# data[].attributes.body
12/20/16
* Today is the official "last day" of this class. Though technically the last day Friday, but today is the last day of the year I'll be in this classroom for finals. Thank you, Mrs. Stevenson, for being such a nice teacher. I truly appreciate your thoughts and helpful advice.
*This year has been interesting. The fact that is was my first year of high school was stressing me out, and the fact that we were in this class with people of different grade levels kind of frightened me. But, I realized that it doesn't really matter that I'm not in the same grade as everyone else in the class. Everyone was nice and pretty chill. So the class was great.
* But, time to reflect upon my art. I have learned so much about different techniques, what I like to draw, what I don't like to draw, which techniques I like, and which techniques I don't like. I'm still not great at managing my time at all, because for most of the projects I ended up taking them home to finish them. The last project didn't count because I was supposed to make two, and I only made one, but I didn't end up needing to take it home to finish it. But, I'm proud of what I was able to accomplish in this class. I thought I was only comfortable using materials like color pencil, mainly, and I had dabbled a bit with water color. But I now know that colored pencil takes too long for me to do without being completely satisfied with the results. And I absolutely love using watercolor, even if it takes a long time to dry. And oil pastel is great too, I love not completely blending it out I love how it looks when I do that. Trial and error was basically my motto for this year, not only in this class, and I've been able to learn so much. My favorite project was my growth project, I used complementary colors (red and green) without even realizing it.
* I won't be here next semester, but I will try to experiment more and learn more in art. I always tell myself to draw everyday, which never gets done, but maybe I actually will.

# data[].attributes.body
Artist Logo:
* Our last small assignment was to design a small signature or emblem that we could use for others to recognize our art or understand our personalities.
* I decided to just use my own signature because I do actually use it, and I think it is something that is kind of recognizable in my art. I originally designed it kind of on accident when I was drawing one day and liked it so I started to use it more and more. I prefer it much more than my old signature, which was just my full name, but now it's just my initials "HG". It's kind of more "mysterious" and distracts you from who actually made the piece and instead it doesn't really matter. I like incorporating it into my pieces, because it is kind of like something that stands out and doesn't stand out at the same time. While everything else in my art is but horizontally on the page, this is at more of an angle and makes it more interesting. It is also really fun hiding my signature places because it's small, and I think it's fun looking at other's artwork and finding their signatures.

# data[].attributes.body
Final Portrait Extended Assignment:
* I had gotten back to re-applying a lot of the color that was lost, and finished with that. What was once red turned into a lot more of a hot pink, but I was fine with that because it helped separate from the red squares with extra contrast. I ended up becoming really happy with the outcome of the colors and how messy, but at the same time, neat this looked. I cleaned up the ink resist in places that it didn't and I'm so much happier with it. We were supposed to complete two ink resists, if we were doing ink resist, and i was only able to finish one which I am a bit disappointed in myself because of. But, I worked really hard on this one.
* I'm very happy with this finished piece, I ended up cropping because I didn't end up liking the effects I added at the bottom. It reminded me too much of fireworks and the fourth of july, which wasn't what I was going for. I like to call this piece "Disconnect" or "Boxed-Off". I think it looks a lot more like me that it originally did.
* I used blue and read and my main colors in the piece, including lots of white and some reds turned to pinks. Blue and red, because I love how they pair together, to make purple, and to just contrast against each other. I originally was going to use blue and only blue, to provide a calming, sad kind of mood. Because, I normally just look pretty sad and calm. But, I added to red because I thought that was a bit too boring. From research, red represents love, passion, stress, etc. And I had a passion for making and finishing this piece, and I'm pretty proud of it.

# data[].attributes.body
Final Portrait Extended Assignment:
* I had done ink resist, earlier this week, and absolutely hated how it had turn out , originally. All my work on the "strokes" in the oil pastel had basically been a waste of a time because after the ink resist all you could really see was a base color and not the variety of colors I had tried to keep. So, I decided to re-apply a lot of the color that was lost. I forgot to photograph the original piece directly after ink resist, but remembered to take a picture of when I first started re-applying oil pastel.
*I left the bottom of the piece slightly white, for some effects
later.

