Hannah

=AP CONCENTRATION=


 * Last 3 pieces:**

Concentration: third 3 pieces
Roses: The roses represent love. I like the direction in which this piece is heading. I think the addition of the fake roses really helped to make this piece stand out. I still need to balance the composition, maybe with drips of color or some stronger texture. I need to pay more attention to the details on the petal, such as the way that the light hits each individual petal.

Snowflakes: The snowflakes represent the fragile environment. The snowflake in focus is not breaking into pieces, but instead, melting away. The texture in the background really helped to make this composition interesting, but it still needs work. I would like to go back into the snowflakes and add intricate details. Money: the economy. I am very pleased with how this piece turned out. Using a wash of paint to color the dollar bills really helped to make the paper money pop. The tears and shreads add a nice detail to the piece and the background also adds.

Concentration: second 3 pieces
I think with these most recent pieces I have started to develop a unique way of organizing my compositions. I have taken the idea I used with the house of cards piece in the fact that I am using actual pieces of the material (or similar material) that I am portraying. I didn't start this until my last two pieces.

Clock/gears: Time
In this piece, I used the gray scale markers for the entire composition. I think have a perspective with the gears really helped to push this one along. I still need to go back and accomplishment sharp edges as well as touch up parts of the background. I still need to find a way to have the numbers and the gears interact more than they are right now.

Stained glass: faith/belief
This piece has been very successful in my opinion. First, I worked on a bigger scale than I have been working for my previous pieces. I used different materials to realistically render the surface of stained glass. I used cut up pieces of a plastic divider from a binder to get the shiny, glossy appearance of stained glass. I used paint to put in the lead lines between the panes and brought that out into the shattered pieces which really helped to tie the components of the piece together.

Ornament: tradition
This piece has only just been started because I got a little bit behind, but I am pleased with the direction in which it is heading. I have worked on a smaller scale and cropped the composition so that it is a close up view of an ornament. I am going to use pieces of broken metallic ornaments to represent the parts that are shattering off. I will have to work hard to get a realistic rendering of the sheen of the ornament on the part that I am painting.

Concentration: first 3 pieces
So, I'm pretty sure I made a good transition with these first three pieces. In all honesty, when I started on this concentration, I had absolutely no idea where it was going to go. I had the idea of things falling apart but I wasn't completely sure where I was going to go with that.... fragile objects? dense objects? abstract? realistic? While working on my first piece, I decided to take the time to really think it through. I put some serious thought into my idea and really thought of what would work best to fit my artistic ability, especially in this first month when I had to use my left hand, and couldn't really get the small, intricate designs that I might have wanted. So, this brainstorming left me with a more concrete concept. Fragile objects that are breaking apart, but these objects represent different aspects or themes in life.

Bubbles: innocence
Bubbles are seemingly innocent, clean, pure, transparent. The colors are bright and lively. They are moving across a background and there are bubbles that are brought in front more so than others. Then, the biggest bubble pops as it hits a darker spot in the background. Collaged pieces with letters with rough, ripped edges fall to the ground as the bubble breaks apart.

Lightbulb: knowledge
A lightbulb represents new ideas, knowledge, wisdom, and creativity. But a person's knowledge can easily shatter when we realize that we really don't know everything. I used an image from the internet as my source to follow. A broken lightbulb that gives a lit up appearance. Swirls of smoke spiral out of the lightbulb and create an interesting negative space. I went to Michaels and bought paper that had a metallic sheen on neutral colors like cream, gray, dark gray, and white. I printed off various quotes on this paper with other neutral colors. I made these words take on the shape of wisps of smoke that left the lightbulb. I then took a black wash over certain areas of the text and went on top of this with white pastel.

House of Cards: patience
For this piece a took a somewhat different approach with materials. I did not use pastels, I used the actual material I wanted to represent. Playing cards. I cut up the cards into small pieces and collaged them back into a house of cards. I spent a very long time to focus on the tedious idea of perspective. I placed the house of cards on a background covered with red and purple tissue paper. As the house of cards went back in perspective, the collaged pieces started to spread apart until the pieces of cards began to float away from the house of cards.

