ART Fall '11: Digital Printmaking

Here's the art from my Digital Printmaking class:

We had to use textures to create an image for our first project.  This took me about a month and a half to complete mainly because I had to keep changing things.  It started out as just a skull.  Then it became a skeleton mashed with pieces of muscle.  Then I had to create an entire skeleton and complete the missing pieces that were behind the muscle. THEN we needed a 3rd layer so I created the skin sections.  My teacher just kept changing his mind!

For the muscle, I used an image of our blinds and colored them red.

For the skin, I used an image of cork board.

For the skeleton, I used an image of shredded paper.

Since I didn't build this all at the same time, the proportions are a little weird.  This is compiled of at least 200 layers.  I would warp, change levels, and cut the images of shredded paper to create this.  Same thing for the muscle.

This is the first printed layer - 96" long.

I then printed out 2 more layers of the muscle and then the skin. I cut them out and then glued them on top.  Its hard to see, but I curled up some pieces of the muscle so you could see the cone underneath. This was taken with my phone, I'll get a better picture later.

This was the 2nd project - wallpaper.  I scanned face cards in and cut symbols out and created this design.

This was the final wallpaper.

This was the last project.  We had to create a vector based image that would be lazer cut.  So I created this bird design in Illustrator.

feathersss

I used painted matte board as material.  I glued the blue and orange pieces on top of black matte board then glued the feathers on top of that.

This was the machine. I did take a video, I'll post that later once I figure out how to get it off my phone.

Another view.

ART Fall '11: Intro to Painting

This was my first oil painting class. I've been avoiding this like the plague. Notice we're supposed to take this class our sophomore year and I'm a senior.

Here's the art from my painting class:

Black and White - purse

Still Life - boot, belt, pillowcase

Still life - Dog stuff on a chair and 2 pillow cases

Interior painting - ceiling of our paint studio and I did alter the colors to make it more interesting than just white walls

We had to recreate a Cezanne still life painting and this was my choice. This was after Day 1

After Day 2

After Day 3

Final

This was a painting of our choice.  So I chose a picture of a cove that I took in Gloucester, MA. This was after Day 1

After Day 2

After Day 3

Final. And yes, the water was that blue. I suggest everyone visit Gloucester, MA - its gorgeous!

ART Fall '11: Drawing Approaches

At last the semester has come to an end.  I had 3 art classes: Intro to Painting, Digital Printmaking, and Drawing Approaches.

Here's the art from my Drawing Approaches class:

Blind Contour of my hands.  Basically, I'm drawing my hands without looking at the paper. I hate this technique.

Drew this from a picture I took of a bridge in Wilmington.  I then used a grid technique to copy that picture to this charcoal drawing.

For this one, we had to choose at least 3 different artworks from books and create a new juxtaposition with them.  I used Hopper's "Night Hawks" for landscape, Wyeth's pirates, and an anchient Roman precession relief. I first put them all together digitally.

 Then drew the digital image here. I call it the "Clash of the Timelines." Only thing bad about charcoal is that things smudge a lot.

This was the "whatever you want" project. I hate it when teachers do that. I don't WANT to do anything, I want them to tell me what to do! Its so hard coming up with something.  Anyways, I decided to try watercolors focusing on cloud subjects.

Note: I have never done watercolors before. Its HARD.

This was my favorite. And it only took my 15 minutes to do. The other ones took over an hour. This is one of those things where I don't think I could make again.

This was our Free Association Drawing.  This was 15feet long and 3 feet wide. 15 feet! I thought I would never finish this. My back is still hurting from working on this.

These are other students rolls just so you have an idea of the size.

It's All About Riley

Dewey came for a visit the other day. We've known Dewey for years, back when we had Josie.  He lives in another neighborhood but escapes a lot. He would come play with Josie and our neighbor's dog Princess all the time. Unfortunately our neighbor has moved away with his dog and Josie has passed. But we have a new playmate! Its kinda funny. Before, Josie could never keep up with Dewey and Princess because she was too old and too fat.  Now we have this limber, young dog to play with them - but Dewey and Princess are now too old and too fat. What is this, opposite day!

This picture just explains everything. All Riley did was bark and Dewey just didn't care for it (neither do the neighbors). I think Dewey keeps coming back for treats from me, not to play with this chatter box.

Walkies at Valley Gardens. It was difficult to have her sit still. Phone cameras aren't the best at capturing movement.

I took her for a walk at a secluded area. Its our little secret where at.

