Self Portrait

For our self portrait of ourselves, I found this to be a very interesting project. I had never really sketched out a picture of myself, or done much sketching in the recent past so it was very exciting.
I had practiced a lot of facial features before attempting the final project. Included in them were the eyes, lips, ears, nose, and muscle drawings. I also practiced proportions of the head with the egg-shaped structure and practiced shading. I found the eyes, muscles, and shading the easier parts of the project. I found the lips and shape of the head to be harder objects to draw. When attempting these drawings, I had used light pencils such as H or Hb to create the basic shape and then I had used darker pencils like 3b's or 4b's to shade it in and darken the picture.

All of this was incorporated into the final piece of the project, a self portrait of ourselves. We had looked at ourselves in the mirror and sketched out ourselves, sometimes being timed - this new approach to practice our proportions was really fun, but it helped me properly define certain proportions of knowing where the eyes, ears, lips, and nose where positioned on the head.

Putting everything into the final piece, we took a picture of ourselves and sketched out the picture. What I had found was that putting all the pieces together was much more difficult than drawing individual sections or parts of the face. Especially drawing myself, from a picture (I never like the outcomes of photos of myself), it seemed much more complex than what we had done before. I had proportions of the face quite distorted in comparison of what I really looked like. I had made a lot of changes before I was able to make things look more in proportion and shaped correctly. I had initially drawn up the circular shape, then added an oval shape to the bottom. However, this was in a 3/4 turned position and the shape was a little off from what it looked like, and it took me a long time to have that figured out. I initially had drawn the eyes, nose, ears, and mouth in once the shape was drawn, but they too were out of proportion. For this project, I had done plenty of erasing and drawing and erasing again. Probably one of the hardest things I've done in art! It took a very long time of trial and error, with help from friends and Ms. Cockburn to actually get the proportions and shape correct.
For shading the picture, I had found this easier than my other parts of the project, I was able to spot dark areas and light areas and actually mirror it on the picture (I thought). I had done shading, then I used my finger to smudge it to blend it better, then I used the kneaded eraser to take parts of unwanted areas out. The kneaded eraser was very important in my shading, as it helped to gradually take pieces of the darker areas out.

Overall, this was a fun, but very difficult project.

Shadow Box

Friday, May 8th, 2009:
This was the first day of our shadow box final summative. I had made two initial drawings, one a crossroad with some hills, and a scenic view of a waterfall from a helicopter. Ideas for this came from pictures in magazines. Putting the designs aside, as I could not seem to find a good one, I chose to do the physical labour part of the project, cutting out the rectangles for the shadow box, and cut out 24 cardboard squares and glued things together to make the shadow box.
Then, as I was listening to Stairway to Heaven, I used this song as an inspiration to design my shadowbox. It would incorporate my previous projects such as perspective, renaissance-inspired designs, painting landscapes, taping, and many painting techniques. I had completed about half of it, making a small gate, some clouds, and a curving staircase; it looked very good, however it appeared to me that it was a stereotypical view of a stairway to heaven. It was literally a stairway that goes into the stereotypical view of heaven, being clouds and some bright colours. I liked it, however it did not seem to have something special in it that stood out.
This was a challenging first step. I have never made a shadow box before, and I don’t really know what it may look like. To put a staircase into such a small space (cutouts) may prove to be very difficult. The design of this project is not as easy as I thought because we have to put pictures out in 3D, and I am somewhat doubting how it may turn out. I am also considering drawing up a bridge over troubled water, should a stairway not work.

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

For this class, I had redesigned the gate and spent some parts of it trying to think about how to add to the picture of “heaven”. I could not think of things to add, as it may be good enough to just keep it simple. I made extra cut outs of the stairway, the gate, as well as the clouds and glued it on top of a Mayfair cut out.
I plan to use collage to create the clouds, paint for the gate and the sky, and parallel lines for the staircase, and taping (painting) for the staircase, as it will probably be very difficult to paint such small areas. Also, not appearing on the picture, is the wind. I intend to create stencils of that and put copies of it across the top left corner of the picture plane.
This part of the process was somewhat difficult as I wasn’t sure of how and where to place certain objects that I have in mind and I am not sure if I should add it or not. Currently, the picture is relatively plain. I hope to try to add more into the picture, but by the way I set it up, it seems difficult to add much onto “heaven”.





