Decorative Metal Panel

Our most current project is the decorative metal panels.  I am really enjoying this because we were allowed to make any design that we wanted. Its also hard to saw and make which makes it challenging and fun. We are allowed to saw 3 types of metal, brass, nickel, and copper.  We are also allowed to add textures and distort them. They don't need to have any significance to us although mine does. I added the Leo symbol into mine so it is a little bit more personal.  I love doing this and I will be upset when it is over.  This is a great experience and not your everyday thing to do in art class.

Me sawing the metal           

Cutting out the Leo symbol

Identity Collage

The objective of the identity collage was to add things that have changed your identity a lot.  My personal theme was about how quickly one person can change your views on certain things and really impact your life.  Before we started the assignment I was expecting it to be extremely easy. I was wrong. This collage was  very difficult for me mainly because I didn't know how to make things suddle and hide them, but still tell a story.  In the end, I knew what everything symbolized and although it wasn't my best project, I am still happy with it.

Self-Portrait Tempera Batik

One of the hardest things we have done this year was easily the self-portrait tempera batik. It was so difficult because it was of myself. It was difficult drawing myself because I i never thought that it looked like me but in the end, I see some features that are very much alike.  We first started with a practice that was a smaller piece.  That was a little bit easier because there wasn't so much to work with. When we got to the actual portrait which was huge, it was intimidating. There was just so much to paint and so many choices of where to start, where to make darker, what colors to use...etc. We were allowed to use any color we wanted to I chose a blue/teal color for mine. It made it more fun and not so original. It made it so that everyone didn't have the exact same skin colors.  When we were done painting we inked then rinsed it which created a cool, worn down look. After that we used colored pencils to shade in some of the missing areas (from rinsing).  I personally thought that the colored pencils were the hardest thing to do because there wasn't a colored pencil that was exactly the color paint I used so I was forced to blend a few colors together.  It was a fun experience overall.

Large drawing, not yet painted.       

Smaller drawing, beginning to paint

Pablo Picasso

25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973

Pablo Picasso is easily one of the greatest and most influential artists of the 20th century.  He grew up in a small city in Spain with his middle class family.  From the age of seven, Picasso received formal artistic training from his father in figure drawing and oil painting.  At 13 years old, Pablo's father was at professor at a College of Fine Arts in Barcelona, Spain.  Pablo's father persuaded the officials to allow Pablo to take an entrance exam into the advanced class. The students had a month to finish the exam, but Pablo finished in a week.  He was immediately entered into the class because of how much he impressed the officials.  Pablo went out on his own at age 16 to Madrid.  That is where he realized his love for El Greco's work. He mostly loved the elongated limbs and arresting colors.  This was just the start of Picasso's amazing adventure. He eventually died while he was out to dinner with some friends and his wife.

A cool fact about Pablo is that his first word was "pencil."  I think this is cool because it's as if he was born for this profession.

I personally like Picasso because he was not afraid to go out on his own and explore.  He also wasn't looking for fame through his paintings, fame just found him.  I also really like his paintings as opposed to some of the other painters during this time because he had a lot of shapes and they are all really fun to look at.  One could look at his paintings for hours and never get bored because there is always so much to each of them.

This is my personal favorite paining from Pablo because I love the emotions on her face and all the crazy colors and shapes included in this.