Color Wheel - The first project was to design a color wheel that maintained its functionality but was more artistic than a normal circular color wheel. Since entering school I have been rather obsessed with the shapes of buildings and clouds. I love the harsh angles that buildings provide tempered with the lightness and fluffiness of clouds, these two elements juxtaposed really fascinate me. For my color wheel I combined these two elements, and for the most part I think it looks pretty cool. My one disappointment was with my inability to control and maintain the value of all the colors for each ring. I did OK, but there is room for improvement. I do believe that the colors themselves are mixed pretty well, and I like the design.
City and Clouds Color Wheel (20 x 15) Acrylic on Illustration Board
Complimentary Colors - In this project we were asked to draw a plant of some kind and then paint it using only one set of complimentary colors (which are any two colors across from each other on the color wheel). We could mix the two colors together in anyway we wanted and add black or white to those colors to tint or shade them. We also had to have at least 3 transparency effects in our painting and have two sections where we used the pure colors that we mixed from. Which is why there is a red-orange branch.
For my colors I chose to do red-orange, and blue-green. I could have done green and red, because you can get a nice gray, but not the right kind of brown. However, most people were doing that color combination because of the green which made me not want to use it. Plus, I felt that blue-green, and the pinkish color I could get from red-orange seemed more Japanese somehow.
Bonsai Tree Transparencies (20 x 15) Acrylic on Illustration Board
Here is a close up of the transparency effect.
The painting turned out good for the assignment, but I don't really like how abstract the solid colors make it. In the drawings you could really see how the bonsai twisted together, so I think I am partial to the drawing, even though it was done on crappy paper. In hindsight, I wish I would have just drawn it on nice paper. I didn't only because I thought I would use this drawing as the transfer, which didn't happen because the transfer would have been backwards.
Sort of hard to see but here is the drawing (click for a better shot)
Here is the transfer, but it is flipped correctly, I couldn't bring myself to look at it the other way. It is too weird.
Cultural Patterns - In this project we were asked to find a pattern of some sort from a culture that we found interesting. Since I had just been looking at bonsai trees and a lot of Asian art I kind of wanted to stay in that part of the world. So I found this Indonesian Batik fabric design which I felt was really cool. Once we found the design we were supposed to replicate it as closely as possible, and then do another version using a color scheme of our choice. I chose to do a monochromatic color scheme using only red.
Original fabric picture from the web:
Batik Indonesian fabric design (20 x 12 each square 8 x 7) Acrylic on Illustration Board
Closeup of Duplicated Original Side:
Closeup of Monochromatic Side:
Artistic Inspiration: For the final project we were asked to find a painter, or a painting, that inspired us and do a report on the painter, or painting, and then to create our own painting from the inspiration of the artist's techniques or content of a particular piece.
I chose Jacob Van Ruisdael as my artist, but had no one particular painting in mind. He does these amazing paintings of clouds and the Dutch landscape. Seeing as how I love clouds but have never attempted to paint them I figured this was my shot.
I learned a ton by doing this, and while I feel this is probably my strongest painting to date, there are also some things I dislike about it. But that's part of the learning and I am ready to do it again. Also, being that this is my 10th painting ever I feel that I have shown vast improvement in a very short time.
In Ruisdael's works you can see how realistic his clouds are, which is what I wanted to do, but an accidental late night use of purple made me head into a more abstract looking cloud. I still think it looks pretty cool, but for my next cloud painting I really want to try for realism.
Some Ruisdael pieces:
Clouds, and Barn (20 x 15) Acrylic on Illustration Board
I kind of got lost in the top half of the painting, and I wish I could fix it, but worry I might screw it up more if I touch it. Here is the pic with the top clouds cut off.
Worse or better?
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