Thursday, May 14, 2009

For this class, I had finished putting the black Mayfair paper underneath the white paper to give it some weight and thickness. I have also attached it to the frames of my shadow box. I have begun to collage the clouds, and they are nearly finished.
This class has been relatively easy, as the work I have done is mostly manual labour. The collage of the clouds is the toughest part of this class, as it is difficult to find a nice colour that would match the colour of the clouds. Another difficult part is visualizing the whole picture. It seems that the clouds at the moment may not look good, however it may change when it is contrasted beside the sky. For the next class, I hope to finish up my collage, and perhaps start parallel lines on the staircase. I have also cut out the stencil for wind.
That may be the hardest part of the picture, because the source of light is not precise yet. As it is already in the sky, drawing parallel lines for shadows may prove to be quite difficult.






Tuesday, May 19, 2009

On this day, I had spent a long duration of time painting the background. This was one of my more productive classes. I had started by making it all the pale blue, then adding white to the still-wet blue on the top. After that, I added more light colours onto the top half of the picture plane, signalling a perspective of heaven. The whole painting was done wet on wet, so I tried to apply plenty of paint, while adding some water to prevent it from drying too quickly. Then, I had added some light green and yellow onto the top. With these two additions, came violet, orange, and other shades of these colours with hints of white across the sky. At the bottom of the picture plane, I had added some lighter colours, but little in comparison to the top, these including violet, light blue and some white.
After partially completing the painting, I shaded in the staircase. Shading (with use of parallel lines) in the staircase was easier than I had expected, however due to the small area the shading didn’t work out too well as the pencil tended to dull quickly and I couldn’t get the desired neat parallel lines that I had wanted. I did not use a ruler to make it seem more natural.
Finishing the rest of this, I had then added changed around where the cardboard would position itself. Instead of going 3-2-1 (bottom to top), I changed the cardboard pieces to a 5-1, where it would actually work. The 3-2-1 had an extra depth so I had to change around the pieces to get the look I wanted.

Tuesday, May 20, 2009

This was my extra class after school. On this day, I may have

gotten the most amount of work done in one class. I had continued to paint some of the background, and add some touch ups of ultramarine blue into the bottom, to create a larger contrast with the light background. I had also continued painting the background, adding some light violet into the top and some white mixed in water. Playing around with the background, I had also added a small subliminal message in the clouds. With my wind shaped stencil, I had applied it 3 times into the upper left hand corner, each being a different colour.
When I had finished painting the sky, I had spent some time painting the gate. The end result of the gate does not look exactly how I wanted it to look, as it seems to look too colourful. This was a tough part of the project, as I had been doing very tedious work, using a tiny brush to paint very slim lines into the gate. I hate painted it a multitude of colours, making the bars on it a combination of roughly 6 different coloured lines. At the end, I had added extra lines with a black sharpie, vertically and horizontally. The vertical lines were for the sides, which I liked, however my horizontal lines for the “opening” part of the gate did not look too good with all of the light colours on the gate.
With the staircase, it was re-shaded and then re-shaded again except this time I used a sharpie. Using the sharpie gave it much more definitive parallel lines, which made the shadows look much more real. In addition to parallel lines, I had also painted the staircase, making it mainly white, with hints of yellow, orange, and yellow-orange. Here, I used taping to keep the paint contained within each step, as it was very difficult to paint straight lines in such a small space. The clouds were also shifted down to allow the gate to stand on-top of the clouds, rather than inside them.

Thursday, May 21, 2009

For this class, I felt like it was mostly completed, so I tried to play around with the picture that I already had. I had changed up the gate, turning it from a bar-like gate to one that was more of something you would see as an entrance to a garden. I drew one up from scratch, drawing inspiration from an advertisement, it seemed to me that a “garden-like” gate would be more suitable than a barred gate. I have made the gate lighter than the previous one, showing a happier side to heaven. This took some time to draw up, cut out (two, one regular paper, and one Mayfair), and paint. By next class, I hope to outline some of the gate to be able to define it more, as it is difficult to with the paintbrush as the surface area is very small. On the gate, there are also two sets of flowers and a ring of flowers on the top.
Also, I have added an extra 3 squares for depth on the first layer. Now, from the first layer to the second layer, there are 4 squares, and then 5 squares for the third layer. These extra squares help add depth to the staircase.
Due to the first layer being 4 squares above the second layer, the staircase along with the gate continued to fall down as it was too heavy. Beneath the staircase, I put in a small spring-folded paper to keep it standing where it should be. I also added dark colours to the bottom of clouds to show shadows and depth.

