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So you want to know how to draw yourself as a snail? W-why? Well, if you must:

The materials you're going to need for this are a white piece of paper, dark green, light green, white, yellow, light brown, dark blue, orange, red, brown, and black oil pastels, a pencil, a mirror, and a can-do attitude!

Step 1:
Draw an oval on the paper using your pencil. Then draw a curved line vertically going trough the oval. This will give you a guideline for where to draw your nose. Next, draw two lines horizontally, one in the upper half of the oval and one in the lower half. These are guidelines for where to draw your eyes and mouth. Now grab the mirror and look at your ugly face. Begin to erase the oval and draw the shape of your head. Draw your features on your head, but make sure they are along the guidelines from earlier. Draw your ears on the ends of the guideline used to draw your eyes. Also, your chin should be at the bottom of the guideline used to draw your nose. Once you are done with the nose, eyes, mouth, chin, and ears, erase the guidelines. Below your head, draw the body of a snail and draw the shell behind your head.

Step 2:
Color in the outline of your head using the dark green oil pastel and color in lighter as your move closer to your features. Make your cheeks, the middle of your forehead, and the middle of your chin yellow, as that is where the light will be hitting. The space surrounding your nose must be dark green as well, as that is where shadow is hitting. The front of the nose, however, must the the lightest part of your face. Use the dark blue to color in your eyebrows and, if you have them, your glasses. Also, use dark blue to color in your mouth, NOT your lips.

Step 3:
Color in the outline of the body with the dark green and color the inside of the body with the light green. If you have blonde hair, like me, then color the outline of your hair with the light brown and color it in with yellow, then use the light brown to make quick lines throughout the hair. Now on to the shell, which is where I kind of messed up. As you can see, I made the top of the shell yellow and orange. Don't do that, color it orange instead and make the middle of the shell red and the center light brown.

Step 4:
I fixed the shell, in case you didn't notice. All you have to do with this step is color the bottom of the snail body black, as that is its shadow. Then color the ground brown. Now, the background could be somewhat tricky. The sun should be in top right corner of the paper, so make it white and barely press the yellow pastel against the paper. Color the rest of the background yellow but when you get close to the ground, make the pastel darker. Go from yellow, to darker yellow, to orange, to red, and then reach the ground.

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Yes, I realize I'm a high school student. I know it's childish, but our assignment was to create a self portrait and add something to it that you could use to describe yourself. I'm a very childish person, in case you can't tell. Or according to this painting, I'm a very creepy person. Just look at its eyes! It's what nightmares are made of! I feel like I have to cover its face with my hand if I'm going to be able to finish typing this. You know, before I made this piece, I was required to create a portrait of just my head in order to try out the oil pastels. It turned out a lot creepier than I had anticipated. So I made it my goal with this one to not make myself as horrifying, and it's even worse! Oh well. I will say, though, that the shading is great. There's about six different shades of green in the oil pastel cabinet, which is why I chose to make my face green. But I also used yellow and white in the spots where light would be hitting, like my forehead, nose, and the bottom of my chin. The last question you may have regarding this piece is "Why did you make yourself into a snail?" Well, it was either this or the guy on the Pringles can, so I hope you realize that there's no reason I create what I create. I kind of just do it.

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There's no story behind this one, our assignment was to create something that had some form of growth in it and this is what I came up with. There's not a story behind all of these, you know? But even if there's no reason for it, this is actually the project I'm most proud of. The reason I'm so proud of it is that I draw, and that's usually all I do because it's the only thing I know I'm good at. But when I decided to sort of step out of my comfort zone and add a 3D element to the piece, I was surprised at how good it turned out. The shack is made out of small slips of cardboard, but each one represents frustration. Using a hot glue gun that I'm pretty sure wasn't working properly to glue these tiny slips of cardboard to the paper was a huge pain and I burnt myself multiple times. Another part that I added a 3D element to was the pink tubes coming out of the shack. You probably can't tell, but I glued cardboard that was arched under each tube in order to create an effect that there were bumps in the tubes, and it turned out pretty good. So was the piece worth all the pain it caused to my fingers? Maybe not, but it's the best thing I've made in this class, especially considering it's not just a drawing this time.

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This is a drawing of a photo taken during the Botanical Gardens field trip, which I was not on. Our assignment was to choose a photo from a gallery on Mrs. Ross' laptop and draw it. Believe me, choosing a photo was not an easy decision. But this one stood out to me because at first, I wasn't sure what it was. I thought was a tree or a fruit. But upon further inspection, I found out that it was indeed a tree. But still, I think the leaves on the tree make it unique from other trees. They don't look like normal leaves, but some kind of moss instead, it's pretty neat. It may look kind of sloppy, but this actually took about two weeks to finish because I had to keep covering mistakes and parts that didn't look good with layers upon layers of oil pastel in order for it to look the way I wanted it to. But looking back, I think some of black spots still showing, like on the bottom of the tree, make it look kind of good because tree bark is not flat, it's a rough surface with lots of indents. So I guess there's kind of a lesson with this one, not everything needs to be perfect and sometimes flaws make something look better.

