Renaissance Post Card

For my renaissance post card, I chose to do the hands in "The Creation of Adam". I simply cropped the hands of the original picture, then sketched it myself. I had to focus on the shades and highlights of the picture to make my drawing look realistic. For me, the hardest to draw was the fingers, because I would either make them too long, too chubby, or the spacing was off. Overall, it took me 2 days to finish my drawing, and I am happy with the finished look.

#Niprockart

For my "#niprockart" project, I chose to do something basic, so I decided to do pointillism. I used blues and greens for the colours, because I think they look nice together. First, I started off by lighty drawing the letters in a straight line, then I started to colour my dots in each letter. I would put the dots closer together at the bottom of the letter to make that part of the letter look darker. I would also add some black dots to add shading. As I got closer to the top of the letter, I would add less dots to make it look lighter. I was pleased with how the finished look turned out. 

Contemporary Vs. Traditional Art

Contemporary Artist

I chose to look at the British contemporary artist, Simon Beck. He is known for his famous "snow art", which he creates different abstract patterns in the snow using his snow shoes. Each pattern is crafted by Simon alone in the town of Les Arcs, where he lives during the winter months. He uses a oriernteering compass to help create his perfect geometric shapes. Simon spends up to 10 hours a day perfecting his designs. I think Simon is extremely talented and patient to spend so much time creating his perfect art pieces. He is also very good at making measurements, because he has to determine how big each pattern is going to be with the land he is working with. 

Traditional Artist

I chose to look at the traditional artist, Vincent Van Gogh, because when I think of traditional art, his "Starry Night" painting is the first image that pops-up in my mind. In "Starry Night" I particularly like Van Gogh's swirly brush strokes, because it gives the illusion that the painting is constantly moving. I also like the vibrant colours that he chose for his painting. This makes certain parts of his paintings really stand out.
 

Culminating

1. Challenging and Inspiring

My first thoughts on the project were I was a little intimated by the length of the project and if I am able to get it done in time so that it will look good. The materials that I was first going to use for this project was paint, and paint a collage of the things that represent me, but then I was doodling on a piece of paper with a black gel pen, and liked the way it looked, so I changed my idea to drawing with the pen instead of painting. I will be drawing these pen sketches on a canvas.

This is the doodling that I did which inspired me to sketch with a gel pen.

2 & 3. Imagining, generating, planning and focusing. 

I next took a large piece of paper and began to sketch some pictures that represent the things I like. One of the sketches that I didn't like was I wrote my name large in the middle of the page, and I want this project to represent the things that I like, and having my name doesn't show the things that I like.

4 & 5. Exploring and experimenting/ producing preliminary work

When I started to experiment with the gel pen, I had to practice how to shade different areas of the picture. I like how the finished product looked. One difficulty that I came across was that the pen would sometimes run out of ink, but other then that, I really like the effect that sketching with a pen gives.

6. Revising and Refining

I shared my preliminary work with Ethan and I asked him to give me feedback on how I could improve my sketches and he told me that I should blend the shading more to make it look more realistic. So I will take his siggestion into consideration when making my final sketches.

7. Presenting and performing

This is the final look. I didn't end up using the canvas to draw on, because I didn't like how the pen looked on it, it was also hard to draw on because the pen was barely showing on it. I am very pleased with the end result of this project.

8. Reflecting and evaluating

I believe I have reached my learning goal because my drawing shows the different things that represent me. 

I think I could of used my time more efficiently and not have procrastinated as much. However, I was able to finish my drawing and and the questions to go along with it as well.

What I would change is planning better. I found that I didn't plan enough as to what I was going draw, so this wasted a lot of time. I would have liked to put more thought into my ideas to have a more successfully art piece.

The planning helped me generate my ideas, and it saved me a lot of time, so when it came time for me me to create my art piece, I was just sitting there wondering what to do next.

Norval Morriseau

The PowerPoint we watched about the aboriginal painter, Norval Morriseau, was very informational. It mainly talked about Norval's life and his woodland art. I thought it was cool when he was referred to as the Picasso of the north. His paintings were very unique because he used a variety of different types of lines, colours, and shapes. Also, Norval's paintings had spiritual meanings. The PowerPoint also talked about his association to the group of seven and how he influenced them. It also talked about norvels life and his art, and it showed differnt styles of woodland art. It showed how lines and color were important to woodland art, and the pantings were based after spiritual meanings. He faced the struggle of rejection because people didn't understand the spiritual meaning behind his paintings. Morriseau was so important because he was the first traditional aboriginal artist. 

http://youtu.be/pcznBdkZMEs

My mosaic project

For my mosaic art project, I chose to do a beach scene. I got this idea by looking at different mosaics on Google and this particular picture caught my eye:

When it came time to choose my materials for this project, I remembered that my grandma had a lot of different colored glass marbles, so I took the colors that I needed which were, light brown, dark brown, and black for the sand, white for the foam in the water, and different colors of blue for the water. I used grout to glue the marbles on a piece of wood. A challenge that I faced while creating this scene was that some of the marbles wouldn't properly fit where I wanted them to go and either they would hang over the edge or fall off, so I had to go through the marbles to find a perfect match to fit the space. This was one of my favourite projects to do! 

Here is the finished look:

Dot Day Project

For my dot day project, I chose to do a square on the class mural. I started by painting my square white so that my colors would look vibrant. Once the paint dried, I started to draw my pattern which are circles that over lap each other, I drew the circles in rings that resemble a target.

Here is a picture similar to what I did:

After I finished drawing my circles, I lightly erased my pencil marks just enough so I can still see the outlines. I then got multiple colors of paint and mixed a certain color to get a variety of different shades. For example I would use blue, and mix it with white, black, or purple, then I would paint the rings. One obstacle that I faced while painting was that there would be a few of us students working on the mural at once so there would constantly be someone erasing which caused the mural to shake and potentially mess up another student. Other than that, I really enjoyed doing this project!

Here is my painting so far: