Monster High Doll with Shakira

I decided to use a monster high doll as my inspiration because of the colored hair, skin, and the large eyes and mouth.  The doll also has really skinny limbs so while it was tricky to make Shakira crazy skinny, it also looks like really cool while kind of weird. The most difficult part was changing the color of her hair because I had to select only her hair and then change the hues and saturation.

Retouching

This project was interesting because it really showed how magazine pictures can manipulated and the extent to which a picture can be altered.  It helped improve my knowledge of photoshop tools though because of the use of blurring her skin, using patching tools, and even brightening colors like I did to her eyes.

After Visiting Artist

I was surprised by the project
 because it was much easier than I had imagined but still a fun and challenging project to complete. It was kind of hard to bend the wire into the shape I wanted but after a while it became a lot easier. I think the hardest part was wrapping the wire and bags with cloth and yarn because I was trying to make sure there was no dangling string and that the bags and wire were completely covered. I am really happy with the head of my panther because it started out as the part of the piece I disliked the most but once I added ears, eyes, and a nose, I was pleased with the end result.

Dripping Flowers

Creating the dripping paint look coming off the flowers was really tedious but a lot of fun.  I loved blending the paint drips into the petals' textures and colors. Each petal is a different shade of the coral pink so each one was completely different. I wasn't sure at first if I was going to have paint drip from the yellow pollen but I am really glad I did because it helps complete the image of paint dripping from the entire flower. 

Before Visiting Artist Bryant Holsenbeck

Before Visiting Artist: 
1. Bryant Holsenbeck is an environmentalist who uses materials we wouldn't normally think of as "art supplies". By using trash bags, broken CD's, scraps of cloth and other pieces that have been thrown away as "trash", Holsenbeck creates an entirely unique style of pieces. She works with the community to create amazing and environmental friendly pieces of art. Although she started out as a basket maker, she is now devoted to creating installations and pieces of art all out of recycled materials.
2.I expect to be surprised by the different techniques she will teach us on how to make our trash bags into animal works of art. I have never done a project from recycled materials and I am excited to have her teach us how.
3.I think that we will all have a little trouble at the project first because most of us have never created an animal out of bags. However, I do know that we will all try our best to create the animals with our own skill and Holsenbeck's instruction.
4.I am planning to make a white tiger because even though I won't be able to capture all of the tiger's beauty it will still represent the gorgeous animal.
5.Favorite Pieces:
             
6. My animal idea:
     

Painted Pig

I did a splatter painted pig after I had finished my other projects because the splatfant had been really fun to do and I wanted to do the paint look on another animal.

Vessels: Dice Candle Holders

Artists Create Original Art-
I had decided that I had wanted to make something out of clay that could hold a candle and allow light to shine through. I thought of dice because I have always liked the simplicity of a pair of dice and it the dots could be the holes that have light shining through. Originally I thought to keep it white like traditional dice but the light would like white so I painted it black so that the values would stand out more.
Some inspiration I had when coming up with this idea was some pictures I had taken several months ago of pairs of dice, both white and black. Just two simple cubes with some dots has a sense of simplicity about them and I knew that they would work well if made out of clay.
Artists Solve Problems-
I am a bit of a perfectionist so I was determined to make sure that the holes were all perfect circles but because of that I would be constantly be cutting at the clay and taking more and more away. Some areas between dots got so thin that they were on the verge of breaking so I had to learn to be really gentle and to be careful not to cut to much away.
One of the mistakes that happened when I was cutting the holes was towards the end when the clay was a lot harder and easier to break. About a third of one piece broke off so that I had to re- score and slip the piece and line it up with the holes I had cut out. After I had smoothed all the clay together though it looked like it never happened.
Artists Take Risks-
One of the risks I took was the material itself. I have never been all that good at working with clay so I was a little skeptical of how square I could make it look and how round the holes could be.  I also had to make sure that all my clay was smooth and that all the texture that come off the cloth was gone. I had been really worried that I may have not gotten all the air bubbles out or that a piece would break off but it came out perfect and really happy with the overall result.

Contour Line Drawings

Over the last few days I have done several contour line drawings of my hand, instruments, a hallway and my classroom. While I am not the biggest fan of doing contour line drawings, they do help me improve my drawing techniques and help me to draw more fluid lines instead of sketching them.

X-Ray

The X-ray project I did was a really cool one because I had to make the skeleton look just like an x-ray and then fit it inside the oval frame.  I also had to make sure that the bones of the x-ray lined up with my head and shoulders to create the realistic look of a real x-ray.

Tiger Owl

My tiger owl was a lot of fun because it was interesting to find the animals i would use, to blend the textures together to create a more realistic effect, and to see the overall image that was a very cool looking tiger crossed with a snowy owl.  I chose these two animals because they are both gorgeous animals and they are very similar in color. They also go together perfectly because of the stripes the owl naturally has which match the tiger's stripes.

Splatfant

This tutorial was a lot of  fun because I had to figure out just how to make the splatters appear to be on the elephant by adjusting the appearance of the layer and the opacity of the image. I am pleased with the end result because the paint actually looks like it was thrown on the elephant.

Gunslinger

This was a very  interesting project because I had to include several pictures that were all cropped together to create the overall image. It was fun experimenting with the different shadow options to make the images more realistic in its environment. I really enjoyed figuring out how to use the pictures and the cartoon together and I am really happy with the end result.

White on Black

 This was done with white pencil on black paper from a small clear  jar and was an intricate project because of the many textures and reflected light on the glass. It really opened my eyes to always pay attention the light reflecting off of glass or any surface.

Colorized

I did this through a colorizing tutorial that helped increase my understanding of how to use the color and blending tools to go from an original picture to almost a cartoon look. It was a lot of fun to apply whatever colors I wanted to make this colorized effect.