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Zing! I'll be here all week, folks! As you can tell, I finally got the whitewash to work this time. So that means I was probably doing something wrong, oh well. But this actually the same paper used in the White Squash piece. If you look closely, you can clearly see the squash in the background. Now I know what you're thinking, why on earth would you want to draw over another piece? Why wouldn't you just make a new one? Well, you should ask Mrs. Ross that question because it was our assignment to draw over the previous piece. Another thing we had to do was have our drawing be all one line, but I didn't do that. I remembered that it was supposed to be one line when I was almost done with it, so it was too late. But regardless if I messed up on the assignment or not, I think the fan looks really good and realistic. So that is what I think of this project. Onto the next one!

What's that? You want to know about whatever that is on the left. Well, it's a shell. It sucks, it might be the worst thing I've made all year. I totally screwed up with the shading and I wasn't able to fix it. Ok?

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You probably don't know that the title above is a pun, but you might after you read this. This is another one of the paper collages, like the Coca-Collage, except this time we had a different obligation. This time around, what we had to do was whitewash the paper, and then create a drawing of any object in the art room with sharpie. My object of choice was a squash. Something you might not be able to tell about the drawing is that it is all one line, as that was another requirement for this. I think the drawing turned out pretty well. I'm able to tell what it is, are you? Now, one thing that did not turn out right was the whitewash. I don't know if I was doing something wrong or if there was something wrong with the paper, but it just wouldn't work try after try. In conclusion, I think this drawing is also middle of the road, I can't say much about it. It's alright, I guess.

Do you understand the pun now?

It's because, you know, it's a squash...

and I had to whitewash the paper.

Squash, it rhymes with wash.

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See what I did there? Our assignment for this project was to grab a dictionary, rip the pages to shreds, and then make a collage with them on paper. Easy. I got it done in a matter of minutes. But then the next day, our assignment was grab two different bottles/jars and draw them with China Markers. A lot harder and dirtier than yesterday, but no problem. The third day of this project consisted of painting and outline of the bottles and/or jars. (The bottle on the right is a Coca-Cola bottle, in case you can't tell by the title.) Now, I remember watching Mrs. Ross presenting how to do this project and just standing there in amazement at how she was able to make something that you couldn't even tell was before into such an identifiable object in a matter of minutes. My project did not turn out as well as her's, of course. You can still see what they are, though, and that's what I will think about this project. How I was able to take scribbles and, with the help of paint, turn them into a cool painting of a bottle and a jar.

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If you look closely at this one, you may notice that it's the same tool as the one in Rusty Gears #2. This may lead you to believe one of two things: 1. The assignment was to add something to a previous drawing of a gear or 2. That I was too lazy to draw something new so I just used a drawing I already made and added something to it. While I would be subject to commit the ladder, #1 is correct. But why the mouse? Allow me to explain. When we first started this project, I thought the only criteria was that we had to use watercolors, I didn't know we had to use one of our previous drawings. So what I originally wanted to do was recreate the cover of the book "Of Mice and Men." (I know that's supposed to be italicized but I don't know how to on Padlet.) When I presented my idea to Mrs. Ross, she pointed out to me that I was supposed to incorporate my tool drawings into it, but I could still use an element from the cover. So then I mashed the two ideas together and ended up with this. So how did I do? Well, I think the mouse looks good, it's easily the best part of the painting. It's just that the wrench and the background look sloppy and rushed, and it probably was rushed, knowing myself. I've always been the guy that buckles down and gets it done, even if it's not right. I've done that with my homework everyday since I was in elementary school. Look at the right side of the painting if you don't believe me, I didn't even have the patience to wait for the painting to dry before taking a picture of it.

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I honestly have no idea what I drew with this one. No, I don't mean that I think it's bad, I mean I have no idea what the object I drew is. I do know that it is not a gear or a tool, so I'm going to guess it's some centerpiece for a table. Another thing that I know that I drew this in one day, so, naturally, there are some things did wrong. I feel like the shape of the round part of the bottom looks odd, like I didn't make an effort to add more texture to it, and maybe I didn't, who knows? Now, the lighting for the bottom part is alright. I like how I had a ring of light and then what surrounds it gradually gets darker and darker. In conclusion, I'd say this drawing is as middle of the road as it can get. You can't say it's terrible, but there's nothing that deserves praise.

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Since the first rusty gears drawing took me a week, I had to complete two rusty gears drawings in one week so I, learning my lesson from the last drawing, chose much smaller paper this time. The gear I drew this time was, I believe, a wrench zoomed in to the bottom of the jaw. The hardest part of this drawing was not the shading this time, but the proportions. It was really difficult for me to get the size of each part and the space between it and another part correct. In fact, looking at it, I still think there's some things that I messed up on. Overall, I don't think this drawing is bad, it's just that there's nothing really special about it.

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This is the first project that I made this year and it sort of prepared me for all the artwork that I had to do in this class. Our assignment for this was to pick 3 different gears/tools/silverware from a box, zoom in on a certain part of it, and then draw. Below is a picture of the real gear zoomed out. My drawing is of the middle of it. It took me the entire week of school to draw this because I chose the largest sheet of paper possible to draw the gear on, which means I had to fill all of that space. Another struggle while creating this was deciding where the light would be hitting the gear, since good shading was essential to the drawing. I ultimately decided to have the light hitting the top of the gear because that's where it was when I was looking at it in real life, so it was easy to know which areas would be dark and which would be light. After I finished this drawing, I thought it was so-so. But looking back on it, I actually think I did a pretty good job with the shading, especially in that cylinder in the middle.