Final Reflection:
This past year has been an emotional roller coaster in this class. At the beginning of this year I had no idea what I was doing in this class. Even though I still don't really know what I'm doing, I feel more put together in this class than I did at the beginning of the year.
This past year has been an emotional roller coaster in this class. At the beginning of this year I had no idea what I was doing in this class. Even though I still don't really know what I'm doing, I feel more put together in this class than I did at the beginning of the year.
Get Lucky! (12)
This picture was taken outside of Laurel Park Elementary School while I was waiting to pick up my sisters from school. While my sister lily and I were waiting for Sophie, Lily found a four leaf clover! Seeing this took me back to when I was younger, and would look for four leaf clovers every time I saw clovers. I only ever found two, and I would get SO excited every time I would see them!
While painting this, I got so sick of painting the grass. I thought it looked really really messy, and just that I could do a better job with it if I took my time, but at this point in the semester I had no time to take my time. I'm still not a fan of how everything looks, but I'm okay with it. I think it ended up looking better once I added more value. I also think I did a sucky job with the legs, and shirts, I think they look way too flat. I should have had a bigger range of value.
I think I absolutely KILLED IT on the hand, and the clover. I love the detail I was able to capture on the hand, and I love the shine on the clover. The hand has nice value, and a lot of small details that are hard to see from far away, but this reference picture is so focused that it shows all of the small creases in the hand. It was super difficult to get it to not look messy. I didn't have a small enough brush to get it SUPER clean, but I think I got it to be okay. I think my least favorite part of this piece is the feet. They look so weird and misshapen. I'm definitely not a fan of them. I think I just kind of BS'd the feet, and didn't really take the time to try very hard when painting them. Again, I think this was just a time management issue.
My all-time favorite part of this piece is the clover. I think it looks adorable, and has a super nice, organic color. I also love love love how the colors ended up blending together on the grass. I remember at first I hated how it looked, and thought it was really messy, but Emmarose helped me out, and kept telling me to just add more darks or more lights. In all honesty, I didn't think that would work, I thought I needed a whole new approach to the painting, but I just went with what Emma told me, and it ended up looking surprisingly nice! I'm super glad I didn't give up on this piece, or paint over the grass when I got confusing, and more difficult than I thought. Overall, I'd rate this like a 7/10
Stevie Wonder (11)
I LOVED painting this piece!!! This picture was taken at the farmers market a couple years ago. I went to the flower festival with some friends, and my friend Emily took a picture of me and Abby. I think this picture reminded me of home because of how much some of my friends have become my family.
I had such a hard time painting our faces. I think the reason it was so hard to paint was because I didn't have a small enough brush. Not having a small enough brush made the faces look really messy, so I tried to cover up as much of the face as I could, by adding sunglasses, and a sunflower over our faces. Initially the picture only had one sunflower over my face, but I tossed in another one to cover up Abby's face. I thought this would fix the problem, but I still couldn't get the eyes, so I just covered them up with sunglasses. I thought this was a good idea, but then I realized how much that made us look like we were blind.
I LOVE how the flowers look. Especially the main flower at the bottom in the middle. I think that looks the most detailed, and realistic. I also like how the vines look. The white highlights make it look fresh and bright. I think this would look even better if I would have added more vines in different places, to fill negative space. I tried adding the wax paper behind the flowers, but it DIDN'T WORK!!!! It looks so so so bad. Nobody knew what it was, so it was kind of a fail. I think if I could have added more value, or do a wash of it, and then have highlights to make things more defined it could have worked.
I also love the trees, and the texture given on the bark. I think the highlights were a nice touch, and so was adding the magenta to the shadows. I also really really like the leaves. I tried not to stress about painting those, and just went for it. I love how it turned out!!!! It looks so nice, and kind of gives the effect of a blurry background. The front is super detailed, and the background is simple, like it was in the picture.
Overall, I like this painting. I think I did a pretty good job accomplishing what I was going for. I'd rate this an 8-9/10.
Sunny Days (10)
This picture was of my all-time favorite flower, taken in my Grandma's back yard in Utah. I spent the majority of my childhood in my grandma's back yard, so this photo has a lot of significance to me. I took this picture last time I was in Utah, which was when I dropped my sister off at college, and stayed at my grandma's house. When I took the picture, I was thinking how cool it would look as a painting. I didn't think I could actually ever paint it, but i did! That was a really cool experience, because I was able to realize my growth throughout the past couple of years.
