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In the picture, I'm trying to capture a memory of what I saw during a solar eclipse. It was long ago, about 7 years ago and also really dark.

I think the part that communicates my memory the most wasn't the final piece, instead, the thinking and vision of what I wanted to do. I really don't think I could put the memory into paper, 1 because it was really long ago and 2 because I wasn't exactly sure how I wanted to use the dry media to show my idea. So I think that the planning of it in my mind along with the imagining really communicates my memory the best.

This picture connects to my response because if you were to just look at the photo, it wouldn't really display the image of a stereotypical eclipse, and I don't really feel like I was able to truly capture what I was thinking, which is why my thoughts captured this moment a lot better.

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The feedback I received from Kara was to blend out the ocean so it would look smoother and more realistic. I also decided to add a few lines to represent waves, but they are really discreet. Also, when I blended out the sky, it wasn't very contrasting, and I got more feedback from Kara telling me I should add a lot more pastels in the sky so the eclipse glows a little more, and there is a lot more contrast between the sky, the sea, and the eclipse. I also made sure not to add many pastels right next to the eclipse so it would glow even more.

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This picture is trying to capture a sunset I saw in Phu Quoc. It was one of the best sunsets I've ever seen and also one of the best photos I've ever taken.

The portion of the creation that stood out to me the most was always the ideation process. I imagine something and sort of think I can perfectly capture it. However, when I actually try to put the pen to paper, it doesn't exactly portray my thoughts as I usually imagine a good quality image instead of trying to turn that into art really.

This picture connects to my response because even though it does portray the main idea of what I wanted to create, it doesn't capture it as perfectly as I imagined.

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This photo shows a collage of a hypothetical high honor roll award. I was trying to manifest another award so I made my own award.

For this piece, I think the portion that stood out to me the most was the final product. For this piece, I really didn't know what I wanted. I was just thinking of ideas and trying to find letters the whole time. I think the final product, along with material exploration, best helped me understand what I wanted to do. And since I didn't have an exact vision in mind, I was able to go along with the flow and create a piece that I honestly had no large expectations for, which created the piece I'm most proud of.

This piece is really abstract, but at the same time, anyone looking at it would be able to understand what I had made.

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The struggle is currently finding a solid base for our structure since it is a very active pose. The tape is constantly drooping when we really want the tape to have tension to be really solid for the huge amounts of tape on top. I also have been struggling with getting my hair stuck up in all the tape. A play is the collaboration between our team, just sharing ideas and merging our thoughts to make the best structure. It's also really fun to go through the struggles together and laugh about it and how our structure looks (because it's really funny).

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I think that at the beginning, none of us really knew how to start, especially since we had to start again because the fat tape looked really ugly and disproportionate. We were struggling to find a suitable base structure and were also constantly looking at other structures for inspiration. I think what surprised me the most was how it came together so nicely. In the beginning, it looked horrible and just a bunch of tape stuck together. We also really struggled with the proportions but it came together in the end.

I feel like we really got to understand struggle and play since especially in the beginning we had no idea what we were doing, and we really had to trust the process, since it looked like an actual tape monster in the beginning. Eventually, once we could actually see what we wanted, it started to become more playful and made the class really go by quickly.

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This was a really new way of drawing for me, as usually I try to define each part instantly instead of trying to understand the overall shape of the piece. Today, I drew my action lines first and then slowly transformed them into the drawing. One whole side of the ballerina, for example, was actally the action line.

I think the hardest part about simplifying forms into basic lines and shapes was never having done it before, so often I really couldn't see the shapes Mr. Larson saw, for example. I was not very used to looking at the drawings as just a few shapes, so it took me a while to understand them and know where to look for the shape, since sometimes they were the actual shape of the body and other times it would be the shape/connection between the body and arms.

The sketch at the bottom is the one that I focused on the most with line and shape. I broke up the arms and legs and body into a singular line with some branches like a tree, then I slowly added triangles and squarish shapes to form it.

Breaking down drawings into simple shapes really helps you understand the overall drawing and not just focus on the smallest details.

