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Gestural charcoal drawings on the structures.

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I think that my portrait metaphorically shows that I am a free spirit. I love the organic nature of the background and how there is no real rhyme or reason to it. From the initial photograph I changed the arrangement of the colors and used brighter/darker colors in specific areas to make the figure and the background more interesting, Specifically I think that my use of the brighter pinks and blues in the background as well as the in the skin, moves the viewers eye across the piece. I also think that my usage of color to create a kind of flowing effect in the background makes it more calm and more visually pleasing.

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This is the original image that was taken that I used to create the portrait.

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This is once colors have been blocked in before the a lot of the shading on the figure had been done. But this is after I used the burnishing technique on the shapes and colors in the background.

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This is the final product. I went darker on the hair and on the skin so thwy seemed more cohesive with the entire piece.

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This is the original sketch that I created. This is before I made the decision to use black paper and go for high contrast.

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Cardboard Structu

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The original source of my idea was the deer antlers that were sitting in a still life in front of me. Initially this started off as two separate sketches but I thought that the distinct contrast would make for a more interesting and visually appealing piece.
Unfortunately much of the feedback I received during critique was not extremely helpful. One of the people who viewed my piece told me to make it more recognizable by adding leaves. But I generally do not think that I want it to be recognizable, I think that leaving the viewer to interpret the piece makes an abstract more interesting. The same person also said that the contrast was too much. Which is something that I may agree with but I think that the warm colors with the contrast of the dark and moody purples and blues help draw the viewers eye across the piece. Other people who critiqued my piece said that the contrast was the strongest part of the piece. A helpful piece of critique I did receive was to create more detail on the right half of the painting. This is something that I did apply as I added more lines and created more interesting shapes.
My intended compositional area of emphasis was in the two antlers. Generally I think that those areas had the most contrast and the most outlined in sharpie. I tried to add depth by letting the watercolors flow together as well as use darker colors around the edges of the piece. My second layer, sharpie, created a bold contrast with the stark black on top of the light watercolors. I think that this was helpful to make the piece seem more cohesive despite the stark contrasts.

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This is the sketch filled in with watercolor and some initial outlining with a sharpie. I wanted a very fluid painting thus I let a lot of the colors run together and mix.

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This is the final product. I extended some of the lines further out on to the white and created a few more interesting shapes in the bottom right corner to draw your eyes even more. The decision of leaving the white allows the painting to look very fluid.

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This is closer to the final product. I finished outlining and added more shapes into the right antler to draw the eye to it.

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This is my initial sketch on watercolor paper. The idea stemmed from looking at two deer antlers that were a part of the still life on the table in front of me.

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Finally, here I finished blocking in colors and pulled out the highlights of the object with an eraser. Also some of my shading was messy, so I used a blending stump to make the piece more cohesive.

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Initially I began to block in darks and lights in my pencil drawing to get my basic shapes done.

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Here I began to really exaggerate the darkest blacks found in my object, as well as continuing to block in colors.

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This was the initial object and composition that I was planning using for the project.

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Eventually I decided that my composition was boring and I instead cropped and zoomed in on the object.

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(Sighting Practice, Measuring angles)

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This is the final drawing of the piece of paper. In order to make highlights I utilized an eraser and later utilized white charcoal.

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This is a continuous line drawing done with a blinder on. This was a drawing of the piece of wood.

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This was the piece of paper/design that I came up with to draw for this project.

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This was the sighting practice piece. I drew the pile of ice skates. It became evident that in order to make the drawing look more 3D it was important  to observe the angles and shadows!

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This was also a continuous line drawing but instead, it was done without a blinder on. It was a still life of the tricycle and the vase behind it.

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During the creativity squared project, I made both deliberate and intuitive decisions. With my subject, I intuitively placed the lips and face off center. I realized that this decision made the entire design significantly more pleasing to the eye, thus it was a positive decision. Intuitively, I also made the bars shape around the face and lips instead of making them completely straight lines. This makes the image more interesting and draws the viewer's eyes around the different areas of the lips. Deliberately, I made the colors on the face and in the background fade from light to dark. Another thing I did with color, was fade the green and brown into orange and yellow.  With these decisions, it helps to draw the audience's eye across the image and make it more interesting opposed to just blocking in solid colors.
Many things surprised me during this project, but I was really surprised by a lot of the intuitive decisions that I made. For example, I was very unsure about the colors I was using in the beginning, but they have really grown on me. In my opinion, the use of contrasting colors creates an interesting composition.
If I were to start over, I would have added more dimension to the bars. I think that it would make the piece more interesting if there was some texture and dimension. I also wish I would have found a way to make the lines sharper and cleaner. Overall, I am happy with my piece and surprised it turned out the way it did!

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Started by filling in the lips and highlighting the lightest parts of them.

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Began from the bottom and moved up, slowly blocking the the rest of the spaces in my sketch.

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Filled in the rest of my sketch. Continued to work on the gradient. Also added white to the bars and cleaned up lines.

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Still blocking in colors and began to develop a gradient. Colors got lighter as you look towards the left of the piece. Began to add more orange tones into the face.