I had a really really hard time getting the grass to look realistic. In the photo, the grass is mostly dead, and really flowy. I could NOT get it to look right, so after a certain point I just left it how it was. I think I did an alright job with this painting, but I don't like how the grass looks, which kind of affects the entire painting. I feel like this painting was very rushed. I wish I could have had more time to really focus on painting the grass. I could have looked up tutorials and tested them out and everything, so I could get the best I could.
I wish I could go back and paint the clouds. I like how they look, but I think they could look even better if I added more layers to them. My goal was to have them look more puffy, and bright, but they look kind of dark, and lazy.
I think that the mountains could use some work. I don't like that I did them all in one color. That's how they looked in the picture, but I wish I would've added different colors to make it look more realistic. I know there's kind of a rule that you're supposed to add colors you don't see, but since I was rushed, I just did one color. I also hate the road. I think that the road looks too 2D, and not as real as I could have made it look if I had more time, and added more colors. I think that the only part of this painting that I actually really like is the flower. I love how the texture of the petals looks. I made sure to add the magenta from the sky into the center of the petals. I think this made it look extra real, and 3D.
Overall, I think I changed my mind, and that I don't actually like this painting. I WISH I would have had more time, or used my time more efficiently, but I didn't :/ I think I would rate this like a 6/10
Chacos (9)
Last summer I went camping with friends from my church. While on this camp-out we hiked for 5 miles to get to the waterfall that this picture was taken at. We all sat on a log, and my friend Mary took this picture! I love the composition of this piece, and how detailed the water is. I actually wanted to die when I was painting this. It was so hard to have patience through this piece. At first I was really struggling to make the water look realistic, but then I realized that watering down a cream-ish color helped to make it have a more realistic appearance.
Another thing that really helped me to make this look realistic was getting a black canvas. I think it really helped to make everything pop!
I really really struggled with getting the legs to look right. I had to do layers and layers of paint to get them to look the way they currently look. If I could re-do anything in this piece, I think that I would probably try to fix the top right corner. I was really rushed at that spot, and it isn't as good as I wanted it to be. I think I might also go back and add another foot on the right. I got really tired of painting feet, so I just cut the last one out, but now I regret it.
I think this was one of my favorite pieces to paint. I really liked using the black canvas, I thought it was a nice change to what I usually do. It was really cool to try something new, and stretch my comfort zone, and my skill level. I think the black canvas really helped the colors of the chacos to pop, and it helped the legs to shine out a little more. I also like the skin tone I was able to make. I usually have a really big struggle when it comes to finding the right skin tone, but this time I had no problem. I can't tell if it's just that my skills are improving, or if I just got lucky with the skin tone. Either way, I'm definitely not complaining. While painting this piece, as much as I hated painting the water, it was also super satisfying, and it helped me to pay better attention to the detail in the reference picture.
I love how the anklets look, and I wish I could have added more to the legs, but at the same time, it wouldn't work to add more anklets, because it would look overcrowded, and too busy. Having a fairly simple foreground/ middle ground made the complicated background more interesting/ It kind of balanced out the rest of the piece. If I were to have added more anklets it would have thrown off that balance, and made it too crowded.
Overall, I'm super glad I painted this, and I'm impressed with how it turned out. I was able to capture everything the way that I wanted, and make it look a lot like the original picture. I'd rate this a 8-9/10.
Peachy Keen (8)
My family has a tradition (Actually, my mom has a tradition.) Every year, my mom gets a ton of organic peaches from the farmers market, or sometimes we get them from our family friend's farm. We try to eat as many as we can, but as soon as we run out of things to make, we can the rest of them, and save them to eat them throughout the year. I love how aesthetically pleasing this process looks. I painted my favorite picture I took during this time, which was CRAZY difficult to do. The glass was so hard to paint! It was really difficult to paint the peaches through the glass, and make it so there was still the appearance of glass. I really like how the lettering looks in this. I think they look very life-like, and match the picture well.
