Figure Drawing

Artists Develop Art making Skills:
This was a really good project because it combined charcoal with life- size figure drawing which are both tricky.  I have used charcoal on previous projects but I still enjoyed using it again and I liked how the project combined everything we have learned so far with folds, the face, and body proportions.
Artists Create Original Work:
This is original work because I drew my model by proper proportions and made sure to draw all the folds first and then started shading bit by bit. I saved the face for last and while I am not that happy with the face's proportions, I am pleased with the rest of the drawing.
Artists Reflect:
I drew the whole thing in pencil first making sure to get all the contour lines and folds from her t-shirt and jeans. I then went over the same lines lightly in charcoal, and followed those by shading. I was really happy with how I started with pencil because it allowed me to correct mistakes without it being noticeable before I finalized the lines in the darker charcoal medium.

Skull Drawing

Artists Create Original Work:
For this self portrait, we had to draw our own face over the skull picture and  I drew my proportions off but this only helped me realize for future drawings. This is original work because was drawing my own face and figuring out the different techniques as I went.
Artists Develop Art Making Skills:
I thought this was a really good practice to help us see wear the facial features are supposed to go and how the proportions look. I knew for future reference that the eyes are supposed to go lower down over the eye sockets and same with the nose.
Artists Reflect: 
 I did realize when I was drawing the face how important the facial features' proportions are because if they are off even a little bit, it doesn't look as good or as realistic. While I had initially thought that drawing over the skull was hard and a little creepy, I soon realized how much it helped me in that drawing and how it would help as reference for future portraits.

Skeleton Drawing

Artist Develop Art Making Skills:
I really enjoyed this project because it helped me see the proportions of the body and showed how the body is structured. It was also really good practice for me with shading and depth. Drawing the skull really helped me see where the eyes are compared to the head with the other facial features.
Artists Solve Problems:
I did draw the skeleton too large so the ankles and feet did not fit on the full page. I resolved this by simply attaching an additional sheet and continuing so I could still have the full skeleton.
Artists Take Risks:
When I first started, I had thought I had proportioned the skeleton out but I should have double checked my measurements because they were off and when I realized that I just continued and did not remeasure. Even though it still turned out relatively well proportion wise, I think I could have measure it out better.

Self- Portrait

Artists Develop Art Making Skills:
I definitely improved my knowledge and skill in different mediums because I used charcoal and I had only used charcoal a few times before and it was a big step to use it in a large self portrait. I also have never liked doing portraits and I had never had much luck with them in the past but I impressed myself with how much my portrait actually resembles me.
Artists Take Risks:
Coming back to the use of charcoal, I had only ever used it for small things such as warm- ups or class assignments and never for a major project. I figured out when and where to use a tortillion as to not take away from the piece but to help where needed.  I also used a soft paint brush to blend the charcoal in some areas because of how it helped increase the smoothness in the face where as a tortillion would have left faint streaks and would have been uneven.
Artists Reflect:
I had started a rough draft of the portrait by using griding and when I saw how it had already looked like me, it made me more determined to make the final piece some of my best work and I am really happy with the end result.

Quick Figure Sketches

 
 Today we had to do quick figure sketches which are cool because it really helps me notice the different shapes of the body and gets me to focus on the proportions rather than detail.

Opacity

Artists Create Original Work:
I had been considering doing something involving water whether it was bubbles or dewdrops. I took pictures of a flower that I had sprayed water on and had many drops of water between the petals. I thought this would be a cool picture to do in color pencils because even though the flower was red there were many other variations of colors in the petals and in the background.
Artists Develop Art Making Skills:
I had never used Prismacolor pencils so I had been kind of worried about how well I could make them blend together but I am really happy and impressed with how I was able to capture all the colors and shapes in the flower and in the background. I would now choose the color pencils for future projects because I was really happy with how they made the image looked.
Artists Take Risks:
I was a little unsure about how I would do the background and capture the blurry look of the leaves and colors. While I could have done the background more simply than the picture, it wouldn't have had the same effect. I did learn though that if I used the light grayish color pencil over the colors, it lightened them up and made them less definite and captured that blurred look.

Look at that View

I chose to do a perspective drawing from a birds eye view because I had never done a birds eye before and I wanted to try something different. It was hard to do the lines on the buildings that were closer to the edge because of the sharp perspective but it was a good challenge. I was also a little wary when shading the buildings but I am happy with the end result.

Candies

I enjoyed drawing the candy in the wrapper in color because I had to see all the highlights and reflected colors in the plastic. The smarties were fun to draw because of the many colors inside and on the wrapper. It also helped me become better at layering the Prismacolor colored pencils. The lollipop in pencil was a good practice because of the folds and values of the wrapper as well as making the stick look rounded. The jolly rancher was fun to draw because with the pastels I was able to blend the values in the candy and capture the highlights in the wrapper. I was also able to use the colors to capture the shadows under the yellow part of the wrapper and the shadow under the candy.

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.

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.