A Personal Challenge - Capturing Light

I had another project in school that allowed me to be totally in charge of my next few paintings. The only criteria was it had to be a personal challenge. Something that I wanted to lean or practice or try, something that maybe I had never done before but had always thought of trying, but was too afraid of failing.

So I chose fireworks! What better way to challenge my love for seeing and using colour than by trying to paint coloured light flashes. Yeah no problem...

I absolutely love fireworks so I was not lacking for personal reference material - I had at least two Canada Days worth of fireworks to filter through, plus the never-ending source that is the internet. The internet, and technology in general, is just so scary and intimidating to me that I try to avoid it as much as possible. There will always be better and better pictures of fireworks, fantastic displays of colours and light, that it very well could have been made on photoshop and isn't an actual representation of what we may see in real life. Which is why I like to use personal reference material. If I didn't see it in my daily life, then why do I think I could reproduce it in art?

I tried a couple smaller versions of fireworks before getting impatient and moving right to the large, stretched canvases I had prepared in great anticipation of this assignment. It was a different sized canvas than I was used to painting on - way more vertical and not much in the horizontal category, but I love trying new things and the weird shape made me excited. I even took it one step further and made my second fireworks in oil so I could show the difference between the two mediums in their light and colour. I thought if my acrylic painting didn't end up catching the fireworks glow I wanted, maybe the oil could. I have an actual gold oil paint that I used that I think adds nicely to the effect of fireworks, as well as a stringy medium I glazed over top for texture, and even though my acrylic fireworks are not textured and don't sparkle, I think I captured their energy and their essence with the brush strokes and the dark background.

Acrylic Fireworks

Oil Fireworks

I'm hanging my fireworks in my hallway right now which is not an ideal place for them, because of their size and subject, I think they need to be much higher and in natural light. Being hung so low and in a dingy hallway does them little justice and causes them to go unseen, so I need you to come take them home. Put them in some light behind a vase with some flowers in it. That would look nice.

More about the paintings: They are both about 43 inches long x 22 inches wide (almost 4 feet x 2 feet) and 2 inches thick, and as I've said, they are acrylic and oil respectively. Both painted on a stretched canvas, frame built by me.

I do not think they need to be sold as a set. They relate very little to each other, other than theme, and I think they would appeal to different audiences. I am looking for $250.00 - $300.00 each, but I'm more lenient with the prices on these ones. They don't belong with me anymore and I'm really excited to see who feels inspired by the fireworks. Please share if you have a friend who loves fireworks and needs a Grace Original in their life. <3

Art Bits and Pieces

One of my many classes at RDC is 3D Fundamentals, which is similar to last semester's 2D Fundamentals, but, obviously, about 3-Dimensional things. So we built nano houses and sculptures out of matte board, and one of the later assignments was to create little chair models, out of whatever we so desired.

My first chair was out of a single piece of wire. It was kinda flimsy wire, but it got the job done.

My second piece was made entirely out of candy. It also took me the longest, and I learned a valuable lesson: chocolate doesn't glue together. I tried all sorts of glue- white, carpenters, hot, crazy, none of it worked. What I found worked best was trying to stick them together, then get a blowdryer and melt them together. With the exception of the pretzels being glued together, the entire thing is edible. Although I wouldn't recommend eating it anymore. Who knows how many people have sampled it between making it and now.

The third one didn't work out quite right, for which I am quite disappointed. I made a chair out of clay with the intention of casting it in clear resin and then steampunking it to make it a steampunk underwater chair. Turns out that the resin was old and wouldn't set, and I ended up running out of time. But it initially was going to look like this. Only in clear resin.

The following are some things I was working on in Ceramics. I have since finished them and completed all projects, but I have yet to take pictures of them. So as of right now, we have...

My steamboat teapot...

 One of the projects in Ceramics was a tile project. So basically, I had some black paint, splattered it on a piece of paper, folded the paper in half to make a mirror image, cropped it to a rectangular shape, and then photocopied a bunch of copies to see what it would look like as a repeating tile. I liked how the two looked, so I carved them into clay, a process that I don't care to explain, let's just say it was time consuming. What I've done after that is made a couple boxes using each of the tile patterns. They were pretty awesome.... I will post pictures later!

 One of the last projects we had for drawing was to do a couple self portraits, Chuck Close style. This is one of my (unfinished, at the time) drawings of myself, on a grid. Again, finished pictures will be posted later, as I am quite proud of it.

In the meantime, all my pictures are organized, and I am content.

If you or anyone you know is interested, I do take commissions. Of all sorts... Just let me know! :)

Cheers.