# data[].attributes.body
Final Portrait Extended Assignment:
* I had finally finished with my proportions and basic outline of my face and decided to start filling it in with oil pastel. I wanted to use only blue oil pastel for really high contrast without it being too much for me. I had lots of fun using the oil pastel in different ways, and especially not worrying about whether or not I had blended it out properly because I loved how it ended up turning out by doing so and it was easier to finish more quickly. I still don't think that the proportions are perfect, but that doesn't really matter, I don't want it to look too much like me anyways. I am about ready to start adding on the ink, just a few things I might want to touch up or finish until I'm completely satisfied, and then add more layers. I'm very worried that the layers I put aren't thick enough because I really want them to be thick enough for no black to show through except for in the areas I want it to. I also added a bit of red, for a bit more contrast and to further express my love for how it looks when it is not completely blended out.

# data[].attributes.body
Final Portait Extended Assignment:
* We started our final big project of the semester! For this assignment we have to draw portraits, of course, but of ourselves or others. We don't just get the pictures from the internet or make up random people to draw. We are only drawing people we know. I decided to do a self portrait, because I really didn't know who else to draw. We have to draw from pictures of extreme contrast, and draw using color theory, and oil pastels. We had two options of media, one was to draw one portrait in oil pastel on a gigantic piece of cardboard. And, the other was to draw multiple portraits using oil pastel and traditional indian ink. I went with that option, because I have lots of trouble drawing very large.
* I started with the sketch, using a grid format because I didn't know how or where to start the drawing. I'm not entirely sure on the proportions or the placement, or even the accuracy on this drawing but I'm kind of just going with it. I want to use blue and red, because they contrast each other very well and make everything pretty interesting.

# data[].attributes.body
Nose and Lip Study Assignment:
* We had a bit of time near the end of class today to catch up and work on whatever we wanted and I decided to pick this work back up. It may not be entirely accurate because I wasn't looking in a mirror, but I made my sister look at me every once in a while. I didn't draw any eyes because I thought it was too late, and I didn't think it would be the best idea to draw them. Anyhow I am very happy with the finished product and I hope this study was somewhat useful for our extended project,

# data[].attributes.body
Three-Quarter View Practice Assignment:
* This was an assignment that we worked on for two class periods. Mine was pretty bad, if I have to admit. And I wish I had worked a bit harder on it, but I just had so much difficulty trying to draw sculpture. Sculptures look like people, but their features are really smoothed out so it's hard to get the shading exactly right. I think my proportions were off, too. I don't really enjoy drawing masculine figures either, I'm used to just trying feminine facial features. So, my drawing looks a lot more feminine than it does masculine. But, I guess that's okay because I'm still learning. I added a background to attempt to distract from the foreground and make it look a bit nicer.

# data[].attributes.body
Nose and Lip Study Assignment:
* At the beginning of this week we were given an assignment where we had to dry ourselves, but cropped so you can only see our noses and lips. Everyone had seemed to have been struggling with that part of drawing portraits. It was a really fun assignment, I thought it was pretty therapeutic. I love shading, it's lots of fun and I loved the color palette I used, though I did not end up finishing but I plan on finishing it once we have an open work day.

# data[].attributes.body
Upside Down Portrait Assignment:
* Today in class we had an opportunity to finish our Upside Down drawings of people. I thought mine was looking pretty nice, until I turned it upside down, but that wasn't the point of the assignment. It was to be able to better define shapes and draw what we see instead of going off of what we already know.
* I like how mine ended up turning out, it's very different from the original picture, but I kind of like it because of that. In the original picture the girl had a hand, but since we were focussing on drawing faces I decided to leave it out.

# data[].attributes.body
Upside Down Portrait Assignment:
* For a class period we picked out a picture of a person, that was flipped upside down, and tried to draw them. This was very difficult, because I really wanted to flip it over to see what it looked like the right way. And, there was no way to really measure proportions because the picture was upside down and the person I was drawing was facing in a way in a three-quarter direction. I had started at the nose, but didn't know how or where to go from there so I worked pretty hard on the nose. But, then I moved up to the eyes, I ended up giving her a demon-esque look which I really like. It doesn't really look like the picture though, but I'm not done yet.

# data[].attributes.body
Portrait Practice Assignment:
* We picked up pictures of random people, and using our knowledge of proportions from the day before, we tried to draw them. I think I have pretty nice proportions, but the drawing looks nothing like the girl I was trying to draw. She looks like and old woman, and I don't know how to not do that, because it has happened twice already. But, what if what I drew looks like what the girl looks like when she's older and I specialize in drawing aged portraits of people? That would be really cool, but probably not true.

# data[].attributes.body
Portrait Practice Lesson:
* In class we were taught about proportions and followed a lesson on where facial features go with basic, non-exact measurements.