Very pretty area. Its easier to get around during the summer cuz you just walk through the water when the trail gets blocked. I had to walk across a wet log over water with Riley pulling me. It was a miracle I stayed dry. We really need to work on loose leash walking because I'm ready to kill her if she doesn't stop pulling me everywhere!

This was today at Winterthur. Today was the county's XC meet. It was so much fun. I wish I kept up with my running. But I have started up again. I ran 2 miles today and hope to keep stacking up the miles. My goal is to run the 5K Turkey Trot on Thanksgiving day.

Its getting cold outside. We actually had snow last weekend. In October! Riley has low tolerance for cold. She's seriously like a heat seeking missile. If your just sitting on the couch watching tv and decide to get up and get something. When you come back Riley always takes your warm spot. And during the warmer days, Riley always slept in her bed in my room. Now she insists on sleeping with me on my little bed. She does make an excellent heating source but I often wake up in the middle of the night on the edge of my bed because Riley somehow pushes me to the side. She's a 1/4 of my size but insists on taking 3/4s of the bed. Jerk.

So, not much happening in my life other than school. I'll post some of my artwork from this semester up soon. I honestly can't wait till the end of this semester - I've got some serious senioritis goin on.

AHS

Who else is super excited about American Horror Story? 

911

Seeing those planes crash and seeing those towers fall takes my breath away every time. I was in 6th grade at the time.  We found out in 3rd period.  We went to our always ridiculously early lunch at 10 or 10:30 and we were all contemplating who did this. Our best guess was China...we didn't know politics at our ages. I don't even know why we thought it was China. We were heading into 4th period, math with Mrs. Lambert (Least favorite subject and teacher), when we got the news we were heading home. Couldn't have picked a better time. I was at a friends house watching the coverage on TV. I couldn't even comprehend what was going on. War doesn't come to America. We're invincible. We're too strong for someone to beat us down like this. It was also hard to comprehend because I was so young. It was hard to believe there was a world outside of my country, let alone a world that wanted to attack us like this.
Words can't even express how tragic this event truly was...watching these videos, documentaries is just surreal. Its sad. After 9/11, I felt like anything could happen. We were no longer untouchable. Hopefully nothing like this will happen again.  Hopefully.

God Bless America

HURRICANE irene

Well this is the second natural disaster I can check off this week. We got close to 7inches of rain and wind gusts up to 50 or 60 mph. Not hurricane force but with a heavily saturated ground, trees will go over like toothpicks.  Unfortunately most everything happened during the night so we couldn't see much. Later on we hear on the news that southern DE got slammed by a tornado! Not to long afterwards we get a tornado warning.  Ya, we hung out in the basement for a bit because the winds were whippin.
As that passes, weather calms for a bit when it suddenly picked up again and at around 11:30 Sat night Dad, Sean, and me were inside watching Inception when we heard a big crack and a squeaking sound of something falling. I honestly never felt so scared. I thought one of our huge trees were falling on the house. Turns out, it was a massive branch that snapped off and fell on the power lines. But the power lines didn't snap, the power box on the side of the house just ripped off. We never lost power despite this whole incident. So we have live wires on our lake lawn. Awesome.
Sean and I stayed up till 4 am to keep monitoring the basement to make sure it didn't flood and to see if power would ever go out. After Inception we watched hangover. Every time I heard a huge gust of wind my heart would race because I was seriously afraid that a tree was gonna pancake our house.
Eventually we went to bed at 4, I woke up again at 6am because the wind was really picking up and I couldn't sleep. I got maybe 3 hrs of sleep last night.
Torrential rain turned into a light drizzle but the wind sure picked up. It was wiiiiindy today. But now the sun is out, the rain has stopped, and the winds have died down. Who would have guessed there was a hurricane here a few hours ago. I can't even imagine if this was a category 2 like it was first predicted.

 This is just the beginning.

 River on the side of the house

 Riley protecting the generator or more likely hiding behind it

 Mr. Fixit fixing the gutter

 "I'm not looking at you because you threw me outside in the rain"

 Tornado Warning

 Close call

 Even the utility guys were shocked we had power.

There's our power box thing in the bushes

Oh ya, and the best part! UD classes were supposed to start up Tuesday but are now pushed back to Thursdaaaay. See, it was move in weekend so Monday is cleanup while tues and wed they move in. So I'm gonna have 1 class this week. They should just push everything back till after labor day in my opinion. And what's this? Hurricane Jose formin in the Atlantic?? That would be crazy if we got his by another one.