I believe that my most successful project was my one-point perspective drawing. In this drawing, I chose to draw "The Battery" at Charleston, South Carolina. I believe that it is my most successful project because it shows the buildings, sidewalks, trees, bushes, and other objects going back into the distance and get progressively smaller as they get closer to the vanishing point. With my piece, I believe that using colored pencils as the medium was a great choice. By using colored pencils, it was easier to show shading and shadows coming off of the buildings, bushes, and fences. The color makes the scene almost feel real. The warm, bright colors on the building and the different blues in the ocean make you feel like you are actually walking through that part of Charleston. I believe that by making the buildings a little bit smaller so I could fit the whole scenery of the picture in, with the ocean and the sidewalk, was very beneficial to the piece. It captured a very popular area of Charleston and showed people an idea of what Charleston would look like if they ever visited the area.
I believe that my mixed media project was the least successful. It did not turn out at all how I wanted it to. In the middle of my project, I wanted to change my theme and change the project around completely but I did not have enough time to do so. I would have rather done a piece that more represented myself, or something I love. Instead, I chose a random theme. Even though I believe this is my least successful project, I like my idea of using yarn for the flower petals and using text about nature for the butterflies. I believe that if I put more time and thought into this project, it would have turned out a lot better and been something I would have wanted to display in my room. I just do not find this piece of artwork appealing, nor do I think that it uses a lot of mixed media. If I would have done this project differently, I would have chosen a theme where I can better represent myself.
Both of these pieces of work show my practice with shading different colors and blending them together. These two pictures shows my growth in shading and blending. In the first picture of the jolly rancher, I had trouble smoothly blending the colors. In the second picture of the leaves, I had more practice with blending and was able to show a good transition of colors through blending. The medium of the first piece was oil pastels. I believe that oil pastels are more difficult to smoothly blend colors with, as apposed to colored pencils. From using colored pencil in the picture of the leaves, I was also able to easily show texture in the leaves and in the background. I learned that in order to blend oil pastels, you have to start out with lighter colors and overlap and layer the colors to show a smother blend of colors.
I believe that these mini lessons were the most beneficial to the final project. These projects practiced blending and shading with different mediums. Also, they taught how to draw wrappers on certain candies. The peppermint drawing was difficult to learn. It was hard using chalk and blending it, but making sure the color pigment didn't fade. It was even more difficult trying to show that there was a transparent wrapper around the candy. I believe that I needed more instruction in this particular mini lesson to achieve full success. I believe that my wrapper around my peppermint candy does not look realistic. However, I believe that I received a good amount of instruction on the Dum-Dum candy. I believe that the instruction I received helped me be able to display and show where creases were in the wrapper.
Acrylic paint is my favorite medium to work with. Ever since I was young I always loved painting. However, I would only paint with water color. I took Art 1 my freshman year and was beyond excited for the painting project. Ever since then I have painted pieces using acrylic paint during my spare time. I love starting out with only primary and neutral colors and being able to mix them to create different shades and tints of a color. The different variations of colors are endless. Normally when painting pieces, I use smooth brush strokes. However, having assigned to paint like famous artist Emil Nolde, I needed to use choppy, broken brush strokes. This pieced turned out a lot better than I imagined it would and I am very please with the final product. It taught me a new brush stroke to paint to add character to the painting. I will definitely use this brush stroke in other pieces I will paint later on in life.