My Abrela's senior portrait

Don't laugh, I'm not even close to finishing this portrait of my grandma when she was in her late to early teen years. I think it was her senior photo. Anyway, I'm still working may way from the underlayer coat and I have to watch every brush stroke since in real life, the painting looks like an old photography, which is what I was planning for.

Music Room

This was my ink drawing. At this point, while I was making it, I didnt have an essel with me, thus presenting the slant and uneven-ness of the piano keys. It gets on my nerves so bad, but of course it would for any perfectionists. But by the time I notices it, the ink already dried and there was nothing I could do. But for my first time using ink, I think I did a darn good job. Hopefully

Working Hands

I had the perfect hand on the left then it didn't match up on the bottom hand and then the top hand was a complete mess. Presenting :the good, the bad, and the ugly. However, my idea that I wanted to convey came out exactly how I wanted it to. Where an artist puts their blood, sweat and tears into their own artwork for themselves, showing the cycle (a.k.a. the hands drawing the hands).

Illusion

Well, first I have to finish this piece, but in the meantime I wanted to make an Illusion with figures-since i never made an illusion before (it is WAYYY harder that one would think, and it even confused the person drawing it). I tried to make it to where you did know which figure's body is missing or is somewhere else (at this time the orange figure morphs into the yellow figure).

Nesting Dolls

This artwork was made with pastel and crayon, something I don't normally use. It was a bit hard for me since I wanted to emphasis shadow yet keep hints on what they were.
On this project, I had fun with their faces, the eyes made their faces and each had a different expression that I hopefully conveyed through the nesting dolls.

Black/ white face

This artwork was actually fun for me, it was different than what i was used to and I actually used black for this piece. I tried to use simple lines, and I think I did a pretty good job with it.

Georgia O'Keeffe

Georgia O'Keeffe is one of my favorite 21st century artists, as many of my close friends know. Looking at her flower paintings, I can see her macro style show through magnificently. Her macro is so defined that her own art becomes abstract in itself.

Robert Longo and Gernard Richter

Robert Longo

Full of charcoal and patience, detail and smoothness, sweetness and satire. This artist I definitely admire and would very well love to create and see the world in this way. Absolutely incredible. Something I would defiantly love to explore in his manner of art.

Gernard Richter
VVery intresting and unique, its a normal activity yet seen in a different perspective. As if it was a candid photograph. Something that is unique in it's own way and an emphasis on normal activitites that we tend to overlook. A composition of life on paper.

Pictorial Composition: an introduction

The Importance of Balance
"the sensitive eye of artist and viewer tests every picture fro balance, a judgment usually rendered naturally by everyone, with or without knowledge of artistic laws"

• balance is very important for all paintings and works of art, it creates an emphasis and pulls in a crowd which in turn makes an art piece strong in a visual aspect
• "the value of a unit depends on its attraction, and its attraction varies according to placement"
• "a unit near the edge has more attraction than the same unit at the middle"

-balances that many artists include in their work is balance of line, of mass, of light and dark, and of measure, so just making sure that everything is balanced throughout the piece. Making every section equal in attraction as in another section.
Looking back on my work, I realize I probably should have more acknowledged balance in my artwork. this of course would help me more on my composition and elements that include to make my artwork stronger, hopefully I can make them stronger. Practice and effort is the key.

Some of my recent work

DCA: Chapter 4

There are 6 categories of light as it falls over a form: highlight, light, shadow, core of shadow, reflected light, and cast shadow. All of these relate back to any artwork, of all the art elemets, " value has the greatest potential for spartical development" or basically just to any artwork.
* I think I got the concept down for light sources, however, I need to concentrate and apply it more to my Artwork, to create more depth and to create better form in my art. With my next project, a corner still life, I will definately need this to apply onto my figures in my actural artwork. How I'm going to get there.....I haven't quite figured that out.

Reading: Colston pg 84, 91

Perspective is actually very hard for me to recreate and of course, it helps with depth and distance. If I get this down, I will defiantly improve at least a level or two with my art work. Wish me luck on that.
Hint- viewpoint gives extra perspective that attracts the eye.
What I defiantly love...is side walk art...they definitely show depth and distance and are extremely well done. If I was good enough to do sidewalk art...I would do it.

Moon lighting: all about diagonal beams, in the end just use an eraser to emphasize the lighting. It's basically just like regular lighting on a still life, just more emphasised.

Landscape Artists

Bob Ross

I really love Bob Ross, I used to watch his t.v. series as well. I just admired how he was able to create such detail in his paintings with relatively simple pain brush techniques, he even used his pallet knife. He was able to create trees and water with either a dab or a swipe, all with great detail and most within a half hour time period.

