Ceramics Project

Ceramics Project

    The medium used in my ceramics project was clay. This is a good material to work with because you can shape it easily. When I finished the project was 10" by 7.5", although it was bigger before it was put into the furnace. This is because when the moisture is taken out of the clay it shrinks. The design element that I stressed during this project was form. This is because I wanted my project to have a unique shape. To get the design onto my piece, I used the transfer technique. This means that I originally drew it on paper, but then moved it onto the clay by poking holes through the paper. This left small holes that outlined my design on the clay. My project serves the function of being a shallow bowl. It could be used to hold anything from pencils and pens to small notebooks. When I was coming up for the design for my project, I wanted something that would stand out. I decided to do this design because it reminded me of a mid-evil shield, and I like the topic of mid-evil times in history, so it interested me. I learned a lot of things from this project. For example, I learned that medium means what your project is made up of, and I also learned how artists get their designs onto their ceramics. If I could repeat this project, I would either put a lot more red clay on the design or non at all. This is because I didn't apply the red clay thick enough, and it was not a solid color all the way through. I could have fixed this by putting on a heavier coat of red clay or just by not putting on the red clay. I think either of those options would have looked better.

Persepctive Lettering

   Perspective Lettering

      In my perspective lettering I wanted to do something fun and creative. In class we had been learning all about vanishing points and how to use them. By drawing all of your lines to a vanishing point it adds depth. This drawing is one point perspective. All of my letters go toward the center of the paper. I then colored them in using the griselle technique. This means that I did all of my shading in pencil first, and then I went back afterward and added color with colored pencils. This added value to the letters. For example, it was darker on the bottom of the letters than the top, because my light source came from the top. I then added the pacman to the background, because I like that game and I thought it was an original idea.

Shoe Drawing

Shoe Drawing

      My shoe drawing took a lot of work in practice. In class we practiced doing blind contour line drawings which really helped me learn how to draw the shape of an object. After I learned the basics of how to draw contours, I had to decide what I wanted my composition to be. It was required that we had depth, so I knew that I had to put one shoe behind the other. I used my shoes to find a position that I thought would look good in a drawing. Eventually I settled on the shoe in front being flat, and the one behind it on it's side. When I started drawing I made sure I used my countour lines. But to make it look good, I had to use blending. This is when you use a tissue to spread out the lead from your pencil. This made the shoes look more dimensional and gave it the depth it needed. I also added a light source, which came from the top left corner of my paper. This cast shadows that gave my drawing value. Where the shadows were, the shoes were darker. All of these elements together helped create my drawing.

Acrylic Landscape Painting

 Acrylic Landscape Painting

    

      When I started planning my acrylic painting I already had something in mind. I wanted to have a mountain in the backdrop of my composition. So, I looked through a couple magazines and tried to find something that I liked. I came across mountains, but they were in a desert. I thought they would look good, and wanted to have an orange sky in the background. I kept looking and I found a sky that fit, an object to go in the front, and a cracked ground to go in the middle. I needed atmospheric perspective in my painting to make it look good. Atmospheric perspective is how objects start to blend in with the background and have less detail the farther they're away. I did this by making my mountains blend into the background, and they had much less detail than the rocks up close. I also used a lot of shadows in my mountains, which came from the light source. The light source was coming from the sun, which was in the middle of the painting. It cast shadows that added depth to the mountains.


     I wanted my color scheme to have warm colors in it, because it was in a desert setting. So, I used the colors red, red-orange, orange, and yellow-orange. These allowed me to create a dry and hot look. In my sky I used horizontal brush strokes because it was supposed to be clear and sunny. In my mountains I also used horizontal brush strokes because in some places the rocks formed cylindrical pillars. When I got to my ground though, I used vertical brush strokes to make it look like it was stretched out. I added value to my painting by using more or less of a color in certain areas.For example, I wanted the area around the sun to be really bright, so I made the area closest to the sun yellow. As it got farther away, the sky turned orange. I also added value by making shadows in my painting, which is just a darker version of the color the shadow is casted on.
 

Pastel Still Life

 Pastel Still Life Project

 

 

     When I planned my composition for this pastel still life I considered the positive and negative space. I chose to position my items in a way that the foreground didn't have much in it, and the background had a lot of color and life.I did this using a thumbnail sketch.A thumbnail sketch is a drawing that is done to plan the composition of your space. You have the option to move your "window" of vision around, and decide the best angle and place to put your objects at. After I planned my composition I had to work on making my objects look more realistic. I made my items appear to be three dimensional by shading my objects. Changing value and adding shadows throughout the still life adds depth to it. When depth is added to a drawing it appears to come off the paper and gives it a realistic feeling.The shading couldn't be done without my light source though.The light source in my painting came from the background. It cast shadows in the foreground of my composition and helped create the three dimensional effect.