Final Design



Tea & Sandwiches in Tucuman, Argentina

So we have come to the final project of our class. We have the freedom to choose any project, any design, any medium to work with as long as it incorporates what we have learned in class. I thought long and hard and decided to work once again with acrylics. I enjoyed my first painting and wish to recreate that feeling of satisfaction. For my inspiration, I went back to a missions trip to Argentina. I was part of a group of ladies who were assisting in a conference for women and young ladies. After spending several hours visiting fabric stores for decorating, my friend and I returned to the hotel tired. We went to the dining area and literally fell into our seats. The headwaiter, seeing our exhaustion, recommended a light meal of tea and sandwiches. What we received was much more than that. Special attention to details and anticipating our every need left us feeling soft, warm and fully satisfied. I felt very special. I wanted to recreate that feeling with my final project.




One of my many Japanese tea sets.

 

I love teapots and tea sets and collect them everywhere I go. One of my sets is a beautiful cream color with cherry blossoms. This was the set I selected. Because I would be painting on an ivory canvas, I wasn't sure if I could do justice to the color. Instead of an ivory cream, my painting would have a light pink set. Also, I decided against drawing the Japanese lettering. In order to see the contour of the teapot more clearly, I printed a black and white copy of my subject. This allowed me to study the curves and the perspective of the set. 

 

black and white copy

Although I did not intend to create a monochromatic painting, my project ended up mostly in shades of red. I did add the cherry blossom tree with it's green leaves. Since I did not have a background to work with, i decided to add a "spotlight"effect by encircling it with deep rose colors. This worked very well, giving it a warm and cozy feel to it. I'm very happy with the end result. When I look at the painting, it takes me back to the same feeling of feeling safe and pampered as my visit to the Argentine hotel.



My completed project


 

Typography

This week we are learning about typography. We have three assignments.

The first one is to create a "ransom" note by cutting letters out of magazines. The idea is to use the fonts to create a dramatic demand. My ransom note reads "Drop the salad and no one gets hurt" It is signed by Mars, a familiar name in chocolate! I looked for fonts that looked like junk food, and found a PopTart "S" and a Willy Wonka "M". Actually, it is a "W" but I turned it upside down. This was a nice project that opened my eyes to the many ways font can be used to deliver a message.

Our second assignment was to take a sentence and write it out using fonts to make the sentence look like what it says. Hmm, that sounds confusing. Basically, we had to "write" an expressive sentence. I selected the sentence "They were saturated with happiness". I drew all the "T"s to look like umbrellas and the "r"s to look like leaking water faucets. The rest of the letters were puffed up as if full of water. There are also some drops on them. I used a mixture of oil paints, markers and water colors for this project. The idea was to make it look as if all the letters were so full, so saturated with water that they looked ready to burst.

The last asssignment dealing with typography was to create a logo with our initials. I shall be uploading that soon.

Implied & Tactile Collage

My assignment here was to create a collage using two styles. The first format, implied, was to have the illusion of a textile. The second format, tactile, was to have actual 3D materials. I chose the same picture of a field with a tree and mountains for both formats.

Implied Collage

To make the waves of golden fields, I used cuttings of wavy hair. From far away, it does not look like hair. The mountains are pictures of tweed coats and the tree trunk is a leather purse. For the tree, I did a rubbing of mesh.

Tactile Collage

Using the same picture, I gathered materials that are similar in look to my original collage. The field this time is made of burlap and has a smattering of green in it. I've also added some grassy areas with a few flowers. The tree is made out of feathers wtih leaves cut from a fabric. The mountains were fun to make. I put a smathering of glue and let it dry for several days. On a piece of paper, I put 2 separate squirts of black and white acrylic paint and using a sponge, I touch lightly over both and dabbed the glue. To finish it off, I outlined the mountains using a big of black rick rack. Finally, I dabbed blue and white paint above the mountains and glued white filmy material, outlining with white round ribbon to create the clouds.

I think the implied collage needs work but I'm pretty happy with the tactile collage.

Acrylic Painting



Original picture

 Okay, I have to admit that this one made me nervous. The assignment was to paint a picture using the color we chose for our value scale.  I picked what I hoped was a relatively easy picture to paint. It is a simple flower in a small vase surrounded by a few rocks and water. The color I chose was red because that is my favorite color. Once the outline was sketched out, I decided on the lightest shade and started there. The picture went pretty smooth and easier than I expected because there were large patches of color rather than a lot of small patches.

Me concentrating



It was a bit difficult deciding which shade to use on the non-red portions of the picture but having my value scale nearby made it easier.  When I finished the large areas, I went and added shading and highlights. I then lined the different items in the picture to make them stand out. Once I felt I could not do anything else to improve it, I stopped.  I am very happy with the painting.

 



Final painting



This was my very first time painting with acrylics and I enjoyed it very much. In fact, I am already planning my next painting!

Oil Pastel picture

We are working on acrylic painting in class this week. I thought I'd try painting a smaller version of the same picture but with a different media. I painted this picture using oil pastels. After sketching out the picture, I filled it with the oils then went over portions of it with watercolors. I think it gave it a nice look. I changed the background a bit to make it look more like a water lily type flower, floating in the water. What do you think?

Branching out

This assignment was to draw a landscape wtih one tree or bush that has a personality. Well, I have no landscape and two trees. Believe it or not, this is the paneling inside one of the elevators in my office building. All three walls have this type of "wood markings". Makes for a very uncomfortable ride when you're alone in there! They remind me of the trees in Fantasia.

I plan to re-do this assignment.

Value Scales

Today's assignment was to create 2 value scales. The first one is a gray value scale and was created using photos from magazines. It was a challenge to put this one together because each time I thought I had 10 values, I looked closely and found blue or brown hues in the photograph. Once I had my values ready, I pasted them on a white bar then onto a black matte board. This keeps the values at the end from completely disappearing into the background. Looking at this picture, there are several values that look very similiar but in person, there is a greater difference in the tones.