Christmas trees, and more gouache love

Chris and I decided to get ourselves a Christmas tree the other day. We went to Walmart looking for a tree stand because Chris really wanted a live tree, but apparently they've been all sold out since Thanksgiving--is there some increased demand for live Christmas trees that we're unaware of? Anyway, we don't have much room for a tree, so we ended up buying one of those little fiber-optic trees, and lighting a tree-scented candle so we can pretend it's real. Here it is:

And here we are:

With finals basically over and my new job taking forever to start, I've pretty much been hanging at home this week. It's been really, really nice to finally get to take a break; I was finally able to go out yesterday and get Chris's Christmas present, and I'm finishing up thank-you's today (umm.... yeah). Today, though, I had the urge to get those art supplies out again--specifically the gouache--and I started messing around. I didn't make anything amazing, but I did end up with this little painting.

This is actually really small--probably about 3 inches tall, or less. It doesn't look a ton like the picture I was painting from, but I was mostly just messing around with shading on the face and I didn't do a sketch beforehand, so I'm okay with that. For the curious, this is actually Emma Watson (you know--Hermione). She's started doing some modeling recently, and I found her in one of my magazines. Her pictures don't actually look much like here--way more makeup than she ever wears in the movies. It makes for some fun contrast, though.

Final projects, plus some other stuff

It's been a crazy, crazy week (crazy as in two major papers and two final art projects due this week, resulting in me having slept a total of 10 hours this week since Monday, plus lots of snow and really cold weather), but I just turned in my last portfolio and I'm turning in my last paper tomorrow, so I figured I'd celebrate by eating a pita, listening to some Regina Spektor, and finally posting on my blog. I just finished my pita and my iPod's playing, so I guess now it's blog time.

For my drawing and 2D design classes, we were required to put together portfolios with four of our best projects from this semester, plus our final projects. I figured that since I haven't posted several of the pictures that went into those portfolios, I'd post them now (plus some of the rejected pieces that didn't quite make the cut ;)

Drawing Portfolio

This was my final project:

This was done in ink and gouache (pronounced GWASH, like "squash" and "ohmigosh"), and is a picture of some ruins in Capernaum. It took forever and I pretty much used up a whole Micron pen on this thing, but it was fun. Especially the gouache. It was my first time ever using gouache, and I really want to use it again. Seriously, people, this is true love. <3>

Ta da!!! I did this a while ago, back when I was drawing eggs. It took FOR-EV-ER. That's the biggest problem with pencil drawings--they're super time-consuming.

The last thing I submitted was this HFAC drawing:


I know my teacher's going to be disappointed when he sees that I submitted this drawing, because what he really wanted me to put in was this house:

So obviously, this house isn't quite finished. It was even less finished when my professor saw it. Picture it without the lines to the left so there's just the detailed parts, and that's what my professor saw. It was one of those things where it was taking much longer than I thought it would, so it didn't get finished on time and I figured I'd just take in what I had so he could see that I'd been working on it, and then I'd turn it in late. Well, he absolutely loved it. Just the way it was. I think it was his favorite thing I ever turned in, actually. He did agree that it probably did need a little bit more, though, but he didn't want me to finish-finish it. He wanted me to maybe fill in the details around the window and on the chimney, outline the left side in ink, and just not finish the bottom right corner. I started doing that, obviously, but ran out of time, so I turned in the HFAC instead. I kind of feel bad about it, though, so I think I might finish it up next week and show it to him when I go to pick up my portfolio, because for whatever reason, he really really liked it and was super excited to see it "finished".

This is what did not make it into my portfolio:

It's a picture of a dinosaur. Or at least, I was looking at dinosaur bones when I made it, and there might be some dinosaur parts in it. Something I discovered about myself this semester is that I'm really not good at abstract art--realism is kind of my thing, I guess. My teacher pretty much hated almost every abstract art piece I made this semester, though the dinosaur one was actually his favorite abstract that I did. He gave it a 9, which is definitely more than you can say about my other ones :P Luckily, we only did a few, or it probably would have killed my grade dead.

2D Design Portfolio

My final for this class was actually a series of three paintings, including a painting of me, Jordan, and Chelsie. The original plan was to not use the picture of me (which was actually from an earlier assignment) and to do one of Amanda instead, but I ran out of time and could only get two done. I'll have to make it up to Amanda later.

They're all painted with acrylics, though painting Chelsie's made me think that watercolor or gouache could also be really cool for something like this. Jordan's pose was kind of fun--I stole the picture from Facebook (BWA-HA-HA!!!). The color scheme on Chelsie's is kind of weird, but it's grown on me and now I really like it. Maybe I'll do one of Amanda in my free time--it just feels right that all of my siblings be reduced to large, simplified fields of color. Or something like that.

This is a collage I did of a Matisse painting using the $80 paper they made us buy for this class (seriously :P). It took a long, long time, and by the time I was done I felt like Jerry Seinfeld on that one episode where he signs a bunch of 12 cent checks, and afterwards his hand is all cramped and injured. Cutting out paper for over 12 hours straight has kind of the same effect. I do like colors, though, so using all of those colors was kind of cool.

This is another collage. We did way too many collages in this class for my taste, but since our class is made up of people going into all disciplines of art (photography, graphic design, studio art, ceramics), our teacher was told to not give us assignments that would favor some students over others, and to our teacher that meant collages. I don't entirely get this, though--all of the photography students had to take Drawing, and half of them can barely draw at all, and none of them are being graded easier than the rest of us. But anyway, collages my teacher said, and collages we did. That was one of my better collages. Yippee.

To tell the truth, I didn't even like this thing. My teacher did, though, and so did the rest of the class, and my teacher really wanted me to put it in, so I figured I was just being self-critical and put it in. It's the letter S in a box, rotated and flipped and colors inversed. My teacher said it had flow.

This was the last thing in my portfolio, and it's much bigger in real life. It's only about 2 inches tall, but it's two feet long. For this, there were 12 boxes, and we had to listen to a song and add elements to the boxes as the song went along to reflect the music. I did "Blue Caravan" by Vienna Teng, whom I love.

Rejected:

This is my logo for a store that sells candles and cupcakes. We had to take two items, which could be related or unrelated, and group their images together somehow to make a logo. This one was cute, but I decided not to put it in the portfolio. It was lots of fun coming up with ideas for this assignment, though.

Also rejected:

Sorry if there are any typos in this post. I'm running on low amounts of sleep, and my typing ability seems to have decreased. I typed "explosed" instead of "exposed" earlier, and laughed much harder than I should have. That is all.