Unit 3: Interior or Exterior Perspective Painting

In my perspective painting, I have made a house with renaissance inspired architecture. It is made with acrylic paint.
The overall project was difficult. At first, I had to sketch out the picture using techniques involving vanishing points, horizon lines, and special methods to measure distances (such as pillars). This was relatively difficult at first, however it became easier as the project wore on, starting with boxes to chairs. Sketching my building was tough, as there were two vanishing points, this confused me sometimes on where to point certain lines. The shape of many individual parts of the building were difficult to sketch. Arches were difficult to draw, as the curvature of it never seemed correct for me and the landscape (lawn) was not easy to draw to match the shape of the building (as the vanishing points were moved up).
Painting the picture seemed even more difficult. I had never painted buildings before, and this was totally new to me. The light of the building seemed a little tricky, some areas green-blue, and some a pale orange. To make it more complicated, the light of my sketch was reversed when put onto the canvas, so I had to try to imagine things. Painting the building was quite difficult for me as I have never been able to draw moderately straight lines, and tihs was a critical part of the step. A problem in this involved the openings in the buildings with shadows. They appear to be black from the original picture, however when I applied the black onto the canvas, it showed up very poorly and contrasted the picture too greatly. I tried to adjust by adding some light green and light yellow to the black to make it stand out less.
Something that really helped out was the suggestion given to me to use a larger brush than the tiny one I was using. When I used the tiny brush, it turned out to be to flimsy, not allowing me to draw straight lines, however the thicker brush allowed me to improve this. Also drawing straight lines for me was difficult, and it was suggested that I paint keeping my wrist steady, going up and down to draw a straight line. This helped me a lot to draw straight.

However, I still feel that the painting can still be improved upon on many different areas. First, patience would be much more needed, as I lacked that, forcing me to redo many things over again to maintain a straight line or to stay in boundaries. My sketch was a lot neater than my painting, and painting it was difficult to stay inbetween boundaries as I had used a tiny brush, believing that it would be easier, it turned out to be more difficult.

Skateboard Unit 2

Sanding of the Deck:

The sanding of the deck was time consuming, but nonetheless exciting, knowing that we would have a smooth finish as the fruit of our labour. It was very good to practice using the grating and sanding tools, which may also be a good future use. The first stage in the sanding (using the grating tool) was quite difficult. I found it sometimes tough because the grate would get stuck in the board, or it may pull off ridiculously large pieces of the board. I found it easier to sometimes switch directions, which may sometimes help prevent the tearing off of large pieces. For technique, i found it much easier to use long straight strokes to get more out of the board with minimal effort. Using short strokes got much less out and i found short strokes to be less productive (in the sense that it would not be as smooth). I also sanded out the edges so that the board would be more round, and smoother overall. It seemed easier to hold the board tucked underneath your arms to grate the edges.
The second stage of the sanding process involved the use of sandpaper. I started at the 60, the most rugged, to remove the larger and unecesary parts of the board including chips and glue. Sand paper was an even slower process, however much more rewarding, getting smoother with every increase in sandpaper. I had to start off by removing all the glue and chips in the board. This was the most enduring, having to apply an extra amount of pressure to get rid of it. For the 60, most of the time was spent using my hand and sandpaper only. Using the 60, a lot of time was also spent on the sides. When i moved up to the 80, i applied the sandpaper to a (kindof) styrofoam base to cover more of the flat side of the board. Using this, i mostly went with the grain of the board, feeling much easier to go with, rather than against it. This was slightly smoother, and took almost as much off as the 60, but a little more refined. I moved slowly up the ranks of sandpaper not finding them all very effective. I didn't really see too much wood bits come up, so it seemed that they did not work. However, feeling the board you could really feel a difference. I could really see a difference when moving up to the 220 and the 400. Both of these produced lots of fine pieces of wood. They made a dramatic difference, taking away all the tiny deficiencies in the wood. The 400 especially, was very good in making the whole board smooth out. By then, the entire board basically felt like a piece of paper. Overall i thought that i was able to make the board very smooth around the edges and the deck.