Sketchbook

Photoshop: Working with Photoshop was a new experience for me. I had used it once, but I had no idea what I was doing. I really enjoyed figuring how to do things as I went along. Although I liked using the computer, I really like the concrete feeling of using medias such as paint, pencils, and so on. For some reason, that is more satisfying to me. This definitely will help me when I work on my concentration since I will have limited use of my wrist for about a month in January. I can use Photoshop without having too much trouble. I can use photoshop to create pieces with shadows and collage/mosaic textures. Embracing Chaos:

Embracing chaos is probably the hardest thing in the world for me, but I did it... and maybe, possibly, just a little bit, it wasn't to extremely horrifying. I might have actually enjoyed working on this project.... maybe. Ok, fine it was pretty neat and I guess it was too hard to find some sort of reconciliation. Of course, that first day when we were splattering paint, I thought that I was going to lose it and with the first sling of the paint brush, I actually screamed. But I soon figured out that it wasn't that bad. Of course, this didn't happen until I found some sort of unifying factor. I tried first with a light blue wash in the corner, but wasn't sure where I was going to take it. So then I brought elements of the map, which was in my background, into the piece. I brought in what looked like water and either brought it behind or in front of the original objects. I repeated these shapes with both a beige and a white. With this, I feel as if the objects fell back. Also, the original wash that I included really helped. I guess this piece could carry the message of the fact that harmony can be created through art even though the different ideas or subjects don't really blend together. I guess the same for go for a life meaning to. People who are completely different can turn out to mesh together really well.

Project 3

For the ridiculous object still life, I really enjoyed using the charcoal. It was a nice change from the self portrait when we used pencil. I enjoy charcoal because I really like being able to blend values by smudging and have patches of solid values instead of having the pencil line texture. Personally, I didn't really like the subject matter because I had a difficult time taking the project seriously since I was drawing stuffed animals, rubber ducks, and a guitar hero guitar. I guess that if this was a concentration I would maybe the idea of a normal looking piece of artwork, with a crazy subject. I would probably use something with copying the techniques of well known artists to create work that looked classic and elegant, but when the viewer looked closer they would be shocked to find that the subject was ridiculous and wild. I doubt I would ever do this though, seeing as I wouldn't be able to take it seriously.

Project 2



I actually really enjoyed this project, even though I seemed to struggle.It was somewhat tedious using pencil, I feel that it turned out really well. If light was a metaphor, I guess it could symbolize what is seen and not seen by others. I would say that half of my face is in light and half is in dark. This could symbolize that other people only know half of me. This actually sort of works because in general I feel that I have two different personalities. I have a bold, talkative, outgoing personality at school, but outside of Westminster, I tend to be more introverted. I guess most of my friends don't see the "dark side" of my portrait. The part that is in the shadows and tends to hold back. I kind of look crazy and excited which matches my "school" personality, the one I tend to show more often. If this was the start of a body of work, I would probably find other objects are ideas that I could use to have light and dark referencing my personality. I guess you can always find a way to relate life to art, even though it might sound cheesy, but the more I have thought about this is sort of makes sense....?

Project 1



My original object was a clock, which transformed into an hourglass, because I felt that it would be a more interesting composition. I liked the idea of a definate visual of time slipping away and moving quickly. So I guess I sort of used the abstract idea of time as my focus. If I was doing this as a concentration I could easily illustrate time through numbers, activities, seasons, colors, etc. Using paint made me realize that I had to vary my textures. Since my color scheme was all blue, I needed to have something showing variation with in my work. I used a distinct, raised texture to show the sand, and used smooth blocks to show the reflections. I feel that this work shows who I am as a person--- someone who stresses about running out of time, and time slipping away.