Self-Portrait Project

I had a lot of fun working on self-portrait project. It is supposed to symbolize awareness around the world. The eyes mean seeing your surroundings, the ears mean to listen to the people and problems around you, the mouths mean to talk about issues that face the world, and the hands mean to do something about the issues that face the world. It was fun and interesting project for me because it wasn't the usual drawing or painting I do. I really struggled with coming up with an idea at first for this project but after a lot of brainstorming I am happy about the result.

Place Project

I really enjoyed the place project because it was a place that meant a lot to me. I drew the Armenian Genocide Memorial in Armenia with rain everywhere except on the flame. The rain was suppose to symbolize how trouble may come our way and their may be rough times but the fire symbolized how we will always stay strong and keep hope. It was scary to put the rain in because I felt like it may ruin it but I was very happy with the result. I liked having the flame as the only thing colored in.

Headline Project

The headline project was not my favorite project. My headline was "Montreal Street Gets New Life". I am not a the biggest fan of drawing people so I didn't particularly enjoy that. I do think that I improved on drawing people though. The drawing shows an alien coming down from a spaceship in a green glow while people watch this occurring.

Candy Painting

I really enjoyed working on the candy painting! I liked mixing the paint despite its difficulty at times. The most difficult part of the painting for me was the wrapper. I didn't expect to enjoy painting as much as I did. It was also difficult to get the color of my background right and I would not get enough paint but it worked out at the end. Applying the sugar to the candy was shocking because I didn't think it would turn out as it did. It was fun to work on!

Artist-in-Residence: Alexander DeMaria

I thought Alex's work was fantastic! I was shocked by how much detail he used and the hours of time it took to create the pieces. I was also surprised by the fact that he used pen for his art pieces because I know that if I work in pen I always have this fear of messing up and having to start over. I enjoyed his work greatly and was overwhelmed by how great of an artist he is. I can not wait to see his show! My question for Alex would be: How do you start your pieces, like the planning for the piece? How much time do you put in planning for the piece? Is it at all scary to work in pen? and What draws you to working in pen? His response to the pen questions were that if he messes up he just finds a way to cover it up or go over it. He said he was drawn to pen when Dungeons and Dragons asked him to do a pen drawing and he just stuck with it because he liked the way it looked better than the colored pencils he used to use for his drawings.

Drawing from Observation Skills

The skills that it took to create my drawings are endurance, focus, being open to criticism, value, placement, and texture. It took endurance because for some of the drawings we spent a lot of time on them and on one double block, we spent the whole two hours on one drawing which required endurance as well as focus. When we did drawings that focused on placement of things compared to other things, we had to be open to criticism and willing to change our drawing because sometimes if one thing was off, we had to change the whole drawing.
I had never focused on texture so much, so in the zoom drawing it was something I got to work and improve on. As well as for endurance, I hadn't really worked a straight couple hours on a drawing so it took time to stay focused and keep working. I enjoyed working on placement because it gave me an opportunity to take the time to mainly focus on the placement. I had to focus on certain things like value, texture, placement specifically which let me improve more on certain skills.

Collaborative Drawing

When I approached each drawing, I mainly looked at the position and size of the things in the drawing compared to how they really looked in the room. In the ones I approached I saw the sides of the trash were missing so I added them and the positioning would be off so I moved or tilted them. What I did was I looked at the view I had and the view the drawing showed and tried to see if there were any differences. I moved things closer together in order to shrink the space between some objects. It was difficult to see the mistakes at first but when I started looking into the drawing more I found ways that the drawing could be improved.
When I looked at my drawing at the end, I thought it looked good and I could tell that people had changed a few things because of the erase marks but I couldn't remember what my drawing looked exactly like before. I could tell they had made the carpet smaller and moved the trash. They had added in the wood and water bottle since I hadn't gotten to them when I had left my drawing. To finish my drawing I mainly added in value and made some objects less blurry. I didn't have much to do after I added some value so, I finished the drawing fairly quickly.