Collograph

We had the oppertunity to go outside for this project and find bugs to look at and draw.  I found a bee!!!  We did this exercise to observe typical body parts of bugs close up. Then we were asked to make up a new bug and cut the pieces of the bug out of cardstock paper and stack them on top of each other to create a COloGraPH! Then we took ink, and printed our bug onto a paper! We also rubbed Crayons onto the bug as another means of making prints of our bugs!  This project became a little tedious because I tend to make things more complicated than they need to be!!! my bug has a really cool body though if you look closely... (O: 

New Word Calligraphy

This project was supposed to be a stamp that we put on our bamboo paintings! I thought it was a really neat idea!  We took a tiny piece of styrofoam and made our name into something that resembled a chinese character.  We carved it on the foam backwards, colored it with red magic marker, and stamped it onto our bamboo art! It turned out great! I love how authentic looking it is!

Chinese Brush Panting

This project was really really fun! We used authentic style brushes to make the authentic style chinese bamboo paintings!  We used black water color- rather than ink- because that was what was available to us.  I think it is awesome that we could make do with waht we had and it still turned out awesome! We had the oppertunity to use authentic rice paper, which I did, but the ink absorbed differently than the paper we were practicing on, so it didnt turn out the way that I had hoped it would.  I have posted my practice piece of paper as well because I liked it so much.  I brought the practice paper home with me and one of my roommates brought over a girl from China.  I had the paper sitting on a desk, and I had forgot I had it there and the Chinese girl was like "Wow! Who does Chinese calligraphy?! It is bamboo!"  she was sooo excited and so was I- because she knew what it was supposed to be!!!!

View Finder Drawings

I found it really difficult to use the viewfinder because as I was drawing things (especially the elephant) I had a really hard time making things so huge that were close to me and things so small that were further from me.  I felt like it really taught me that my previous ideas of how things should be proportioned sometimes outweighed the things that I actually saw.  Eventually I gave in to drawing what I saw through the viewfinder (an ENORMOUS elephant ear) and looking at it now, I can see how it really does look good despite my frustrations while drawing it. 

Grid Portrait

The Grid Portrait was probably one of my favorite things we have done in this class! I have never done anything like this before and I was really impressed with how easy it was once you look at the picture in little boxes and just draw what you see in each box. (originally we tried drawing our face from memory, then from looking at the picture, then with the grids) I just used a normal #2 pencil for this piece- as well as my finger to smudge the pencil and shade it.  This assignment really helped me look at things as little pieces and not just the whole huge thing I had to do.  I am pretty happy about how it turned out- though my eyes are a little too far apart!! hahahaha its ok.  I will just have to make another one someday!

Picasso Head

The Picasso Head was a really neat project-- we were asked to draw a picture of someone in the room without looking at our paper, and without picking up our pencil.  Then, we traced the lines we drew with a thick black marker, and colored in the spaces with the patterns from our previous assignment  (The 8-Design Squares).  This "Picasso Head turned out really cool looking!!  I loved how different they all turned out- but they were all really abstract and interesting!  It was a good project to discuss colors, textures, abstract... and much, much more!

8 Design Squares

For the eight design squares, we were told to use colored pencil and create a large texture, a small texture, complimentary colors, analogous colors, warm colors, cool colors, and two "wild cards."  I really liked how these turned out--- especially my "large texture" box and my animal print "wild card" box!  We didnt know what we were creating these designs for when we made them, but then they became the patterns to use in our next project of the Picasso faces!