Dragon Power

As one of our sketchbook assignments, we drew dragons.  We had the choice to take up references from the internet or draw it from our minds.  We had about a week to draw our dragons.  Then, we presented them in front of class and tell what we like about the dragon drawings and what we could say to improve our drawings.  Some dragons looked very cartoon, others looked very realistic.

 Here are some pictures of our dragon drawings:

<---this is my awesome "Doragon" drawing!

Doragon Pawaa!!

Acrylic Painting

We gathered pictures from the internet, magazines, and other sources to use as our background, midground, and foreground for our acrylic paintings.  The purpose of having a background, midground, and foreground is to create balance for the painting.

We first practiced creating different shades and tints using primary and secondary colors, also mixing other colors to create different colors.  The purpose of this was to be familiar with creating different kinds of colors and use them on our acrylic paintings.

We enjoyed a lot on this project.  Perhaps the only difficult part was trying to get the desired colors we wanted and making our paintings look realistic with combinations of shadows, shades, and tints.  Also, when attempting to paint an animal or a human, that was also difficult as well. After that, our paintings turned out like this:

After finishing this project, we gained skills of learning how to make acrylic paintings and how to make them look realistic.  If I were to do this again, I would take myself to the challenge.  My next acrylic painting should be a magical forest as my background (filled with many trees), a small waterfall as my midground, and an elf/fairy as my foreground.

Pastels

In Mr. Sands's class, we did pastels using varieties of pastel colors.  The purpose of this project was to create balance, symmetry, and highlights.  We first practiced by taking a single object and then drawing it with pastel colors. Whenever there were highlights or shades on the object, we included those in our drawings.  We took this project from a single object to a still-life scenario using at least five colors for project, using good balance and symmetry to make objects stand out.

 

Post Its Art

In Mr. Sands's class, our latest art project was to make our favorite celebrity (or any person) out of post-its.  Mr. Sands put us in teams of five and sent us out to different stations in our school to start making our post-it projects.  For this project, the materials required were post-its obviously and a pixeled picture of our favorite celebrity or another person.  One of our five teammates was in charge of counting and indicating what color we need to include on the wall.  The rest of us included the correct color, and then taped the post-its so it would not fall off.  It took us about four to five days at most to finish this project and the result is this:

It looked so much better when our post-its were pictured in camera rather than looking at a far distance.  The only two difficult parts were keeping the post-it notes straight and making sure which part of the celebrity's face we need to include/delete in order for the post-its to fit on the wall.  Other than that, the rest was just indicating which color we need to post.

I like the idea how we worked in teams.  If it was a one or two person project, it would be too challenging for all of us.  This project was very successful because we were able to make this fun and entertaining simply because we worked together.

We hope to make another project like this some other time.

The Light Universe

Somewhere about the last two weeks of Mr. Sands's class, we did light drawings using only glow sticks.  How is this possible?  First, we needed to buy glow sticks from a store obviously.   Next, we turn off the lights until not a single light can be seen except from our glow sticks.  We used a camera to capture every little frame and motion from our glow sticks as we used our glow sticks to create shapes, words, a scenario, or just a flawless flow of different colors, making them look like elegant ribbons or aura-like scenes. But before this amazing project, we formed a team and sketched down ideas what kinds of shapes, scenarios, etc. we should make with glow sticks.  It was not that difficult to plan. The results?  Is this...





This had to be one of the best projects we've ever done.  We enjoyed it a whole lot.  There was nothing difficult here in this project.  It was all fun and entertaining.  I felt very successful when making this project because we were able to enable our creativity potential and gave us confidence we can make an amazing artwork through simple objects which in this case are the glow sticks.  What worked out on this project was that we, as a team, agreed together what kinds of artworks we should make with our glow sticks.  What did not work out was sometimes we were not able to make some of our desired sceneries.  For example, trying to create a beach scenario, an outer space, etc.  But this project was still extremely fun!  If we were to do this again, the changes I would consider would be going to a much wider place/area to have more space and
create more exciting artworks with our glow sticks.

We hope we can do another project like this some other time. :)

The Value Scale Museum

Somewhere last week and also for this week in Mr. Sands's, we did value scales.  We practiced drawing self-portraits of ourselves and from our sister school, Opex Art High School and also practiced doing some shading.  The value scale is the amount of shading you put in a picture, depending where the light is and where the darker areas lie to make the picture look more realistic.

Before we officially made our projects, we first practiced drawing the individual facial features like eyes, noses, lips, and also the hair in order to get a general idea how the facial features are supposed to be drawn correctly to make them look realistic.

First, we draw a student from our sister school.  We take a tracing paper and placed it in front of the picture of the student.  We put the tracing and picture somewhere where there's light and trace the visible shapes we can see from the student's self-picture to our tracing paper in order to increase our chances of keeping the porportion of the face right and get some of the shading right.

After that step, we started drawing our person until it looked pretty realistic and very similar to the student's self-picture.  We also did the same for our self-portraits, but we looked at ourselves in the mirror instead, used helping tools (ruler) to make the porportions of our face and characterictics accurate and precise without a part of the face (ex. eye, ear, lips, etc.) looking distorted.  Example:



And all our hard work had been paid off:



Perhaps the difficult part was trying to keep the porportion of the face right and also the shading.  We had to determine also how light or dark we should shade on order for the self-portrat of our sister school and ourselves "pop" out. Some may not be as great as the others, but as long as we did our best and accomplished something, it's a big pat on our backs.  After completing this project, we learned the skills of keeping the proportion of the face right, where the darker and lighter shades go on which part(s) of the face, and to simply do our best.  If I were to do this project again, the changes I would have a self-portrait of a cartoon/anime character this time and try to draw it into a "real person-like" drawing just to challenge myself!

Zoo Animal Hands

About the last 2 weeks in Mr. Sands's class, we did animal hands where we painted our hands to make it look like an animal.  It was fun! :D  But I didn't do it since I didn't want my hands to get dirty.  Nevertheless, these animal hands were very interesting to look at.

First, we practice doing contour lines which is a method where you look at an object and draw that object without taking your pencil off the paper.  In this case, we did hand gestures; gestures that will make our hands look like an animal.  We drew those on our paper and then we colored them.  Depending on what shape we did with our hands, we determine what animal it was.  Example could be this:



After that, we took the liberty of painting our hands into almost "real-life" animals like this one shown below:

We were inspired by an amazing animal hand artist named Guido Daniele who lives and works in Milan, Italy, born in 1950. In 1990, he developed body painting technique and had used this for advertising images, commercials, fashion events, and exhibitions. He was awarded with 2007 Hero of the Year by Animal Planet television network.  He is famous for his animal hands worldwide.  His animal hand artworks really look like real animals before your eyes!

After doing this project, I felt I accomplished something because we were able to get very creative with this project.  Even though I may not be an official artist, everyone is a true artist at heart if they devote their time into it.  Everything worked out on this project.  Perhaps the only difficult part was thinking what kind of animal we should draw depending on the hand gesture we did because a single hand gesture could mean many animal possibilities we could draw.  Other than that, everything else seemed to follow through.  If we were to do this project again, we would paint our hands like animals once more and create a short film in a zoo scenario!