Art Time: Bits and Pieces

 We learned how to stretch paper in drawing class. I'm not sure if I've talked about that yet or not, but basically it's where you manipulate paper with water in order to 'stretch' it, so you can paint on it without it bubbling and tearing. So for this piece with the apples, that's what I did. I stretched it, then put a base of Quinacridone Magenta and Cadmium Yellow Medium on it, let it dry, and drew this progression of the apple. I had my friend Alexis take a bite out of it during each step, since I'm not a fan of apples, and then I outlined it in black marker to make it show up better. I quite like it.

 For this assignment in drawing we had to draw hands. I didn't fully listen to the assignment: it said to do one that was tonal and one that was line. And since I have decided that I hate doing things in tonal, I just did drawing for my two. This one was done on stretched paper painted Pthalo blue, I believe, and it says "I love you" in sign language. That's my own hand and it took me two hours. I am rather quite pleased because all my fingers are almost exactly the same size in each drawing, and that is actually quite a feat. If you give it a try, you will see what I mean.

 

This second hand drawing was actually easier to do than the first, and I created an easily traceable copy so I could do it again with ease if I so chose. These two were done with a Cadmium Yellow Medium ground, and the red heart was painted with Cadmium Red. The heart hands on the right are filled in with a sort of sunset effect with chalk pastels. If I was to do both of these hands again, I would choose different grounds. The blue one up top is too dark, and the yellow on these two bottoms I find uncomfortable to look at. The frames I found at Wal-Mart for five dollars.

 This is my fourth self portrait that I did this semester. I'm surprised that I got away with doing only four- I recall the assignments saying we had to have at least six. So that's interesting, but it also makes sense- I really don't like doing self portraits. I attempted at some shading and hated it, which is no surprise at all, but I am fairly pleased with the image. It's on Academia paper, which means it's quite large, almost real-people size, but I didn't spend too much time on it. Maybe two or three hours. Next one I do I need to spend at least four or five, hopefully six hours on.

Just a quick image, this is the right ear of the bust of Dustin I was doing. The final product wasn't too great, in my opinion, but I had fun doing it.. for the most part. It was definitely an interesting experience. Done out of recycled clay.