Printmaking: Lionfish

First, we researched different animals and their habitats.  I choose the lionfish, so I printed out different pictures of them and where they live.  I then put these images together into a sketch, which I traced boxes around three different sections.  I choose the best one to trace from another paper onto the stamp.  Once it was traced, I colored in the areas I wanted to cut out.  I used the carving tools to cut out the areas I had marked. 

Once the stamp was finished and we had practiced how to roll the paint onto the stencil and apply it to the paper I choose paper and paint colors.  We did five different stamps and turned them in for Ms. Rossi to choose the best one.  I really enjoyed carving out the stencil, however if I were to go back and redo the project there were certain areas I would have cut out more. 

Photoshop: Angry Pancakes and Frog Tongue



Photoshop was fairly easy to use.  It was really helpful to be able to go along with the video step by step.  The hardest part was trying to edit the jaws to blend into the rest on the pancake so that the colors would look similar.  The most common mistake I made was to go back to the arrow after editing, since it doesnt say in the video to switch after using each tool.  There are alot of helpful tools that can be used to do things like widen the pancake for the jaws to fit in.  These were also easy to use. I would like to see what other editing is possible with Photoshop.

The frog tongue was quicker because I already knew how to use many of the editing tools.  The hardest part for that one was to try to blend the frog colors so that they looked like a tongue.

Spraypaint Stencil

First, we started by finding a picture with different values.  I found an older picture of me and I thought it showed different values because of the angle the sun hit me and my hair.  After we edited the picture so that you could see the different values as colors, it was printed and projected to trace.  On four different poster boards, we traced the four different value colors and then cut them out. This created stencils that were spraypainted onto painted cardboards.  It was sucessful in working with different mediums like piant and using spray paints.  It is obvious what the spraypaint portrait was, however more detail would have looked better if the stencils would have lined up better.

Contour Shoe Drawing

We started out by drawing common items, like a shell, which sounded easy but is alot harder to do without something to look at and base it off of.  The next exercises were drawing our hand without looking at it or the paper.  This was also very challenging, however it got much easier with more practice.  It was also very helpful to use the technique of following every line and curve of the object we were drawing instead of trying to draw a flat outline. 

We did several practice sketches of the shoe we drew.  It was alot harder to draw the shoe than I had originally thought it would be.  I didn't realize how hard it was to try to draw dimention for a shoe in order to make it look 3-D and like the original shoe.  Approaching this drawing as a regular drawing, I probably would have tried to draw the outline shape and then fill it in.  This is also what made it hard to draw this shoe because you cannot do that with a contour drawing.  Even with that set-back, I feel that i improved with each contour drawing of the shoe and otherwise.  Much improvement was seen once we could see our object in person.  I also mostly improved in the smoothness of the drawing and how lines flowed into the rest and looked less choppy than a normal drawing would.
 

Layers Pro App Vs. Oil Pastels

After experimenting with different layering and blending techniques on the 3-D shapes on both the iPad and with oil pastels I have learned alot about different techniques.  Using oil pastels, it was harder to blend the colors as gradually as you could on the iPad.  On the app you could gradually lighten or darken shades which was alot easier to control than trying to blend black or white in with an oil pastel.  The smudge tool on the app also was very convenient, it blended the colors into each other alot easier that oil pastels because there isnt really anything you can blend oil pastels together with well.  My only complaints would be that the shadows were hard to draw and it was more difficult to get precise lines with the right thinkness then it would be with regular oil pastels.  Technology is becoming more importiant in todays society and therefore it is importiant to incoporate it into art.  A big advantage of using technology for art is that it is easier to share.  It is also much easier and cheaper to create artwork electronically because you dont need to buy all the expensive supplies.  While this is an improvement in the art world, it in some ways defeats the purpose and talent needed to be a good artist.

Pink Panther Skeleton

 

This skeleton was very similar in the legs, torso and arm areas to a human skeleton even though the character was a cat.  This included the shoulder, arm bones, ribs, hips, spine and leg bones.  The long tail was connected to the bottom on the spine like on regular cats and other mammals.  The hands and feet were very large, so larger bones were created to accommodate, especially in making the three claws connected to the foot bones.  The head was probably the most difficult part, because of the unique rectangular shape.  Indents were made where the large nose and floating eyes were once placed.  The ears and areas around the mouth, like the jaw, were also created to follow his head shape as close as possible.  The Pink Panther is a rather tall and skinny character, so I tried to make thin, long bones throughout his body to replecate this.   I really enjoyed creating this skeleton drawing because I had never thought about the bone structure of cartoon character before, which was something that turned out to be creative and interesting.