The background of the reference picture was really boring, and I don't like it, so I was going to just do a solid color, but now I think I'm going to re-do the background, and have a picture of my mom doing something in the kitchen in the background. This way I'll stick with my theme better. In all of my pieces so far, I have a portrait of a person (or animal), so I feel like in order to keep that theme going I should add a person to this one as well.
I think I did a KILLER job with the top of the jars, and the lids. I love the highlights on the top of the jar. I think I have done a nice job keeping it realistic, and not adding too many highlights. I love the lid, because I did a nice job adding the right values. I was worried about the pattern on the lids, but I really think I did a good job with it!
I don't know how good I feel about the peach in the top left corner of the jar on the left. I think it looks weird and droopy. I like how the rest turn out though (for the most part.)
I also really like the dish towel underneath the jars, I think that looks super cute and homey. I like that you can really see the texture of it. I don't know if I'm going to go over if again, but I think it wouldn't hurt to do that. If I could. That would just make it look more defined, and more like actual fabric too. I think I did a nice job overall though. It's gonna look EVEN BETTER once I get the right background in!!!! I'm super excited to see how this turns out!!
Meow! (7)
This painting is of my grandma's cat Marley! This cat used to be mine, until we found out my mom was allergic. We had to give it to my grandma, but we all still LOVE it! My grandma lives on a farm, and has a lot of other animals, so Marley is loving it there! I painted this (as well as the majority of my pieces) in acrylic paint. I think this painting looks somewhat childish. It's definitely not the best painting I've done. I think it's mediocre. I want to go back and fix the background. I think it's super dull and kind of brings the mood of the painting down. I just really don't like how it looks right now. I think if I take more time to brainstorm a background I can add something more interesting. At first, I was super stressed by this one. I thought painting a cat wouldn't be that bad, since I've done a few dog paintings before but i was wrong! It was super difficult. I had a hard time getting the color right for the fur, but I think I like that aspect of the painting for the most part. I also really really like the eyes. I think I nailed the color, and little highlights. I also like the highlights in the fur around the eyes too. I think I need to get the mouth darker, but I don't know for sure. I might just add slight shadows. I also need to add more highlights to the nose. Right now it's just looking really bland and 2D. While painting this, I was super tired and I think that was portrayed in my final product A LOT it just looks really dull. I keep saying that and the word is probably becoming very overused, but it's just too accurate in this case.
I don't like the grass either I think it blends together too much. I did a decent job with dividing them all, but it's still too similar. Overall, I enjoyed painting this (for the most part) I'm definitely gonna have to go back and re-do some of the things I previously mentioned. (I'm also going to use a thinner brush to add some more details in the fur) I'd rate this like a 6.5 or 7/10.
Flower Child (6)
I took this picture while my family was having a day outside, while gardening. Most of my concentration pieces involve nature, because it's such a big part in my family's life. I love this picture because it perfectly portrays my sister Sophie. She's a happy-go-lucky kind of person, and she loves the outdoors. She's SUPER silly, and smiley, which is exactly what comes across from this picture. I really like this painting so far. I think I got the skin tones relatively similar to the actual picture. I wish I could get it more sunny looking, but I don't know how to do that without making it look yellow. I'm also impressed with the mouth, because usually it turns out looking really bad/ not like the original picture, but in this painting I think it looks really real!!!! I'm having SUCH a hard time getting the flowers to look right. I think the purple one will turn out fine, I'm mostly just worried about the dandelion. I think it looks too flat, and childish.
I LOVE how the shadow is turning out. I was really worried about it before, because it took up so much space on her face, and I didn't want it to look too dramatic, but I think I approached it well! I'm also really excited to do the hair. I'm also kind of nervous though. I think the hair will either turn out really really good or really really bad. I loved how the hair looked on the painting of Lottie with peanut butter on her face. I'm hoping the hair on this painting turn out like that hair. I'm really really not excited to paint the shirt. I can't get the color right, and it just looks more red than pink. I think I'll be able to fix this though, so it shouldn't be a problem for too long. If I had to pick my least favorite part of this painting. it's be the eye. I know it's really small, and looks mostly black, but it's also still supposed to have color in it, and not be as big as it's portrayed in the painting.
