Self-Portrait as a Dolphin in a Desert

I portrayed myself as a dolphin because it is a family animal, it likes to have fun, its very close with its friends, and it appears to be a very gentle but it can attack if neccisarry. I placed it in a desert because a desert is constantly changing with the wind, never sure how to make up it's mind. I also picked it because a desert only has two modes, sunny and bright or dark and unwelcoming. It's like me in the way that either I have no middle ground, I am either very happy or wanting to be left alone to just be in my own thoughts.

I have only used clay once in the past. To make patterns and textures, I used generally wire, a narrow stick that I suppose was sold as a sculpting tool, and my hands to make the smooth surface of the dolphin. I liked working with the clay because it had so many possibilites and if there was a mess up, you could just rub the clay smooth and fix it.

I See The Light

My goal using light was to guide the viewers eyes to the seat of the swing and it's shadow. There wasn't much of a plan when I started drawing this, I just had this one track in my mind that said "swing set" and I just worked from there. I mainly used the heaviest pencil (6B), the medium pencil (B) and the lightest (H) to get the shades I wanted. I also used the eraser to highlight points, like the ropes. I discovered while doing this project that I enjoy shading with charcol much better, it's much easier to make shade lighter when you mess up.

Print Making Project

The print making project was difficult for me. I don't think that I have a single print that turned up lined up on the blue background. However I think I got one or two good prints out of it. The challenge for me was getting all the paint to stay on the paper (it kept peeling off when I added a new layer) and trying to get it all to line up at least a little. If I were to do this again, I would clearly label on my sheet where I lined the block and paper which side was up, that might have come in handy.

Light in Art

Defined light in art can be seen as strong feeling, both negative and positive. It can mean hope, fear, discovery, beauty, basically alot of things. The light brings out the subject of the painting, emphasizing it to portray the emotion the artist was projecting.

I am a sister, electrophilic, and happy to be me.

I think the overall goal of this project was to show different faccets of our personalities. I think I did that very well in showing my soccer playing side, my totaly plugged in side, the part of me that is me because of my attention span disorder, how much I love music, my Swedish pride, my vegitarian pride, and how much I love my little sister. All of these make me who I am in a very large way. I don't think I can see my work from any other perspective but my own because the amount of time and out of class hours I've spent on making it unique. I think the biggest strength of my project is definitely it's originality because I doubt that anyone in the class also made a large colorful spiral. I think the biggest part that came through is my inability to focus on any single thing on my life. I have A.D.H.D and it makes my life slightly less, well boring is a way to put it. But basically, there are many factors in my life that make me who I am and I think that shone through well. This was shown by the swirl of the project that seemed to form together making it so the eye couldn't focus on one particular part for very long.

Alexander DeMaria

I like this piece because its movement. It flows from the center up and out and the down to right and around. It causes the eye to keep moving with the colors and the way the lines flow which make the picture fun to look at. It doesn't quite fit in with his other work because it's more colorful and less based on flowly, fantastical designs and more on reality.

Question for him: How does the artwork of "Blown Speakers" fit into the general genre of your work?

Reflecting on the Self-Portrait

With in our discussion groups we discussed my nontraditonal self portrait. It is no where close to done however so I also brought over my draft. What was done was complimented and asked about. The reaction was it was complicated but in a good way and I needed to fill in a bit more. I need at least 4 more classes after today to complete my project because of all of its different arms.