                                                                                                                                                             

                                             Parham Mill at Gillingham-John Constable          

The Opening of Waterloo Bridge seen from White Hall Stairs-John Constable

John Constable is an English Romantic Painter from 1776-1837, an older era artist, but still quite remarkable. I would love to be able to create such detail like this, everything is very strong and concise, absolutely marvelous.

                                                                                                                                                                   

                                      Tower Mill at Wijk bij Duurstede-Jacob Van Ruisdael

                                          Bentheim Castle- Jacob Van Ruisdael
Jacob Van Ruisdael was a Dutch landscape painter from about 1628-1682, his paintings are very detailed and relitivlely realistic. I would only dream of painting like Ruisdael.

Vocabulary

Vocabulary:
Color: All colors can be defined as three things: hue, saturation and value.
Hue: The name of a color. Paint examples: Cadmium red, Lemon yellow….
Saturation: a color’s strength or intensity, this can be high or low.
Value: this is the color’s lightness or darkness.
Landscape: a painting of a scene in nature.
Under painting: applying thin (lots of water added) layers of paint to start your drawing.

My still life in color pencil

I think this still life came out pretty good, the statue is my favorite, however now looking at it overall, my whole entire drawing seems flat... I don't know what else to do to make my art have more depth to it, I can never get that extra mile.

Colston pgs. 22-23, 62-74

Creating textures
  water: use smudgy marks and areas of tone in soft pencil or charcoal, then repeat the exercise using defined liniar marks, or combine the two to describe the natural textural differences between foliage and water-- water I definately need to get better at and with this tip hopefully I can.
Reading pages 22-23, i found that in order to immitate nature, I must immitate nature's symmetry. since "symmetry is nature's fundamental principle of organization".
I LOOOOVVEEE pages 62-74, it gives you easy ways to immitate patters on paper, by just transfering it or drawing over it, never thought of doing that, but now I am definately gonna try.

Reading: DCA chapter 6

Textures:

refers strictly to the sense of touch

You can never go wrong with textures, especially since textures give your artwork a true touch of artistry. It makes you art more vivid, more intense in detail, and depth on most matters-if you use it correctly. This is were I struggle and I know it. I just need to spend more time understanding light or using reflection more carefully, plus I need to be patient since I do tend to rush on my textures at the end.
Categories of texture:

Actual texture: "the tactile quality of a surface, including the mark made by a tool, the surface on which it is made, and any foreign material added to the surface" (148)
Simulated texture: is the imitation of the tactile quality of a surface: can range from a suggested imitation to a highly illusionistic duplication of the subject's texture
Invented, conventional, or symbolic texture: do not imitate textures in real life, rather they are invented textual patterns

Colston pp. 32-35

A balancing act
There are many ways to balance an art piece. Through rule of thirds, in color, movement composition and value. Everything always needs to be balanced in the world of art, personally I have no idea why this is such a rule, but I feel obligated to balance every art piece I do.
We can also use a view finder in order to balance out the amount of sky or ocean or precentage of an area that is show with the use of cropping.

*hint: you can use a pencil to pinpoint the height of a object in your artwork.

hold the pencil out at arm's length, closing one eye, and lining it up with whatever you want to measure.

DCA Chapter 4

Value: describes achromatic color; a color devoid of hue or just basically the gradation from light to dark across a form. *too many definitions
What I found out is that, like color, value can be used for an emotional or expressive purpose. It can also give great depth and sense of texture to an object. And of course it gives a realistic feel to it when light and reflective light has been shown. So basically value is the center of creating a in-depth overall drawing.

Sketchbook drawing: reacreation of a childhood photo

Now this project is kind of odd for me. I don't know what exactly to do and to be honest I'm not sure how to create JUST a line drawing... I wish I was an art geek or even an art nerd, but lets face it... I don't know what I'm doing sometimes. I'm not very educated in the art world like others are, even though I am going in the field. I know some basics, but besides that I'm flying blind.
However, back to my point, I'm not sure what I'm going to do for this project, if this is a collage of my childhood aspirations with a picture of me on the work or I'm just drawing myself..like a self portrait of me as a kid. Not so sure... but I made a sketch of me as a kid at least.

My first drawing

It took me forever to find this drawing of mine, it was in my elementary bucket in my basement. But i think that search payed off since I found this horse drawing of mine from when I was in kindergarten-i think-This was my first attempt at an actual drawing, and I think for being such a youngster I got contour lines down pretty good. I even seem to have some shading going on-i don't know if that was intentional or it was meant to color the horse, but I kind of like the drawing itself, in it's own kind of way.