My Dawg (5)
I took this picture a few months ago when I was playing fetch with my puppy, Huck. He hasn't really learned the concept of fetch yet, so we have to pull the stick away from him. This picture was taken during the process of taking the stick from him. I love this picture, because it shows so much pure joy!!!! It's too cute! Huck is also the epitome of what I think of when I think of home.
For this painting, I attempted a chunkier style. I wanted to have it be not as smooth, and more 3D. I don't know how good I feel about it. I think that I should have smoothed out certain areas more than I did. The huge pro to this method is that the colors turn out a lot brighter. Most of the time my paintings turn out a lot more dull than this one did. This one, however, is really bright, and happy. I had a really hard time getting this drawn out initially. I kept getting the proportions wrong. Emmarose suggested I draw using a grid and that helped a TON. As soon as I used this method I got it spot on. (or pretty close)
I really don't like how the skin looks in this. It was my first time painting skin using oils, and I'm just not a fan. I don't know how to fix it, but I'll definitely go back and attempt to fix it soon. My all time favorite part of this piece is the mouth (the teeth, and saliva) I think I did a nice job with making this look realistic. The drool especially really takes it to the next level.
I also LOVE the trees. I tried using a technique learned from Bob Ross. He used a pallet knife and rolled paint SUPER lightly onto the trunk. Doing this made it look like real tree bark. I also love that I used red in the trunk. I think that this really added to the realistic factor.
Overall, I really love this painting. Using this style really stretched what I'm comfortable with. I think I like my normal style a little bit more, just because it portrays what I'm trying to paint more than the style used in this painting.
Elizabethan Pond (4)
This idea reminds me of home because every year, my family and I go to the Elizabethan Gardens in the Outer Banks. (Where this picture was taken) This is a vacation we take for a week, and we isolate ourselves from social media, and other distractions so we can spend time together, and grow closer. This has really strengthened my relationship with my whole family.
This painting is really different from what I've been doing lately. I usually blend everything a little too much, and it ends up looking too similar to everything else. In this piece I tried to leave things alone more. An example of where I did this was in the water. Part of the reason I did this was because I didn't know how to realistically paint water, so I took three or four different shades of blue, and put individual strokes in for the water. I did the same thing for the rocks. I think that was good for me to try, because it helped to expand my comfort zone. I'm normally a perfectionist with making everything blend right, but making everything just do their own thing was really nice, and helped me to loosen up a little bit.
My favorite part of this painting is the hat/the clothes. I think I did a good job getting the wrinkles in the clothes to look realistic. I had a really really hard time getting the fish to look like they were underwater. Every time I painted the fish they just looked weird and messy since I tried to blend blue onto it. I think it turned out looking okay though. I managed to make it look like it was underwater by adding highlights over the fish. This gave it a more realistic shine/reflection. I had a difficult time getting the lily pads to have an organic color. Most of the attempts I had resulted in being too bright, or too brown. I'm not totally satisfied with the perspective of the lily pads. They look really flat, and don't match with the perspective of the rocks. I don't think this is super noticeable for anyone who hasn't stared at it for hours, trying to fix every little mistake.
If I could re-do this painting, I would make the hair less yellow, by adding a tiny bit more brown, and white. I'd also try to make the water look slightly more realistic. I'd still want to keep it looking like the style I have currently.
Overall, I'd rate this piece an 8/10 since I'm not a huge fan of it, but I'm proud of myself for stretching what I feel comfortable with. I also like how bright it is, since most of my paintings are kind of dull.
Peanut Butter and Lottie (3)
This is a painting perfectly describing my little sister Lottie. She constantly has something on her face, ranging from dirt, to paint. This reminds me of home, because it ties back to my childhood, and the crafts and adventures that lead back to me always being this messy.
While completing this piece, I found that the most challenging part was painting the peanut butter. I couldn't get the right color, and keep it from looking like skin. I'm not super pleased with the way the peanut butter looks, but I do like all the colors I used to create it, instead of just using basic colors that would be expected. I don't like the skin tone in this piece. Instead of re-painting it when I started the piece (since I thought it was too pale) That's one of my huge regrets with this piece. I think if I were to go back and fix the skin it would have made this piece 10x better. I think either I made it look too pale, or I made the wall behind her too dark. (Maybe a little bit of both??) I'm going to go back later and lighten up the background, and add more value in the face. I also really don't like how the eyebrows turned out. I think they look too dark and filled in, and not super natural for a little girl. I wish there was more going on in the background I feel like its so boring and bland because it's literally just a wall.