The Painting:

This process was a moderately dfficult process. The designing of it in pencil was an interesting process where we could draw on a large variety of inspiration, where I finally went with the idea of a guitar. I spent a good deal of time designing the rest of it, adding flames, an octopus, and other objects to the guitar. The next part was harder, where we had to cut out stencils for the skatseboard. This was my least enjoyed part of the project, because the task was tedious, but the final output was well worth it. The designs were applied to paper first. This was fun, as I was able to experiment with different tones and colours. I was able to try many new designs and eventually get a few designs I liked from the 3 different paintings I did. From this, I also developed a few more stencil designs, including the peace symbol, curve-design, and squares.

Then it was time to make a final. I put all my favourite designs together, and applied it to another sheet of paper. This included a blue-white background, the V-shaped guitar(black and white), orange peace symbols, flames, and had nearly perfected the technique by using the sponge.

After completing the paper copy. I moved onto the real skateboard. I had designed the whole thing with extreme caution, making sure that I did not screw up on the final - after so many trials. I had done everything, but left out the detailed designs such as the flames, octopus, and waves. I felt that the plain black and white guitar (with a brown neck) looked better without the designs. I felt that I had complicated some things with all the extra designs and it did not look as good. Keeping it simple made the guitar turn out better and have the middle stand out.

Poetry Transformation

What discoveries or techniques did you find helpful through the process? What are two skills that you learnt and what is one area that you feel you work on to improve your skills?
- Looking at the picture at a distance

- Heavy brush stroke and Light brush stroke

- Using a small, firm brush for blackbird (Also tried to contrast it with water to bring it out)

- Large strokes for an effect (distance)

- Short strokes for further distances

- Flicking the paintbrush for snow (This didn't work out as well as I wanted it to, because it created some very large snowballs) {I eventually went to a tiny brush and did dotting work)

Interpret the Poem

A literal interpretation of the poem would be that there is a blackbird that stands out somewhere, but it is also very small, as it is among many large mountains. The mountains are snowing, and it would keep snowing, however there is a large river that keeps flowing through the area. There are also other blackbirds that are flying around, with an ominous green glow around it. Stephens uses a blackbird and repeats it through the 13 verses to guide the reader through a process of self questioning and self reflection.

How you used certain elements or principles of design to describe the selected piece of poetry.

Shape - Many large mountains in the background behind the blackbird

Line - Horizontal lines for the river flowing across the poetry

Size - The blackbird is tiny compared to the entire background, however it CONTRASTS the background, bringing it out

Value- Dark background, and lighter sky and river

Contrast- Contrasting of mountains/tree/blackbird with sky, river, ground

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Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
By: Wallace Stevens

I Among twenty snowy mountains, The only moving thing Was the eye of the blackbird.
II I was of three minds, Like a tree In which there are three blackbirds.
III The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds. It was a small part of the pantomime.
IV A man and a woman Are one. A man and a woman and a blackbird Are one.
V I do not know which to prefer, The beauty of inflections Or the beauty of innuendoes, The blackbird whistling Or just after.
VI Icicles filled the long window With barbaric glass. The shadow of the blackbird Crossed it, to and fro. The mood Traced in the shadow An indecipherable cause.
VII O thin men of Haddam, Why do you imagine golden birds? Do you not see how the blackbird Walks around the feet Of the women about you?
VIII I know noble accents And lucid, inescapable rhythms; But I know, too, That the blackbird is involved In what I know.
IX When the blackbird flew out of sight, It marked the edge Of one of many circles.
X At the sight of blackbirds Flying in a green light, Even the bawds of euphony Would cry out sharply.
XI He rode over Connecticut In a glass coach. Once, a fear pierced him, In that he mistook The shadow of his equipage For blackbirds.
XII The river is moving. The blackbird must be flying.
XIII It was evening all afternoon. It was snowing And it was going to snow. The blackbird sat In the cedar-limbs.

Collage

What discoveries or techniques did you find helpful through the process? What are two
skills that you learnt and what is one area that you feel you work on to improve your
skills?

I found that tearing out small pieces, little by little really helped get a more detailed picture. You had to be patient to be able to do this, because without it, you could not make it detailed and precise. I feel that i may have been able to spend a little more time on the long plant area (lower right corner) That could have been done by using scissors to get a thinner piece.

Random Drawings