Art 2 Final Portfolio

1. I believe that my Marilyn Monroe sequin art was the most successful. The theme was non traditional art portraits. I knew I wanted to make it out of sequins but I didn't know what person to do. My three choices were Marilyn Monroe, Lady Gaga, and Kesha, but after thinking I decided to go ahead and make Marilyn Monroe.

I used the projector to put a picture of her on the board and traced her on a black piece of paper. Then I used to picture to decided where to put the shadows and highlights. My sequin colors were red, pink, black, and silver. I used black and silver for shadows, red for her lips, and pink for her skin. I used different sized sequins so I could make them all fit on the paper. I used normal glue to put them on the paper but I wish I had used hot glue because after it was dried some of the sequins were starting to fall off. When I got home I put the sequins back on and then sprayed adhesive glue on it so the would stay on permanently.

2. The project that I overcame obstacles was my flute painting. My obstacles were trying to make the flute look realistic, and adding highlights and shadows to the right spots to achieve that. At first I didn't make them bright or dark enough, so I decided to make the paint really dark and light. My risk was not painting all the keys on it and trying to make it still look like it was a flute. The grey paint was really thin so I used many coats of paint. I also took the risk in having the background being two-dimensional compared to the flute. It worked. I definitely learned that its okay to make the shadows and highlights way darker or brighter than you think they should be. In the end I really liked the outcome.

3. This piece helped me grow as an artist because I've never used charcoal to make a black and white piece before. I've also never made a contrast drawing like this before. It definitely wasn't easy because the black would smudge all the time. After I was finished shading the skull and outlining the roses, I was allowed to add color to the roses. Adding color the to roses was also hard because the outline would have to be redrawn every time I tried to color them in. In order to fit the "What's the Point?" theme in the picture, I added thorns to each corner of the drawing. Shading the skull was difficult because I had to make some of the areas extremely dark. If I could change anything about this project I would definitely make the bottom jaw less square and smaller. I would also try to fix the teeth.

The reason I chose this piece is because we were allowed to use many different materials to color it. I chose colored pencils because we were not allowed to use them for our pieces in Art 1. I had also never drawn in animal in Art 1 so I decided I might try it. Doing this pose was really difficult because of the Orca whale's head shape. It's rounded in the front, and I had to find a way to make it look like it was facing forward while still having it in a round shape. I really wish I had blended the blue and black a bit better. The transition between each shade of the colors is a little rough. Even though in real life the whale looks like it was colored with charcoal, I really like the outcome of it. "Up Close and Personal" allowed me to used different materials and try different poses.

4. I do believe that having the new way of learning and teaching was effective. It allowed me to use materials that I would never even think of using! It allowed me to grow as a student and artist. It taught me that I should take risks even if it doesn't turn out good. It also taught me to think out of the box a little, unlike Art 1 where we had a strict regulation of what we could and could not use. The best piece of art work is my Marilyn Monroe sequin piece, but I also have a different one. For my "Questionable" project we had to make it 3-D and proportional/scaled. It wasn't my best piece of artwork but I'm glad I was able to do it.  The only time I would think that this teaching wouldn't be effective is if there were no way you could do the piece you had in mind, or you didn't have the materials present. Like with my "Questionable" project I had limited materials. I could get as many boxes as I needed, but I didn't have enough Sculpey to make the figures as big as I wanted to, so I was definitely limited. Teaching  like this is a great way to expand my opportunities to make art in the future!