I really love how the hair turned out. I think I did a really nice job with getting the shine to look realistic, and not abnormally yellow like I normally make it look. I also really like how I got the fly aways to look realistic, and not messy. I think I did a decent job with making her look like a kid. Getting the child-like chubby face isn't very easy for me to do most of the time, but you can actually tell Lottie's a kid!
Overall, I have no real feelings about this piece. I think it looks decently realistic, but also I think it's really boring. If I could make it look more interesting I definitely would. I want to make it seem more blissful like childhood. I'd rate this piece 7/10.
Lillies (2)
This painting is of my little sister Lily. She had just been "exploring" our backyard, and found these flowers, and swore they were Lillies. We didn't dare to correct her, so we just agreed with her. This makes me think of home, because my whole family is SUPER into gardening. My dad is a Microbiol ecologist (studies different bacteria, and their affect on the environment.) and my mom is a certified Master Gardener, and used to teach gardening classes at a local greenhouse. They've raised all of us to know how to garden, and know why it's a necessary skill.
While painting this piece, my biggest challenge was deciding what to do for a background. The original background was the back of my house, and the railing from our deck, and it didn't look nice, so I tried sketching different ideas, but nothing was really clicking for me, so I settled on fading it into blue. I really regret this decision because I think it makes it look less impressive, and kind of gives the vibe that I was too lazy to finish the piece. I do however, really love how the nose turned out, everything looks so smooth and connected to everything else. I think I did a really good job with value in the skin tone, although I could add a few more prominent highlights. I also really liked the eyebrows, and how I was able to paint the individual hairs. I also like the use of complementary colors used in the flowers, and the background. I thought that was a nice touch that kind of pulled it all together.
My least favorite part of this entire piece is definitely the hands. I think I rushed on the, and didn't put as much detail in as I should have. The fingernails are painted on too thin, and need at least one more layer. I'm going to go back and fix this as soon as I bring this piece home.
This piece really helped me to love painting portraits, and seeing the full personality of the person come to life while you paint. I am very pleased with how this piece turned out, and am exited to go back and fix some of the little details.
Lottie's Goggles (1)
My concentration is centered around home, and to me, as cheesy as it sounds, family is the first thing that comes to mind when I think of home. I chose this specific picture because of my family's annual beach trip to the outer banks, where we miss school for a week, and go explore the beach. I really liked painting this piece. There were some challenging factors to it though. I have never painted sand before, and so I had a hard time with that at first, because it didn't have any depth. Mrs. Rossi told me to just put the illusion of shadows, and not try so hard to make it look exactly like the original picture. I think the sand ended up turning out pretty well, and it all blends nicely, and looks like it has little dips in the sand where there are shadows. Another challenging part of this piece was the skin tone. Skin tones are already super challenging for me, but having a similar color for the sand made it even more difficult because I constantly felt like they just looked the same, or too similar. I ended up adding a little bit of blue to the skin, and really lightening up the sand, and I think that made a big difference. The hair was also crazy hard to do, and I'm still not completely satisfied with it. I need to add more highlights, and make the flyaways look like they're supposed to be there. Right now they just look like I accidentally smudged the paint. To fix this, I'm going to go over it with a smaller brush.
Although there are some things I wish I could do differently, I really love how the ocean turned out! It looks so aesthetically pleasing to me. I had a hard time mixing the right color for the first strip of water where you can still see the sand through it, but Mrs. Rossi had me look at a color chart and find the closest matching colors to mix, and then add light blue highlights over the top of it. My all time favorite part of this entire piece is the goggles. I think I did such a good job making them look life-like, by adding highlights. The best part of the goggles is the clear part on both of the edges that connects the bands to the goggles I think I did a really good job with making this look like it was actually clear. To get this look, I used a lighter purple than the band was normally, so it would look like the clear part had tinted the part of the band it was covering.
I think this is one of my favorite paintings, I feel that my skills as an artist have grown throughout this because of the many technical challenges I faced when completing this piece.