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The rational is in the picture. :)

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I think people associate different strokes, emotions, and materials with different emotions, so the way we sort of doodled yet expressed feelings with colour made our drawing able to be interpreted in many different and interesting ways.

We didn't really didn't have an intention except for a little anger in the beginning, since we were gossiping a little about what made us mad and then after, we just wanted to be more aesthetic and colourful, something we'd be actually proud of which in a way shows a story about looking sort of appealing yet seeing the anger and darkness peak through at the same time.

I think we didn't have much direction in how we made this piece, instead we just chose what looked "right" to us. So when we started with the black ink, we wanted to fill the paper while still having some negative space so the whole page isn't fully one value and colour. After that with the pastels we decided that we wanted the piece very colourful but not add too many mixed colours that the colours would look muddy.

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Contour drawing, understanding how to observe better and focus on what we are drawing instead of the actual drawing itself. It helps us look closely at the edges and shapes of the subject, which helps us understand structure and how different parts might relate to each other, like the nose compared to where the eyes are.

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Contour Drawing

Habits from this exercise that I could carry over into more detailed or expressive drawing tasks is just understanding the overall shape of the subject can do a lot as even if we don't have details, the piece can be somewhat finished and we would have a understanding of the figure.

Blind contour

The biggest challenge in maintaining hand–eye coordination during blind contour is not knowing where the features of the face are located meaning we have no idea where we're putting features on the paper except for the memory of where we started.

Contour drawing with detail

A lot of the times, as I was drawing, I would notice the general shape looked wonky or that my eyes and hands were “out of sync”. To adjust, I'd just go back the part I was unhappy about and continue making another line that follows more of the overall shape.

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Putting it all together (Drawing Styles)

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Putting it all together (Drawing Styles)

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A positive shape contour and then layering gesture drawing helped me better capture the proportions, movement, and personality of your classmate in the portrait, as it has allowed me to first get an accurate outline of my partner and then add layers like the contour drawing lines and the chalk on top that conveyed energy and character.

When adding details from the reference photo, I wanted to focus on making the facial features as accurate as I could make them and at the same time very creative with the colours which we can see in the photo as she is blue with pink and yellow blush. I also wanted to exaggerate my favorite features like her eyes and lashes which sort of turned this piece into my own personal art style that I just discovered while making this piece.

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I think that the grid drawings made sure I could match my proportions with the reference, no matter what step I was at, which kept my piece accurate and very similar to the drawing. I think the general outline, contour, form, and shape of the piece was a lot easier with the grid because I could look at the reference and match it to my grid, which felt almost like tracing and is the main focus of this unit, and I think it really helped me improve on that specifically. I think something that was still challenging was the shading because even though I know where the shadows and highlights are, I need to make sure that they look similar, with the right shades, which was still hard, and the grid didn't help much with that. I think in the future, I think the grid drawing would really help me get my proportions right and the general outline of the drawing to be accurate, and then I could erase it and continue with the details.

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When I was brainstorming, I was mainly just doing a lot of research and envisioning because I was very lost and didn't know what I wanted to do. I tried a few sketches of different scenes that seemed to have meaning and different styles I wanted to use which I eventually decided on a style of drawing that was very gesture drawing-like with lots of sketching style drawings. I was still changing my mind a lot between different techniques like what I wanted for the background, grid or mark making, but my main ideas stayed the same throughout, from gesture drawing then detailed contour.

I also got inspired by Phil Lord’s work with his characters' shapes and figures, always having a sketch-like feel that I wanted to have in my piece as well. His animations and sketches are never perfect lines, instead, they always look partly unfinished yet still full of colour. His drawings in Spider-Man, which he’s quite famous for, have multiple lines outlining characters and buildings, which I liked, as the particular style is something that seems very aesthetically pleasing to me.

For themes and style, I noticed I kept going back to ideas around identity and deep messages from certain scenes, so I made sure I chose scenes and references that I felt really expressed something. My particular message after deciding my reference was a character staring at characters from her imagination, ones that are perfect to her and feel free.

