Bows

Each month we get a new colored pencil magazine at school and each issue has a different colored pencil challenge in it, where you have to recreate the picture of that month using at least 80% colored pencil. For the November issue we had a picture of these bows that lots of people use on presents at Christmas. I really didn't want to do this one, I felt that the bows were going to take a long time to do and I personally felt that the picture was pretty boring. I started on it like the first weekend in November and I would work on it little by little each day but mainly on the weekend, so far I was really liking it. Then Thanksgiving break came up and I knew I was going to be out of town so I decided to take the colored pencils and drawing with me to work on while I was gone. I did work on it some, but I guess I left it there because when I got home I couldn't find it. I looked everywhere and no matter where I looked I couldn't find it. So basically I had to started all over with only like a week and a half or so to completely redo it. I ended up cropping the picture a lot and making the drawing really small so I would be able to finish by December 10th. First I started out by just drawing an outline of each bow. Then I started with the colored pencil. It took forever, there was a lot of shading to do to make sure all of the bows looked 3-D. The gold bow was the hardest to do because it reflected a lot of the other colors around it as well as the gold color it was. It was definitely difficult to get everything done and make sure it looked right. To be honest I liked the original one better than this one but I still think it turned out okay. 

Nature Turned Mechanical

When I first heard what the topic was for this project I had like no idea what to do. I couldn't think of anything creative enough to turn mechanical. It took me a day or two of looking through so many pictures on Google of the nature turned mechanical projects before I finally came up with the idea of turning a hummingbird mechanical. I had seen a picture of a mechanical penguin that was really cool that inspired me to do a bird of some sort... I just choose a humming bird instead. Before I even started thinking about turning the bird mechanical I looked up a bunch of pictures of different humming birds and practiced drawing them. It took me a while but I finally found a position that I liked. Next I found a picture of a humming bird feeder to add to the composition. Then I started on the final. I drew the hummingbird feeder first... I only really used the basic shape from the picture and then I changed the design on it. This was the only project where I didn't draw everything out first before I added the color. After I finished drawing the hummingbird feeder I added the shading with colored pencils and outlined the design on the hummingbird feeder with pen. Then I moved onto the hummingbird its self. I knew I wanted the beak to be a needle, the wings to look like safety pins, and the tail to look like paper clips, but I had no idea what to make the body look like. Then a light bulb went off in my head...pun intended... to make the body be a light bulb. I decided to just leave the head and just make it look kind of like metal. Now that I decided what I wanted the hummingbird to be made out of, I could start drawing it. While I was working every once in a while I would go back and look at my references to make sure everything looked like it was supposed to. I think for the most part everything looked like it was supposed to. After I finished drawing the hummingbird then I started shading with colored pencil. On the hummingbird feeder I had used regular Crayola colored pencils, but on the hummingbird I used Prismas because there was a metallic color that I wanted to use and they blend better. I didn't add much color to the hummingbird just enough so you could tell where the shadows and highlights are. At first I was just going to leave it but after I looked at it I felt that I should outline the hummingbird in pen, like I had done on the hummingbird feeder. The last thing I did was add the background. I wanted to do it in watercolor. I liked the way it looked more than I thought I would. The colors blended more than I thought it would which added a lot more value to the sky. Overall I kinda liked it in the end, it looked better than I thought it would. 

Self Portrait

I was really dreading this project because people are literally one of my least favorite things to draw ever... I hate it. No matter how hard I try I feel like I can never get the proportions right; one eye is always a little bigger than the other or the lips aren't the right size, something is always off. I think I spent three or so days on just a practice drawing then another three days just drawing the outline on the final. I kept drawing and then redrawing different parts just to make sure I got them right or as close as I possibly could. I worked on the dress first probably because it was the easiest part of the whole project. Next I started on the hair and it was very time consuming. Since I wanted to do almost everything in black and white colored pencil it took a lot of layering to get the different values in the hair. I had originally wanted it to look really smooth but as I layered the colored pencil it had a really cool texture to it that I really liked, it looked like strands of hair which made that part look much more realistic, so I left it. It took hours and hours to finish the hair I felt like it was never ending. Once I finally finished the hair I moved on to the face. I had decided in the beginning that I wanted to add some color so it wasn't all black and white. When we first came up with idea for this project it was close to Halloween so I wanted it to be somewhat Halloween inspired. I ended up going with a vampire like theme so I was going to make my eyes bright red and have blood dripping from my mouth. Next was the part I was dreading the most, the face. First I drew the eyes and my glasses and I started shading with the colored pencils from the bottom of my glasses up. Then I drew the nose and shaded from there to the spot where my mouth was supposed to be. I practiced a bunch with the mouth but I could never get it right so I ended up asking McKayla how she does it and she ended up showing me how to make it look like actually lips. So then I drew lips that actually looked like lips and finally finished shading the rest of the face. Getting the values in the face was a lot harder than I thought because you had to make it lighter than the hair but not lose the different values that are there. Finally I got to the part with color. I practiced a bit with the watercolors before I started on the actually project. The watercolor really added the color I wanted and draws your eyes toward the eyes, which is exactly the effect I wanted. 

