Final Project

For this project I chose acrylic and graphite. I like sketching in pencil and am best at shading and creating depth with pencil, and I find it easier to create a dripping effect with acrylic paint. The background was also too big for me to do with marker or sharpie, so I chose black paint for a darker and more opaque color. Having both the graphite and acrylic gave me more contrast and allowed me to show the light and dark of depression more easily. This was a surrealism project, but I still wanted to make a statement so I chose something creepy (a mask) and used the blood to show the pain and the leaking. Had I used acrylic for the shading in the mask, I would not have been able to get the shadows the way I wanted them and if I had used graphite pencil for the background I would not have been able to get the deep, dark black color to represent the emptiness that comes with depression. The mask idea came from the fact that for a lot of people, hiding their depression behind a "mask" of happiness is easier because they don't want anyone to know what's wrong or to upset their family and friends. I think that this piece is really successful. It conveyed the message that I wanted it to with an eerie emptiness. The piece in general also looks pretty good and is neat and put together.



I picked just acrylic for this piece because it is one of my favorite mediums to use. In this art work, I tried to show that even though the world is separate and we (humans) are all different and come from different places, we all have the same roots and need to work together to make the world a better place. Using acrylic helped me to convey the message by allowing me to use a lot of layering and blending to create depth and mix/blend the colors easily. I initially used black for the continents, then went in with a dark green. I then mixed the dark green with a lighter green and was able to sort of highlight the center of the continents. I was also able to give the tree more depth and dimension by adding blacks and dark browns to the lighter browns to create shadows. I think that this piece was very successful. I was able to convey the message I wanted to successfully (though maybe not obviously) and depict it in a way that I liked and showed some of my best art skills.





I really enjoyed the portrait unit, even though I did not at first. It was challenging, but one of the things that I wanted to work on in this class was drawing people and capturing facial expression. My final project for portraits is pictured below). I also enjoyed the surrealism unit, because even though at first I (again) did not like it, I learned that surrealism isn't cut and dry, and that it includes so many different subjects and ideas. I don't really know what I would add to this class to make it better, but I really do not enjoy blogs that much. They aren't that bad, but I know some other people dislike them enough that they wouldn't want to take another art class if they were mandatory. I feel like maybe just writing a short paragraph by hand before we do the gallery walks may help some, just to answer the questions that we would usually answer in blogs. I would also not have so many presentations. We didn't necessarily have a lot, but for people who get really nervous to present it is difficult, especially when you are put in groups of people you do not know. Overall, I really enjoyed this class and the freedom that we had in our projects.






We were here. #swag #squad