# data[].attributes.body
Portrait Practice Assignment:
* For an entire class period we had to put all of our knowledge and skill of making portraits to attempt to draw ourselves. This was actually quite fun, and I thought it was pretty easy too. But, I struggled with a couple of things, as listed on the paper. I made myself look too old, probably because I'm obsessed with flaws and try my best to put emphasis in my art. But, the proportions were difficult and I had a hard time seeing where I should shade on places like cheeks because I thought I had just seen the same color. It still doesn't entirely look like me either.

# data[].attributes.body
Theme Show Project - "GROWTH":
* I have finished this assignment, and I'm so happy with how it turned out! Though, my goal was to finish it in class, I ended up bringing it home to work on it. But, I'm still really happy with how it turned out! The only thing was I had to scramble to finish one of the eyes in class, because over the weekend it wasn't drying properly. One eye still looks very different from the other, but I don't think it's that noticeable from far away. I hadn't been able to put it up into the hallway, because it was still drying and I had to come up with a title, but it is done. I also need to trim the edges because some are jagged, and then there are marks from where the staples were and I want to cut those parts out.
* This is the one time we needed titles for out pieces, and normally I just title my pieces anyways, but I have no idea what to name this piece. I was thinking something like "Shelter" or "We All Grow Differently", I want to incorporate the quote "Don't compare your growth to others, after all, look how much you've grown!" I really love that quote, and I didn't get to write it anywhere or incorporate it anywhere into the piece physically, so I thought maybe the title could be the second best thing.

# data[].attributes.body
Theme Show Project - "GROWTH:
* I had finally gotten paper and gotten to work on my assignment. I had started by sketching main details of the face, and then decided to add facial features and everything else after. The most difficult part for me were the eyes, because I tried my best to make them look symmetrical but I just couldn't. I took a picture showing both the eyes done, but I ended up erasing one after I took the picture because I realized how different they look and I'll get to draw that for class Monday. I want to finish this piece with watercolor.
* I had a lot of trouble with the eyes, but the time I finally thought I was happy with them I looked at them and thought something else was wrong and I realized the mouth didn't look right, so I kept trying to make it look right. I couldn't get the mouth to look right and I spent basically the entire period just trying to fix it. But, since it wasn't looking right, I decided to just cover it up with something like a flower. It would tie together the theme more and I want to use other of the color I decide to use for the flower in other aspects of the piece to make it less boring.
* The project is due November 7th, which is Next Monday, so I'll have a week. My goal is to start painting on Monday. I really hope I can get all of it done in class, because that never seems to happen.
* In the picture shown I edited it to showcase what I meant when I said before. And I'm very happy with how it looks. But, I'm still considering just sucking it up and speading my time drawing a mouth.

# data[].attributes.body
Theme Show Project - "GROWTH":
* We had started a new assignment where we were given one word as a prompt for this piece, that word was "Growth". This word can be interpreted and seen in many different ways, so this is a very open assignment. To begin this assignment we had to come up with three different thumbnail sketches, to show which ways we were thinking of taking out pieces.
* I wrote descriptions and ideas for each of them next to them. I decided to go with the first one (which is the girl) and I will begin working on that soon.

# data[].attributes.body
Observation Arrangement Assignment:
* I had finally finished this assignment, somehow, even though I truly didn't know for sure where I was going with this piece. But, I'm very happy with how it ended up turning out.
* The observation was in the shirt, you can't really tell but it was a fake sunflower I looked at pretty closely. I also used observations in making the hair, and sort of the face too.
* The arrangement is pretty much the entire drawing, and how I tried to divide the different pieces of collage.
* I like to call this piece: "Flower Child" (because of all the flowers).

# data[].attributes.body
Zoomed In - Zoomed Out Botanical View (Homework):
* This assignment seemed really simple in my head, but once I had started planning it out it grew kind of difficult. There were many different ideas I could have used, that I had planned out, with this assignment, but I chose the one I liked the best.
* That's three succulents sitting in a row, but, the angle isn't straight-on (for the zoomed in - zoomed out aspect).
* I'm pretty happy with how this turned out, I spent a lot of time on it, the main thing I should have planned out was the overall color palette (mainly with the background.)
* I liked to call this piece: "Stargazing".

# data[].attributes.body
3 Continuous Window-View Line Drawings (Homework):
* I spent quite a while on each of these drawings, because I had not realized how detailed window frames were and the outside details too. Two are looking out the same window, but for different angles and the third  is looking out a different window in a different room.

