Advanced Drawing (Spring 2012)

I can't believe I'm only going into my Junior year and I'm already done with drawing. It feels weird. But I'm hoping to take an independent study sometime. It wasn't until halfway through the semester that I realized my love for surrealism. Ultimately my goal is to do more drawings like the fish drawing below. It feels like a good starting point and I have a few more ideas up my sleeve - now I just need the time and motivation to put them onto paper.

Two models. 

Some Mayan(?) artifact, a shoe, and a stick. 

Portrait of a model, Erin, who I've been drawing
since freshman year. She's an excellent model. 

Statue of a female body. 

"Glass Jar" - we each took a jar and filled it with all sorts of stuff,
tight enough so nothing would move. We then chose a section of it
to draw. Definitely a fun project. 

"Meet Me By the Fish" - This is certainly my favorite piece of the semester. The location is on campus, and the actual sculpture there is called "Textor Ball" or "The Fish" (it's a metallic ball). I never really liked the abstract sculpture, so I decided to make a rendition of my own. The fish fossil is Dunkleosteus, the turtle has solar panels on its shell, and the hermit crabs have trees on their shells. Call it a mixture between fantasy and reality...the image that I'm trying to depict is a hopeful future where animals adapt to the growing pressures of the environment. 

Dress-up model - wish I had time to finish this :(

"Labels" - final project. Unfortunately, I didn't get to finish this either. The project was about using found objects (i.e. cardboard) so I decided to take that concept and combine it with the model planned for the last couple days of class. 

Intermediate Drawing (Fall 2011)

Here's artwork from my sophomore year, again with the same professor. Not much to say, except that I was still trying to figure out what direction I wanted to take things.

Female model. 

Here's the process of one of my projects. 

I'm pretty sure the only guidelines were to use at least 2 pieces of paper.
You can really see my creativity here...

Close up of the keychain. 

Final product!

"Landscape on Acid" - I don't even know, I was trying to be a little more
creative and abstract.

Part of my final project, which was about a location or place (real/fantasy)
that has a significant meaning in our lives. This is my cat Lexi. 

Watercolor...never my strongest suit. 

Pen and ink drawing of my basement stairs.
Photo credit goes to my brother. 

Male model. 

"Paper Thin" - Mid-term Project Pt. I. 

"Self-destructive" - Mid-term Project Pt. II. 

2D-Design (Spring 2011)

This course was...interesting. It felt a bit elementary after taking Intro to Drawing in the fall. We did color wheels and paper designs and collages. On the plus side, I met an amazing professor who I just got back from Ireland with.

"S" - black and white designs. 

Complementary color self-portrait done in acrylic using a
value scale. I know I don't look happy.
But honestly I'm never happy doing self-portraits. 

"Hydrofracking" - political message poster. As an
Environmental Studies major, this was the first thing that
 came to mind. I had recently seen a documentary about it. 

I don't even recall what this project was about. 

Pixel self-portrait. If you want to see it more clearly,
walk 10 feet away from the computer screen. 

Intro to Painting (Spring 2011)

Here's artwork from my first college painting course. I didn't learn too much here, but I'm happy with what I got out of it - three paintings. Okay, so maybe I wish I had achieved more, but my professor didn't exactly stick to the syllabus. In fact, he didn't say much at all. Every now and then he'd come by and offer advice or a critique, but most of the time he just stared at it for a minute and said "very good" then walked away. I'm not complaining, though. I really just wanted to paint.

Our first project was taking a photograph of an old master painting and copying them in order to learn color relations. Here we worked with a limited palette (yellow ochre, black, white, and a choice of one red) and a palette knife. I choose to do "Liberty Leading the People" by Eugène Delacroix. 

Still life #1. 

Still life #2. 

Intro to Drawing (Fall 2010)

This was probably the best art course I've ever taken. It was a huge step up from high school studio art and I feel like I learned a lot here. I also met one of my favorite art professors here, whom I would later take both Intermediate and Advanced Drawing with. The projects were great and the critiques were so helpful. I met a lot of great people here too - lots of parkies who happened to be close friends of my brother.

Cliche Skull. There's definitely a lack of depth and shadows.. I spent too much time measuring. 

For this project, we used a projector to slowly bring the image into focus. We also did it upside down, so for most of the process we had no idea what we were drawing. 

Chairs. 

I decided to start using color - don't ask what made me choose blue and yellow though. Perhaps subconsciously showing some IC pride?

More color experimentation. What did I learn? - Don't outline the body in black. Anyways, this was a fabulous model. 

Some quick gesture drawings. We got people from the class to take turns modeling. The bottom right kind of looks like the girl from "The Ring" climbing out of the TV though... 

A male model. If you haven't noticed, I suck at male models. Especially here, where I turned this man into a metallic-looking statue. 

Negative space exercise. Oh god why did I put a halo around the pumpkin stem?

The preliminary sketch for the "Hot and Cool" drawing below. 

I'm glad with how this one turned out - perhaps my favorite drawing of the semester! And it's just drawn on a ripped piece of a huge brown paper roll. 

Reductive charcoal exercise. We all made our own paper airplanes and drew them first with charcoal. Then we covered a piece of paper in charcoal and only used our erasers - which is shown here. 

Self-portrait exercise with squares - this was our mid-term project. We each had our pictures taken and then our professor cut them into squares and gave them to us. We then drew each of them on larger square pieces of paper (this is actually a pretty large piece). Let's just say I spent the majority of Thanksgiving Break working on this. Lots and lots of charcoal and spray fixative. Note to self: don't wear striped shirts when you know you're going to have to draw it. 

A typical still life - unfinished, as usual. 

A finished still life. The curves in the yellow-green object are a bit off, but hey you learn from your mistakes. 

Yet another still life. Nothing fancy, just some geometric objects. The shadows need a little work - that's what happens when you spend the majority of your time trying to make all the measurements work out. 

Requests

Most of the art I've done over the years have been gifts for friends. I've only got pictures of a couple right now, but I might be able to get more later.

This was actually a request from my Dad's friend. I never met him, but he fixed my laptop so I made this for him. Keeping the barter system alive. 

I made this one for my friend Allie for her birthday. She initially wanted a painting of something related to the Coast Guard, but I think she liked this anyways. 

Figure Drawing (Summer 2010)

Here's a few drawings I did in a figure drawing class that I took during the summer after high school at the Troy Arts Center.

Hands, as per usual. 

Gesture drawing. 

Male model with a cloth. He was old and creepy looking. 

A ceramic turkey I think?

High School Years (2006-2010)

Looking back now, I feel like I have actually improved a lot since my time at CHS. I know I took drawing, painting, cartooning, and computer graphics, but somehow I don't have much to show for. I can be sure of one thing though - I am never going into cartooning. Though I'm pretty sure I have at least a few other things that I'd upload if I could find them. Unfortunately my Obama painting is MIA (possibly still in Columbia). Last I knew, my teacher was keeping it at her house until she sent it to D.C. for some contest...but who knows where it is now.

Heath ledger.  

Door project - Rainbows are fun to do with watercolors
(though not a medium of choice). Also, that's Reepicheep.