that I learned over the past. I also was able to make my drawing of the chair feel like a chair which i would not have been able to do a few weeks ago.