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As I was experimenting with my colour palette and with watercolours, I really liked what I did with the strokes of paint and the circular shapes I was using to mix paint on the palette, so I explored mark-making and what that could do for my background, for example, random strokes of colour or even putting the circular shapes as my background. I was also thinking of a gridded background, which would give the painting more structure, and instead of blending smooth colours using grids. I also wanted to make the background more interesting to emphasise the contrast between the gesture figures and the background to make the message of the painting stronger. As I kept working, I refined the placement of the figures with the reference and adjusted the colour intensity in the grid to make the central figure stand out more, which helped develop my idea of pressure and envy by making the background feel more rigid and the surrounding figures more emotional.

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For my project, I chose gesture drawing, detailed contour, and grid drawing. I started with gesture drawing because in class, I really enjoyed experiementing with the small boxes of gesture drawing as well as the final gesture drawing of our tape figures at the end of the sub unit. I wanted the figures to feel very expressive with different poses like what we see in Phil Lord’s drawing. Then I was planning on using detailed contour to focus on the specific details and structure of each figure to make sure each was clear. In class when we were trying out grid drawing, I discovered it really helped me keep my proportions accurate and also gave the whole piece a little more structure with the grid lines which I wanted to use to first get all the figures in the right places and then use it to add more to the background since I felt it was a little plain when planning.

As I worked, all the colors felt a little flat with no dimention even when I tried different pain strokes especially in the hair, so I wanted to use gesture lines to make the experimentation more loose.

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Exploring a variety of materials really helped shape my overall vision. When I was working with watercolours, I started playing around with my colour palette and noticed how much I liked the strokes of paint and the circular shapes I was making on the actual palettes. That led me to experiment more with mark-making and how those marks could affect the background of my work. I didn’t want everything to be smooth and blended, so I started thinking about using a gridded background instead.

I am again following Phil Lord's art, which often shows a mix of many styles, which made me want to try combining loose marks through gesture drawing as well as with more controlled elements like grids.

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This artwork shows a central figure viewed from behind who faces faceless, gestural forms that surround them. We can only see the central figure from behind but can see al the poses of the faceless figures. This artwork is about wanting to be like others, feeling envy, pressure, and a mix of admiration and insecurity looking at those who seem perfect, happy, and even free, with where they are at in life and the life they have. The faceless figures represent what I wish I could be, or maybe what I feel expected to be, while the central figure is stuck watching, not involved. The grid background adds to that sense of being boxed in or separated. I used gesture drawing to make the figures feel alive and emotional as well as their poses, and the contrast between them and the central figure shows how distant that feeling can be or make you feel.

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Following Kara's feedback, I outlined all the figures a little as well as emophasized the highlights on the central figures with white pencil and the shadows of the outer figures with normal pencil.

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Placing my artwork alongside these pieces reveals a shared theme and material similarities. Though each piece has its own style and story, together they form a collage of identity, emotion, and connection. My work adds to that by showing the feeling of being separated or observing from the outside. Being included with the group helps highlight those shared ideas.

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Principles of Design

Confort zone

Pattern - I feel like this is very repetitive and simple.

Repetition - I feel like this is very is very simple.

Variety - I feel like this is very simple as well.

Risk zone

Proportion - When it comes to having things of different sizes, I feel I can do. However, making sure faces or bodies are proportionate seems a little new.

Contrast - I think having contrast may be easy, but tying it in and making the contrasting subjects work together seems a little trickier to me. I think to get used to I just need practice with this principle.

Balance - I think this is in the risky zone because balance, to me, might be hard to perfectly obtain.

Emphasis - I believe this can be easy, making something stand out more with certain techniques, but what's hard is trying to get it to still blend with the piece.

For all of these, I think I just need more practice and work with them while doing art to get used to each of these principles.

Danger zone

Rhythm - I feel like this would be something hard to integrate into a piece, as it seems more like part of music, and I'm not sure how to correlate that with physical arts.

Unity - It seems like something hard to make look nice, and it is very new to me.

Harmony - I'm really not sure how to make something with this in the first place because I'm really unsure

Movement - It seems similar to rhythm and also very challengin,g as we have to make something unmoving seem like it is moving.