Don't ask me where I got the horse from, but i think it was from a book.. or a picture... or maybe it was one of those coloring books.

Reading: Colston (pgs 102-103)

Monochrome media: which basically means, a painting or drawing done in different shades of a single color.
"With pencils alone, you can achieve a huge variety of effects. If you add charcoal and conte crayon, you have a full repertoire to suit all subjects"

So in other words, pencils and graphite are an artist's essential tool, which can create a range of desired affects with just the holding positions of the pencils. Yet, charcoal and conte crayon allows a more emphasized work of art, for a broader range of audience.
This, however, is going to be especially difficult for me to take to heart since graphite was my choice of media, however, I need to broaden my horizons and accept that pencils drawings are acceptable and wonderful works of art, but other media can bring more to the table sometimes,.. well most of the time.NOT saying pencil drawings are inferior in any way. 

Reading: DCA, Chapter 5 (pgs 115-141)

Line, is art terms, is the most direct means of establishing style. So, for me is how I express the feeling in a drawing. Say i try to convey elegance or raw energy, outrage or wit ( not sure how to express the last one, but I think I could come up with something); but such gestures can be included in contour drawings, charcoal and automatic drawings and even self portraits like Philip Guston. But keeping in mind that a line drawing has no shading throughout the whole work of art, it's just the combination of lines and the variety of lines that give it its apeal.
While reading about line, something caught my intrest. Under "using implied line" on page 136, the drawing Henry in Candlelight by David Hockney was very intresting. It was in the section called "Blurred line" which apparently are smudged lines by rubbing, which kinda confused me on the no shadding part that contributes to line, however the drawing can still be construde as a line drawing. A blurred and smudged lines create an "indefinate edge thereby resulting in an ambiguous space".

"I discovered that sometimes the in-between lines is as important as the line itself"- Gego





Reading: DCA pg 52-66

Spatial Relationships of the Art Elements:
Our senses are "capable of extending throughout the entire universe and touching it. Not seeing with one's hands but touching with one's eyes"- Octavio Paz.

 A unique way of thinking for me. For artists allow others to see and absorb a concept through an their work. "To see with our hands and touch with our eyes" allows us to see how important space is to artists which in the end helps me to see how space is important in my own work. Artists like M.C. Escher and Oscar Dominguez use the space concept to portray ideas as well.
Space can either add dimension or deplete it, but depending on the artists, space can actually tell a story.
Different space concepts: flat, shallow, illusionistic, actual, and ambiguous space.

200 Projets to Strengthen Your Art Skills (p.36-37)

Overall, I never really had a personal sketchbook-just a few actual pieces of art pasted into a book-like binder. However, understanding that applying for an art school a sketchbook is a vital tool for showcasing my skills and process-I'm going to have to work on one, incorporating my process and how I got used to a media. Basically my whole art world in one book, not sure how it'll end up, but I really want to try.

Drawing a Contemporary Approach (p.40-41)

Understanding continuous- line drawings is like reading about gesture drawings, which I think are pretty much the same. Although they are really an exercise designed to improve observational skills they sometimes become an interesting form of art (which is not a drawing that I'm use to doing, however, it would be a terrific way for me to get loose in drawing and get out of my comfort zone). Then, adding details or colour afterwards can make a drawing a work of art.
be interesting to try it out....

LAST ONE!!

I'm kinda thinking I'm over my head now, with my last drawing. I dont know exactly how its gonna end up like or...not end up. *** I decided for my last drawing to do a  perspective on the future  and the massive detail in this picture is overwhealming me right now. I don't know if I'll finish in time. -But I'm going blind here, I'm drawing from my imagination, soooo....I'm not looking at a still life or anything real...thus making me on my own. But I will continue to right up the dead line...and hopefully it'll turn out how I planned....hopefully. heh ^_^"

My Pastel work-ish

Art gallery/shows

This summer was full of art for me. Every where my family and I went there was some kind of art incorporated into it. I visited the art galleries in Estes Park about 3 times, as well as some sketchbook stores there. Plus I was able to take my family to the Denver Art Museum this summer- my 2nd time going there. However, I was unable to go to the art galleries in New Mexico this summer- a little disappointing, but I'm counting on going soon.

Cherry Blossom Scenery

My Self Portrait

My Still LIfe

Soo frustrating

I'm having a hard time uploading my pictures that I made. Why does things have to be sooooo complicated... -_-

ReLearning my simple techniques

Right now I'm hoping to improve my simple skills and techniques: reflections, shadows, textures, and highlights. Not only that, but I'm learning how to paint, use pastel, and create people with charcoal. Especially since I just started using paint, never really used pastel, and have a hard time recreating people on paper.