Out of all of my projects, my artist painting was the most successful. For this project, I had to base my art off of an artist I researched, I chose Winslow Homer. Winslow Homer painted very realistic scenes, many of which were of the ocean. I usually do not draw or paint with a realistic style, so this project was a challenge to me because the use of value is so different from what I usually do. In order to get this realistic effect, I used my small paintbrushes to dab the foam onto the waves and use different shades of white in order to give the foam shape. The painting is about 8x16, and took me about 4 days to complete. I began with the sky, and because acrylic paint doesn't blend the way I want it to, I used the same dabbing technique. For the sky, I used dark, almost black, colors in order to make it a stormy night. In order to make the moon illuminate, I mixed many different shades of white gradually darkening into the background color which is a blue/gray. For each cloud, I also added some light blue/grey to make it look like the light was shining off of them. After the sky, I did the ocean in strokes, first adding the value into the waves to make them more three-dimensional, but once the foam was added by dabbing with the brush, it really popped out. Lastly I worked on the structure on the left, I used a ruler to make my lines on the structure straight, and did my best freehand on the round top. I worked the hardest on this project and ended up being the most proud of it.
The two pictures that showed my growth as an artist were my Georgia O'Keefe project, and my WInslow Homer project. I used watercolor paints for my Georgia O'Keefe, a sea urchin. The project took me very long to finish because watercolor takes a lot of patience. I used light blues and purples, as well as black and grey to color this painting, In the Winslow Homer project, I used the same colors for the sky and water, but with acrylic painting. From both pictures, my application has improved since I had learned more about paint, I blended the colors much better and more efficiently in my Winslow Homer. For the dark black parts in the sea urchin, I used Indian ink, and in my Winslow Homer, I just used black acrylic paint. The spotty, almost grainy acrylic paint gives the water more texture. My skills improved after learning more techniques on applying paint. Even though they are both done with different mediums, the improvement can be seen because with the watercolor paint, I simply used large strokes to fill in the spot completely, but with the acrylic I dabbed each part of the ocean carefully to give texture to the water. between the two projects, my idea was certainly more creative in my Winslow Homer project. I had chosen something more detailed and difficult, and the watercolor project ,may just be a bit too simple. For the watercolor project, I did not want to a normal O'Keefe painting, so I chose something a bit to different and may have been too difficult for me. Even from far inspection, you can't tell if it is a sea urchin, and it's not very easy to see that O'Keefe was the inspiration for this painting. When looking at the acrylic painting, it very much resembles Winslow Homer's style because of the ocean and the painting techniques. When the two are compared, my improvement is definitely shown, mostly because of detail and techniques.
The project I chose was Jack's pointillism project. He decided to paint a soccer field in pointillism with q tips. I think Jack did an amazing job with this project because he spent a lot of time working on it. Each dot was made individually and his medium was acrylic paint, and he was very smart to use q-tips to point the paint onto the canvas. He did a great job with the details in the audience, instead of making the entire row of seats one shade of red, Jack used different colors to add texture and value to make it more 3-dimensional, and the colors he chose makes the art project very bright. Jack used his love for soccer by making the painting a soccer field. He is very talented at pottery and 3D art, so this project came as a struggle to him, and was a bit out of his comfort zone. He had a lot of trouble covering the wash underneath the painting, but continued to keep on dotting the same color over and over again until it covered completely. The painting definitely shows Jack's love for Liverpool and I think that it is what he's trying to say, I think Jack could've added some players onto the field with tinier dots, perhaps with toothpicks, and some parts, like the white letters in the audience, could use some more value and dark/grey dots. The picture perhaps could be moved so that the circle and line aren't directly in the middle, though it is just my opinion. I still think that Jack did a wonderful job with the pointillism project because he succeeded in making it look like pointillism and making the landscape very clear that it is a field.