Fotune Cookies

My teacher distributed fortune cookies to the class and we were told to interpret them into art. After some thought, I decided to go for an almost direct approach, meaning I tried to draw representations of the fortunes. I wrote the fortunes on the paper and drew pictures to represent each one. I know it may sound odd but the thing I am most proud of in this piece is the way the ribbons with the fortunes on them are drawn. This was a nice project and despite my fortunes having pretty much nothing in common,  I was able to represent them in some way.

3 Artists, 1 Painting

So there's this interesting new project my teacher introduced to us: Art x3! It's where one person starts a piece of art, another one continues it, and a third person finishes it. The theme for this art endeavor was "celebrity," and we were allowed to interpret that how we wanted. It was really interesting to see how other people took your art and changed it to fit their ideas. The above picture was fairly sparse but still really good when I got it and I had no idea how to "make it my own." However, with guidance from my teacher I was able to turn it into the piece you see right here. I had worked on two other pieces before this one and had to let both of them go. It was not an easy experience, especially since I had just thought of where to go with each of the pieces when Poof! they went onto the next person. I have to say I am rather proud of the final result of this one. It took a lot of time and effort but I was able to "make it my own."

Pop Art Stamps

What's fun and kooky and can be used over and over again? Stamps! This marking period we made stamps of our own in pop art style! As you can see, the subject for my stamp is and/or was a globe. I chose it because I have been into geography and history of late thanks to this show I've been watching. Anyway, I thought the globe would be a nice challenge for my artistic skill and it really was. I first had to envision what the stamp would look like then draw the globe on a small piece of paper. Then I darkened the lines so the pencil was nice and thick and then printed it onto a rubber stamp. I then spent several days cutting it out using various tools and eventually viola! It was finished! Next came the really fun part: the printing. I made several different prints other than the ones in the above picture but these were some of my favorites out of all of them. I am really quite proud of how these turned out and the way they are situated really gives them that "Andy Warsaw-mass production" type feeling.

None of these things are just like the other, but all of these things really belong!

What do all of these items have in common? They're all blue! That's right, my art class began collecting these blue items in response to being shown pictures of Portia Munson's work. Portia Munson is an artist who makes color coded collections of cool stuff. I personally think the above collection is pretty cool, especially the globe and the hat. This collection really says a lot about our class as a whole. We were asked to bring in blue things and some people really put effort into it while some other people just brought in a pencil they found in their bag the second before class started (and yes, by that comment I do mean myself.) But other than that, this collection really tells a lot about each of us as individuals, what we think of when we hear the color blue, and what things pique our interests. For instance, one person has an amazing blue top hat, which could mean they like cool hats. Another example is the paint bottle, which would lead one to believe that person enjoys painting. This collection not only tells of our interests, but the time period as well. There are things on that table that could only be found in this era, such as the Angry Birds card in the bottom right of the picture. In Portia Munson's work, there were things that mostly consisted of toys from the 90's and earlier, which is a time stamp of when the collection was created. The time stamp on this collection would be in the 2000's just going based on this picture. And so, collections of all types can tell a lot about a person, not just their personality, but their time period as well.

Collecting

Many people have collections. Collections can be large enough to just barely fit in a warehouse, others can be small enough to fit in a purse. They are collections of things that have an intrinsic value to the collector. A few years back, I began collecting business cards. I am not sure why I began doing this, I just thought it was fun. When I would go down to Maryland to visit my grandmother, or when my family would go to the beach, I would go into the shops and take a business card. Even simply walking in downtown Haddonfield, I found both beautiful and fun looking business cards. I would keep this collection in the pockets of my purse. While I was not deeply, deeply attached to this collection, I was very sad when I lost my receptacle of this collection. It has been this was for two years and I have lost hope of retaining my beloved business cards. Because of this unfortunate incident, I am unable to show a picture of my full collection, but I have been able to keep one cards from being lost. The card below is this card, and incidentally my favorite of the collection. It is left over from a store that now goes by a different name. Pretty cool though, right?

The Marking Period

This marking period, my art class has done a total of two drawings, both of which took alot of time and energy but turned out great in the end. The first drawing, the bike, showed me how to vary the darkness of my drawing depending on the darkness of the paper I was drawing on. I also learned much about the composition of a drawing on a page and what it means. In the colorful candy colored pencil drawing, I learned about drawing using almost only colored pencil, with just a light graphite sketch. It was a great expirience doing these drawings, and I hope to do more like these as the year progresses.

Colorful Candy

The next art project I am currently doing is a drawing of candy in colored pencil. I had never really drawn in colored pencil before so I was a tad nervous when we began, but now I am rather enjoying it. It was a new experience for me, and I quikcly became frustrated with the angle and colors of the lid, but after I got used to it, it became really, really fun. The first thing i did was make a blending gradient of the complementary colors which really did help when creating darks and lights in the drawing. The second step I took was to practice the highlights on a piece of tracing paper and then transfer them to the actual paper. I rather like how it turned out, how it really feels glassy and how it looks liek the candy is actually in the jar. My favorite piece however has to be the blue Jolly Rancher in the bottom right corner; not only because its one of my favorite candies, but also because it turned out really well. This drawing, I must say, was a complete sucess.