Figure Drawing Final! Spring, 2013

Contentment. :)

Here is my figure drawing final!  I made it using ink and a brush, and little bit of white charcoal at the end.  I love how it turned out!  This semester I have grown so much in my artistic skills especially when it comes to the figure.  I made 300 drawings of the figure just in class! Crazy!  This drawing I wanted to express how I feel when I learn to stop and count my blessings, smell the flowers, and enjoy life as it is and the way God made me.

Painting! Spring, 2013

Painting Paint Tubes

 Marching Paint Tubes

Whim :) (In-Process Self-Portrait)

Yay painting! :D I have a special place in my heart for painting since this is what I have been doing the longest.  If I had to choose right now what my BFA would be, I would choose either painting or drawing.  Anyhoo, here are my three paintings that I made this semester :) The first two are a mini-series representing rhythm through repetition.  We had to choose objects we either buy in the masses or collect, and with paint or any art supply that is definitely true!  So of course I decided to paint paint tubes...I really love reflective surfaces, because those surfaces are where I really get to push the contrast which was constantly drilled into my mind in high school, and for that I am so grateful.  I have also discovered that I love working big which seems intimidating, but it is so much easier to paint the details, and it's just more fun in general as well, and I feel very accomplished when I am done.  The third image is an in-process self-portrait which was my third and fourth paintings for the class.  This is my first ever oil painting, and I have fallen in love!  The process was very difficult at first because I had no idea what I was doing, but once I learned how to use the medium and how it's different from person to person, I really enjoyed learning what my style and preferences were.  So far as the design goes, I wanted to show my personality through the colors, my loose style, and my expression.  I haven't quite gotten it to where I want it, but it's getting there.  I am very excited to finish this painting this summer and see how it looks complete!

Ceramics! Fall, 2012

 Porcelain Family :)

Porcelain Stack!

I forgot how much I missed ceramics until I sat down the second day of class to throw on the wheel for the first time in 3 1/2 years.  I love how calming and peaceful it is to pull each piece up, some working out and some not as much.  I also love getting my hands dirty-you know how they say the bigger the mess the better the cook? I say the bigger the mess the better the artist.  I always looked forward to this class each week.  I experimented a lot with overlapping glazes to see what they would look like when fired, and loved the results.  These images are just a few of the pieces I made this year in ceramics, and they are the pieces I haven't given away as gifts yet.  I made over 30 pieces this year, and I enjoyed it so much!  I also learned how to make porcelain, which is a lot like clay, only a lot softer and a lot harder to work with-and I love it!

Overall, it was a great class, and I can't wait for advanced ceramics next semester! :)

Printmaking, Fall 2012

Roses Painting the Red, Drypoint

Tender, Loving Touch, Woodcut

"I Do" Etching

He Carried Me, Etching with Aquatint

Here are the prints I made in printmaking! The first print is a drypoint, which was the first print that I made by scratching into a copper plate, then spreading ink across the plate, wiping it off so the ink stayed in the scratch marks, then running it through the press.  I wasn't sure how to exactly make the design I wanted, I just had an idea and a few images to combine together and make my own.  I love Alice in Wonderland, and one of my favorite parts is the painting the roses red song, so I decided to create that song with a twist.  After making my first print, it actually looked exactly like I wanted it to, so I just darkened a few lines, and ran it through the press a few more times.  The second print is my woodcut which actually made it into the all student show this year.  It took me all semester to finish this print not only in the design, but also in how long it took to carve my woodblock.  I wanted to show something from my trip to Ghana, Africa last winter break, and I wanted to show childhood innocence and joy, but I really struggled in how to show it.  I finally came up with the image in the picture, and I worked and re-worked it to make it my own, and also make it possible to carve.  I think that print is my strongest of the 4 not only because of the detail, but also because of my attachment to the events behind the image.  The third print is one of the engagement pictures I took of my sister and her husband, and I wanted it to look like a Polaroid image, and also not completely detailed as I've found my style has become.  That was my first etching, where we cover a copper plate in what is called hard ground, carve in a design, then place the plate in acid.  What has been carved away is then what gets etched into the plate, and it is then printed in the same way as the drypoint.  The fourth print is an etching that also has a little bit of aquatint on it, which is the gray tone in the cliffs.  The design is based on the "Footprints in the Sand" poem, and I wanted to show that poem in my own way, because Jesus is a huge part of my life. I really like how it turned out as well.  One of my favorite things about printmaking is how different each individual print can look, and you have no idea how it will look until you run it through the press.  You can also work and re-work pretty much as many times as you want in order to produce the best print.  I really enjoyed this class, and learning the process behind making prints, and I have a much greater respect for master printmakers, because I now understand how difficult the process can be.