I think to overcome my hesitation with using these principles, I need to learn more about them and discover how they can be used and how they have been used by other artists

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This picture is an example of contrast, which was one of my risk zones, as I knew it wasn't challenging to do, but then making it look combined and together was. I think by practising using contrast, I've gotten a better feel for how to make each part stand out while looking like the same piece and staying balanced. Speaking of balance, different components in this sheet are repetition with the constant letter i's on each side and also varied with some of them colored in while others were not. There is also balance in this, both sides are symmetrical and the exact copy of each other.

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I think it helped with the proportion because I wasn't focusing on the actual object, instead, the negative space in between, which determined the sizes of the objects. I also think it was a different way of approaching art and drawing things because this time, we're not focused on the subject. A drawing technique I used from unit 1 was shapes, especially from gesture drawing, where I looked at the main triangles of the negative space to draw the whole drawing. Instead of focusing on details, it helps me focus on the general and larger shape of the whole piece, along with how each different object has its own place in the piece and how they look proportionate to each other.

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The lines tended to be very energetic and loose with a combination of bold and thick lines for the main structure to emphasize it and lighter, scratchy lines to explore form. This gives a sense of movement and like the building is dissolving. The shape and silhouettes of each drawing all share a very sharp and jagged structure which creates a style that can easily be carried into our future sculptures. It's also very tall and the city almost stretches up into the sky.

For the use of space, the dark silhouette of the tower against the very light sky and the lighter bottom spiderweb looking ground creates a very obvious positive and negative relationship. The middle sketch is the strongest in Notan terms almost a pure black shape floating above a white background. Focusing on spacew however, I chose to have a very full looking city that at the same time felt empty with the contrast. I have multiple overlapping buildings and shards that break up the picture.

For the lower and higher angle I wanted to make it look very drastic so that it exageratted the scale using lines as the high angle seems to almost diminish while the lower angle seems to explode out of the ground.

For principles of design I used many different ones

- Emphasis: The string emphasizes the city as well as the tallest central building in every iteration immediately draws the eye. - Contrast: Extreme contrast with the black tower shape compared to the white ground/sky

- Movement: Diagonal and zig-zagging string that leads the eye upward

- Repetition: Repeated buildings and sharp shards

What I would present is my longshot front sketch as it has the most detail and what I exactly invision. The other 2 were about figuring out angles which I really liked especially the higher angled one as it looks a bit like it has a fish eye lense as well which I think would add interest and depth to the piece. Presenting the front/long shot though would give a good idea for the sculpture we will make.

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1. How your idea developed since day 1? Has there been more clarity in vision through practicing the iteration process? Explain

Since the beginning, I’ve actually had a pretty constant vision of what I wanted which was an abandoned modern city. My original concept didn’t change dramatically, but the iteration process helped me clarify and add certain details. For example, the theme of a triangle base and the structure of the overall city being a triangular pyramid was developed over time as we sketched and it just appeared.

The sketches also helped me see how to express my original idea more effectively like how tall the buildings should be and how they would be proportinate to each other or how they should overlap. With each drawing, the overall look stayed the same, but the execution became cleaner and more intentional. So even though the vision itself didn’t change, the process helped make the final version more clear and organized with exactly what we wanted in mind.

Even with a consistent vision, there were still some unexpected things. One pleasant surprise was realizing how much more dynamic the composition looked with the way I layered the buildings as their angle and height added to the piece. Along with what I mentioned before about the pyramid shape of the city and triangular base came a long the way and added a lot to the vision.

A drawback was that keeping the perspective consistent became harder because from the start perspective was something new I worked with already and as the buildings became more complex it became increasingly hard. Some angles or proportions ended up slightly off. To solve this moving forward, I plan to use more guiding lines or light grids to help maintain clean alignment and also I believe more practice would help me.

Material list

Popsicle Sticks - To act like the support pillars - the look we need for our city

Yarn - as the string that wraps around every building

Skewers - More support looking items

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This 3d model of our city just gives us an overall better idea of how the city will look generally. Also, in some parts of the city we experimented with how the popsicle sticks would look as support. However, we couldn't add much string looking pieces as there were no options so this just gave us a better understanding of the entire shape together.