Purpose:

To review the meaning of color;

To practice mixing color and exploring a variety of brushstrokes

What is a still-life?

Still-life is the drawing or painting of a non-living object, most often arranged on a shelf or a table. Still-life paintings and drawings have been created for thousands of years, as early as the ancient Greeks, and Romans. Artists will create this kind of art in order to express their status. In the 17th century still-life was limited mostly to religious works of art, containing some sort of symbolism. All in all, still-life has allowed artists to explore the inanimate objects of their world at the time, and express their status through the artwork.

Tahitian Landscape, Paul Guaguin

"Post Impressionism - The Roots of Modern Art." Post Impressionism. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Mar.

2014.

Purpose

To gain a basic understanding about the Post-Impressionism Art Movement and to identify Artists who work(ed) in this style.

This style of art was not very formal. This started from a few artists named, Paul Gauguin, Vincent Van Gogh, and Paul Cézanne, who rebelled against the limitations of impressionism. These artists developed more personal styles around the mid to late 1800’s catering around the emotional, structural, symbolic and spiritual elements which they believed were missing in impressionism. The art style they had developed shaped modern art for the next eighty years.

From this assignment I learned more on how to create a piece of art like this. It forced me to not focus on little aspects, but what I was drawing as a whole. It is not about detail, and exact colors. This work of art reflects how it was seen by the artist. Whether the artist is sad or happy would depend on the outcome of this type of work.

Half portrait drawing, sketchbook

Purpose:

To look closely at half of a portrait and complete the portrait by drawing similar features;

To practice drawing facial features: eyes, nose, and mouth

I overall enjoyed this assignment a lot because a regular pencil is my medium, and I enjoy drawing faces. By completing this assignment I learned how hard it can be to create one side of a face from the other. It involves more than just inverting the facial features. You have to also figure out the different shadow, or lightness of the other side of the face, while given one side to start with. All in all, this assignment opened my eyes to visualizing what I think is right, and then drawing it.

Color exploration-blue

Four interesting facts

• Blue is the #1 favorite on earth

• 53% of all flags contain blue

• In Belgium blue is for baby girls and pink is for baby boys

• Dark blue is the color of mourning in Korea

Realism, inspired drawing, sketchbook

Purpose:

To gain a basic understanding about the Realism Art Movement and to identify Artists who work(ed) in this style.

By doing this assignment I realized how hard and time consuming it is to draw realistic landscapes. The artist has to get the right color for each portion of the piece of art. Also he/she has to pay attention to very small details to make the work of art look right. One more specific thing I learned is how difficult it is to draw grassy meadows to make them look realistic, like you can actually see it blowing in the breeze.

Realistic self-portrait

First, my mouth was too close to my nose, and so I brought it down closer to my chin. Also, with my mouth one adjustment I was told to make was to make it narrower at the ends of it. Next, I had to bring down my hair line, and add more shape to the front of my hair too. Other than these three details, I only made very minor changes such as the shade of some areas and making sure everything looked right.

The first thing I learned is to take frequent looks farther away from the drawing so that I can see if I notice anything that I otherwise wouldn't see up close. Also I learned to focus more on the symmetry of my portrait, because I noticed in my other portrait my eyes were not very symmetrical. Next I noticed that I could improve on how I drew the mouth. I did this by adding shade to one side, and added more white to it overall, also I made the ends of my mouth thinner unlike in the first drawing.

Nose, mouth, eyes exercise

Purpose:

To demonstrate understanding of the structure for each feature: eyes, nose, & mouth:

To practice using black & white charcoal to render a drawing, using brown paper as the middle value