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Welp, this is it. The final project on the year. My inspiration for this one came from my classmate, Alexander Jovel AKA "J", who sometimes draws people in the classroom for his projects. He had already drawn two other people at our table, Josh and Sage, and this time he vowed to draw me. So I say two can play at that game and draw him in return. Where is he, you ask? Well, you see that tiny guy standing in front of the ant? Yeah, that's him. I really don't know why I chose to draw him about to get eaten by an ant, it just kind of popped in my head. But enough about J, let's talk about the ant. For the first time in a while, I used watercolor. I figured I didn't have enough time left to use colored pencils and that watercolor would be quick, so I just went for it. Watercolor is weird, man. You would think it would be kind of messy because of how fast water travels, yet the paint always seems to stay within the lines that I want it to. And for the red eyes, when I first touched the paper with red on my brush, it started expanding past the ant's pupil and I thought I had made a huge mistake. However, the red didn't really go past the ant's head and it left this cool tint on the space near the its eyes that Mrs. Stevenson herself complimented. Now, you might think it's mean to draw J about to get eaten by an ant but I'll tell you what, it's a much more flattering image of him than the one he created of me. Good lord, did you see that thing? I don't really look like that... do I?

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This project was for a show that had the theme of text. It didn't matter what you did, as long as you had some form of text in it. I don't know why, but while making this, I was hellbent on making some sort of statement about The Simpsons. Namely, about how old the show was getting. I decided to show that by drawing Homer, Marge, Lisa, Maggie, and Bart sitting on the couch as they normally do, but they're really old from having to do the show for so long. I can easily say the Lisa and Maggie are the most difficult Simpsons to draw, it's just so hard to get the star hair to look like it does in the show. But even after I drew them, it was nearly impossible for me to get this project done. I had to take this thing home three separate times, only two of which actually made it to my house. Yeah, that's right. The first time I had to take it home, it was Friday. Since I'm in football, I had to do lifting. Lo and behold, I leave the project in the weight room. Luckily, the project was there the Monday after, and I took it home that night to outline it with a pen. for the duration of that entire week, I colored it in (Yeah, I'm a slow worker) and then it was finally done, or so I thought. When I turned the project in to Mrs. Stevenson, she takes one look and is like "Hey dumbass, where's the text?" In a project for a text theme show, I forgot to put in text. So I had to take it home once more over Thanksgiving break. The texts I decided to add were reviews courtesy of IMDB, most of them centered around the show once being good but now losing its way. I'm actually fairly happy with how it turned out. Just goes to show you how something you can be mad at originally can turn into something good.

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It might be kind of difficult to tell, but the technique I used for the snowman was stippling. If you don't know, stippling is a process of making art with many, many small dots or marks. It sounded interesting to me so I decided I'd give it a go. When I started this project, I had only made the head of a snowman because I was in that holiday spirit. After I made that, while I was pleased with how well the stippling was going, I had reached a creative standstill. I had no idea how I was going to made this a unique project, but then I realized how I could make it a masterpiece. You might be wondering who the guy to the right of my snowman is, well that's our boy, none other than Lucky Luciano. Lucy was recently the subject of a widespread internet meme dubbed "you know I had to do it to em". Now, what Lucy meant by "doing it to em" remains a mystery but the real meat of the joke is the way he's standing. For whatever reason, the internet thought Lucy's stance was hilarious and many people recreated the image on their own neighborhood sidewalks. So now that you get it, I thought it would be fantastic to recreate the image in my own way, through my art. So I stippled two human legs, adding to the hilarity of the piece, that look exactly Lucky Luciano's and then added a background that would look like his neighborhood during winter. I also drew in some red Christmas decorations to contrast from the colorless snowman and justify the angry look on his face. Clearly, the guy is not a big fan of Christmas decorations.

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Oh god, do I have to? Well this project started as one of the chair sketches, except for this one we had to use color. I chose pink and green because... well, why not? Then our next assignment was to make a project out of one of the sketches and I chose this one because it had the most open space that I could use to add stuff. What happened next is a mystery. I honestly have no idea what I was trying to achieve by adding all of these goofy ghosts, all I know is that the end result is not what I had wanted.

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Still life is a very broad topic. The only requirement is that whatever you're drawing doesn't move. So, of course, I'm going to choose the most interesting object to draw: a skull. Ever since I've been taking art at the high school, there's been this skull sitting in a box near the art room entrance. One day, I decided to finally draw it, and it was awesome. I added a hat and flower to the skull, making it a saucy skull, and then decided to make use of the seemingly infinite number of oil pastels there are by adding a rainbow background. Fun fact: the rainbow background originally started as a cover up. While drawing the stem to the flower, I made it too thick, so I covered up some of that thickness with a black pastel, then eventually decided to build off of that by making a rainbow in the shape of the skull. Oh yeah, and that chair in back was also last minute. While doing the finishing touches on the background, my classmate J tells me that I was supposed to incorporate a chair (of course) into the project. I decided to just make it a regular folding chair, thought that was kind of funny. Color the rest of the background in red, and you've got yourself your debut album cover! Now you just need to make music.

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You know, I don't know what Mrs. Stevenson's deal is with chairs. Through two semesters with Mrs. Ross, I don't think I had ever drawn one chair and all of a sudden, with Mrs. Stevenson, they're everywhere. Well whatever the reason is, I just know that it is not easy for me. I also know that it's not easy for me to keep my hands off of the paper. Every time I would draw a part of the chair, it seemed like I would add ten more fingerprints. Now, occasionally, the fingerprints can make the project better (top right), but most of the time, it's just frustrating. Other than that, I don't remember much about the process of making these. I'd say my favorite is definitely the top right, though that shadow could use some work. I'm not good at drawing shadows.

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For this project, we had to glue pieces of cardboard on top of a larger piece of cardboard, then cover the pieces of cardboard with paper-mache and then paint over that. So yeah, layers on layers on layers. Before I even knew what I was going to do next, I painted the whole thing black, which probably wasn't the wisest decision. Luckily, I was able to rack my brain and remember a tutorial from the late Bob Ross. The technique Ross went over in that tutorial involved dabbing a paper towel in white paint, and then using that to place a light source by dabbing it onto the canvas and then moving outwards without replenishing paint. So I did that, and I ended up with what looked like I had just splattered paint on a black canvas. That was until I decided to paint trees to block out some of the light, then I added some branches, and then more branches, and then more branches, and then more branches. I honestly think I would have done so many branches that I would have had no light if Mrs. Stevenson hadn't walked by saying, "Woah, cool your jets there, pal" and put an end to it. And thank God she did that, because I look at this piece now thinking "Damn, that's a lot of branches". Another unique thing about this project is that we displayed it alongside our classmate's pieces. As you can probably see, we couldn't really find a common theme with all of our pieces. However, Ola, the artist of the piece above mine, added black to hers in hopes of having some sort of continuity with the jumble. I felt really bad about it because it didn't really fit with the rest of her piece, and I didn't want to make her do something she didn't want to do, especially since I didn't really make any effort to have continuity with hers. She was really nice about it, though. Overall, I'm proud of this project because it took me out of my comfort zone. It wasn't something cartoony or colorful, which is what I normally like to make in art class.