Collage Paintings Final! Fall 2011

 ADOS=Attention Deficit Ooh, Shiny!

Time to Paint!

These are two paintings that I made in my Foundations Design I class for my final.  They were definitely my favorite projects, because I finally got to paint again!  We had a huge pile of shredded magazines and newspapers that we had to take a frame and stick it down on the pile without moving anything in the frame, and then tape it together and paint it.  We also had to find ourselves in this massive pile of chaos.  The things that I was looking for in the pile were smiles, anything referring to art, and anything bright and colorful.  I am an art major.  Enough said.  The hardest part of the top painting was finding that fluorescent pink color without having to buy fluorescent pink.  It took me between a half hour and an hour to actually figure out how to get that color, and I have no idea how I actually did it!  The hardest part of the second painting was just getting all of the details in.  This is a relatively small painting, but I had to fit so much in it, and so many different patterns with different shading and such.  Regardless of these difficulties, I still loved it!

Journey Final, Spring 2012

Climb Every Mountain

This was the final for my Foundations Drawing II class!  For this project, we had to depict a journey by using three different points of view, and they all had to be on one piece of paper.  Initially, this was pretty difficult for me to figure out how to draw, but once I came up with my idea, I just sat down and sketched everything out, and liked what I saw.  The journey that I chose was the last morning of my mission trip/conference in Colorado.  Along with a small group of people equally as crazy as me, we woke up at 4:30 in the morning so that we could climb a mountain, and watch the sunset.  We made it to the top just as the sun was beginning to peek over the tops of the mountains, and the entire view was breathtaking.  I used mostly soft pastels in this piece, and a little colored pencil.  This drawing in itself not including any of the planning took around 20 total hours, and they were all worth it!  My favorite parts are once again having to do with the different textures, and how they show how this year I was able to really loosen up my style, and figure out how different things work.  There was a lot of experimentation in this piece as well.

Self-Portraits! Spring 2012

These are all images of my self-portraits that I made for my Foundations Drawing II class.  For the first six images, I had to make at least 12 images that were either of me, or represented me!  I then had to put a piece of text along with each image, so the book would serve as a sort of autobiography.  As the images show, the book can completely stretch out so you can see all of the images, or you can open the book from cover to cover, then keep turning pages once you reach the back cover.  This was my favorite project for the semester, because we could use any media we wanted, and we could draw pretty much whatever we wanted as well.  I used colored pencils, soft pastels, pen and ink, paint, sharpies, oil pastels, and then photographs once I extended the book.  Originally, I just made 12 images, then for my Positive Psychology final, I researched self-concept, so I decided to extend the book.  Every page along with the text has some text from the Bible, because my faith is a huge part of my life.
The final image in this post is another self-portrait that I had to make.  We could use any non-colored media, so I decided to experiment with watered-down ink.  This was a very long, unforgiving process, but overall, I really like how it turned out considering the medium, and a bonus is it actually looks like me! This is also the first self-portrait that I have ever made by looking into a mirror instead at a photograph, so there was just a lot of experimenting with this piece.