# data[].attributes.body
Observation and Arrangement Assignment:
* My arrangement part has to do with the person without a face, which is a profile drawing I drew from a drawing of myself, but I tried to make it less resemble me than just a regular person. I will use the outlines for the arrangement and put different pieces into the different section of the person (i.e.: the hair, the shirt, the face, I still haven't really decided yet).

# data[].attributes.body
Observation and Arrangement Assignment:
* For this assignment we needed to draw something from life, or more than one thing, and rearrange it in a creative way. But, with this came along the suggestion of drawing a person without a face, which is what I decided to do.
* I decided to start off by drawing something from life first, which is a close-up of a (fake) sunflower, and I ended up finishing that in class. Though, the photo only portrays it at the beginning of the period.

# data[].attributes.body
White Objects on White Paper Drawing Assignment:
* For this assignment, we needed to pay close attention to the shadows that we saw, and try our best to draw what we saw. (We drew white objects on white pieces of paper.)
* I drew a white piece of paper twirled into a coil, on a piece of white paper. It was a very time consuming process, and I'm not a patient person, but I'm glad it's done. I don't really think it really looks like what it is, or looks as nice as it could have, but I still think it looks better than it could have.

# data[].attributes.body
Contour Line Drawing:
* This was another assignment that followed the previous contour line drawing assignment. But, instead of drawing one thing that we saw using the same technique, we had to use a whole scene to draw (Life/Death scenes).
* I drew one whole scene, that I had finished, but when I had gone back to my drawer to photograph these assignments, it wasn't there. (It was the "Death" scene)

# data[].attributes.body
Contour Line Drawing:
* This was a weekly assignment that helps you to become better at drawing things while looking at them (from life). You try to draw what you see, either with or without a blinder, with a single line. The most fun part is to see the finished product, the process is actually really time consuming.
* The first is with the blinder the second is without. The finished products aren't the best, but this assignment was pretty okay nonetheless.

# data[].attributes.body
Gestures Assignments:
* In this assignment we either drew an array of bottles or one object from three different angles. I chose to draw the bottles. We, again, tried to make everything very sketchy. We used oil pastel for the base, and to further define the darkest points or certain things we wanted to define we used ebony pencil.
* I really enjoyed this assignment, I thought I didn't like using oil pastel, but I actually do. I started off using blue, but for the really dark shadows I tried to use an orange/red color. Which I ended up enjoying a lot. I'm really pleased with how this ended up turning out.

# data[].attributes.body
Gestures Assignments:
* We had a weekly assignment where we had to draw items that we saw in front of us, but very sketchily.
* I found it hard to use the markers, and to kind of do this assignment in general. We were supposed to only draw what we saw, with kind of minimal detail. but I tend to just see things with a lot of detail. I don't really enjoy using markers either, but this was nice practice.

# data[].attributes.body
Shadow Play Project:
* I had finally finished this piece!
* I had originally intended to include mainly shades of greens and reds, but after incorporating colors like yellows and blue I think the piece became more complete. (I love the contrast in it.) I had also decided to use an ebony background for a little bit extra shading in the background.
* I am still not completely happy with this piece, but I'm not sure what else to do. I'm not really sure what I could have done better either. I'm still glad that it turned out better than I thought it would.

# data[].attributes.body
Shadow Play Project:
* I  was beginning to grow happier with this piece, and less confused on the direction I was taking it or what the piece actually looked like at that time. (I'm still confused though, just not as much.)
* I had colored in more plants, and tried to finish up other parts of the plants.

# data[].attributes.body
Shadow Play Project:
*  I had begun coloring (using colored pencils).
*  At this point I was pretty confused on where this piece was, I just tried to work on the parts that I thought I understood.
* Even after that, I decided to start taking the piece were in the direction I though I wanted it to go. I wanted to used colored pencils on the normal parts, but the parts where figures overlapped I wanted to make it appear as if it were inverted. (But, I had more trouble with it than I thought I would, but at least it looks like it's contrasting.)

# data[].attributes.body
Shadow Play Project:
*  This project was very open in the directions you could take the artwork in. You simply had to trace shadows, how ever you wanted, in order to come up with something that you would use as an outline of your art
* I decided to mainly using (fake) plants, until it built up a composition I was happy with. I enjoyed how complicated the sketch ended up looking, and kind of had an idea of where I wanted to take this piece.