Interior Spaces

The theme for this project was interior spaces. I had a really hard time coming up with ideas for this project. I didn't want it to be something that had been done before, I wanted it to be different. I came up with the idea to do the inside of my backpack one afternoon while I was working on homework. I quickly put everything back inside my backpack and took a few pictures, the first few weren't that good everything was straight and boring... there was nothing interesting about it at all. Then I got the idea to angle some of my notebooks so you could see more things and it added the different lines that I needed. For this project we had the option to choose what ever medium we wanted. I choose oil paints again because I liked the way the oils blend and I liked the way my last project turned out. Like last time I started out with a wash, a blue one this time, and then sketched out the design onto the canvas. I really didn't have an organized way of painting this one, I kind of just choose a color and painted all the spots that were that color. I started off with the light blue on the binder and then I painted the white part on the binder. After that I started on the black but only the parts on the inside of the backpack. Next I painted the different yellow shades on notebook, notepad, and folder. Then I went back and added the blue and red on the other notebook. After I painted all the covers of each notebook I went back and painted the white pages on each. The last thing I did, and the hardest, was paint the backpack itself. My backpack is plaid so it was really had for me to figure out how to paint the design. By the time I got to the end I was really frustrated that it wasn't looking like I wanted it to, but I guess it turned out okay in the end. 

Everyday Object

 

The topic for this project was "Everyday Object" and we got the chance to choose whatever subject we wanted as long as it related back to the main theme. I thought a lot about what subject I was going to use. My first though was to do a few stuffed animals in my room from when I was little, but I couldn't find a composition I really liked. I ended up just walking around my room playing around with different objects I could possibly use, that's when I came up with the idea to use a bunch of my CDs that were on my shelf. I pretty much just sat on my floor randomly arranging them in different ways until I came up with a few different compositions that I liked. For this project we had to use oil paint. Personally I'm not a huge fan of painting but I really liked the way the oils blend on the canvas. After I painted a light pink wash on my canvas I drew out my design so I had an idea of where everything would go. Then I started painting, I started off with the Ed Sheeran CD, the green one with the black X, because it was the largest and I figured it would take the most time. I was right it did take the most time because it had the most value in it. Next I went on to the 5 Seconds of Summer CD, the white one with the black squiggle thing on it. It really wasn't that hard but it took a while because you had to constantly go over the white paint so you wouldn't see the pink wash behind it. After that I went on to the Little Mix CD, the blue one with the yellow cloud. For this CD I had to figure out a way to make the yellow paint look cloud like, I tried a bunch of different techniques but the way that worked the best was to dab the yellow paint over the blue and then go back and add more paint where it was needed. The last CD is the One Direction CD, this one was difficult because I has to figure out a way to make the oil paint look like the spray paint texture that is used on the real CD. I don't think it worked that well because oil paint and spray paint are so different but all I did was paint a layer of white and the slowly add black, the amount depended on how much value was in that part of the picture. The last thing I did was paint the red background, at first I was just going to leave the pink wash but I really didn't like the pink with all the other colors in the painting. Since green was the most dominate color, I choose red for the background because red is green's compliment.

Oil Painting Practice

 

This was my first time using oil paints and I wasn't sure if I would like it or not. In the past I haven't really liked using paint I always preferred drawing. But I ended up really liking the oil paints. At first it was hard for me to get used to how easily the paint blends together but I ended up really liking that feature. Having a chance to practice with the oils before hand really helped me enjoy the next project more.   

Reflection Project

For this project we each had to draw a reflection of our choice. I chose a picture from when I was little it's a reflection of rain boots in a puddle after it rained. We had to use Prisma colors and had the option to use watercolors as well. I've only used Prismas one other time, they're not my favorite media to use but I think that you can add a lot of value with them. To start off I made a few practice sketches in my sketchbook over the weekend. Then on Monday I got another sheet of paper I practiced blending all the different colors I'd need on the final copy, it helped me get better at using the Prismas. After practicing a bunch I started on the final copy. First I sketched the picture out with pencil. My original plan was to draw the whole picture but I ended up cropping out part of the picture and focusing more on the rain boots instead of the full thing. After sketching everything out I started using the Prismas. I started out on the pants legs first, I had to use a lot of different colors to get the shade I wanted. After I got the first part done it made the rest a lot easier. Overall I feel like it turned out pretty good. The puddle ended up looking really good and you could tell which part was the reflection and which part was the actual object.