Niko Njaastad's Summative page of semester's finished work by Nikolas D Njaastad

Collaborative Collage (Phase 1)

nnjaastad — 2014-11-10 18:08:46 UTC

As our class' first assignment, we were tasked in making a collage background that would later be passed on to make something out of it. I, however, misunderstood and made an collage object and left the paper's art as the background.

Collaborative Collage (Phase 2)

nnjaastad — 2014-11-10 18:12:23 UTC

This is now my take on someone's collage back-ground. I can't say I added a whole lot on my part, most here were already there, aside from the man holding the shampoo(?), the smaller orange man and his negative space, the guy above him leaning on the red/pink line and the guy surfing on the bluish bit that looks like waves.

Collaborative Collage (Phase 3)

nnjaastad — 2014-11-11 00:48:23 UTC

This is the final form and like before, is someone else work before I got my hands on it. It's seen better days, but then again, I thought the forced piece made it look like it never saw a good day. But I digress, I added the sort of path way collage pieces, as well as the see-thru color paper triangle trio. A few strips of black and white magazine bits are missing for the corners, but seem to forget those bits are even there so whatever, I guess it's not a huge loss, but I do still wish I had them. The oil pastel usage here made me understand why it's cool to look at and may be easy to use, but tough to master.

Independent Project #1

nnjaastad — 2014-11-11 00:53:10 UTC

This is a silly pencil sketch of some guy tipping his fedora on the internet. I don't know why he did it, and I don't really know what inspired me to draw him, other than it always brought a smile to my face. For shading out the picture, instead of using a blending tool, I used my finger, mainly because it was always simple to get a shading depth I want and it really takes affect when you shade with sweaty fingers. However this will stain the paper at time, so it have to be a dark spot to make it not so disastrous. I also messed up placing and gluing this down on the piece below, but I used this flaw as a way to add to it. So by getting so clear paper and just dabbing crumbled bits all over, it gives it a sort of fabric-y look. It ain't a great solution and arguably I'd rather prevent it from happening, but I say it makes for a good quick-fix

Independent Project #2

nnjaastad — 2014-12-01 16:49:33 UTC

This is my finished Stippling piece of a skull of what looks to be a cow or a bull, buried in the sand a little. The concept for this merely came from decisions, I felt overwhelmed with suggestions and stuck with this. The bits of the picture that I was certain about doing from the start was the use of stippling and negative space. More or less my goal with this piece with the stuff used was to improve my stippling to give more believable depth and shadows within the object and to make better use of negative space as a whole compared to the second stage of the collage collaboration. The purpose for using a cow skull as oppose to a human skull was that the human skulls looked more refined and lacked the amount of creases and cracks that the cow skull had, and I figured doing this would better show off my skills. I think for the most part, everything that I set out to accomplish was achieved, except for maybe the skull's eyehole and the shadow of the skull on the sand.

Independent Project #3

nnjaastad — 2014-12-16 18:58:48 UTC

*Just for the record, this was by no means to be some picture depicting how blacks think in Chicago. It was jus to draw what might be the religious black kid who people would see him for a sanction, based on a podcast I heard from people who took part in Harper High for 5 months. I see it really doesn't explain my intentions well, but it was meant with no harm.*

This is my work on a Harper High School student, who was very religious and was often seen as a mentor of sorts. My overall goal when making this piece was really to make a narrative out of something. It's supposed to tell of him and how feels about living the Chicago/Harper High area, where crime and violence is commonality and everyone is in a gang whether they want to or not. But not all gangs are bad as it turned out, so for good measure, there's a pin on the baby's beanie that says "Young Sinners". And as for the map like thing next to the gun on the table, it says "Welcome to CHICAGO" because part of the gang code was to have a map to know your way. It was to add a little humor to an otherwise grim story, assuming you know the details. Another goal from this piece was using colored pencils effectively. Since I've already got a hang of regular pencil shading, I thought that using this would be no more different, and since people used this black, pencil friendly for colored pencils, I thought I'd do the same. Well as it turned out, it's much more harder to do it more efficiently that pencil and scratch paper. The colored pencils, though were possible to smear out on the paper, was much tougher and gradually wore on the paper, so I couldn't go crazy like with the first drawing. And really, I don't have a great deal of patience for this kind of work, at least with graphite pencil, you only work in one range of colors. Here you work with a whole variety of colors and thickness to them, it's just too much for the end results. Also, because of doing this project near the end of the semester and during finals, I felt more rushed to get it done and show something, and I think it kind of shows because if it was less stress-filled, I probably add more time to detailing the kid's bed and his clothes to look more realistic. But at the end of the day, I just wanted to make a narrative piece and quality, while always a primary focus I'd say, probably got a bit lost for just making my piece say something. Regardless, I think I achieved what I wanted to create, its just that others might see something completely different.

First Semester Analysis

nnjaastad — 2014-12-18 14:06:59 UTC

So coming into Drawing/Painting III, I assumed I was fairly amateur at drawing. At least when it came to detailed pieces, I always get bored and not finish it or if I did, I felt a lot more was needed to be great. Now, after a semester's worth of drawing and painting, where do I place myself now? I say my coloring skills is something that improved, mainly painting with roots. I've always liked the color looks to drawings, but had more fun making black and white or pencil drawings because of how much more simpler it was to use. But at least I can say I'm more familiar with the medium and could use it even better the next time. My stippling drawing to me shows improvement just by the scope and detail compared to my Drawing/Painting I work. And the pencil sketching to the left I felt improved by the detail on the clothes, they honestly look more realistic to me than any other work I've done in the past. Plus, it kind of gave me an idea of turning "mistakes into miracle" shall we say. I still don't get collage and I don't see what that has in store for the future. So with the 1st semester nearly wrapped up, where to go from here? I don't know, I guess to just wait for second semester to start so we have something to do. I don't draw elaborate things on my own time and nor do I draw anything I'd want to show off, but we'll see.

^ For any first time viewers

nnjaastad — 2014-12-22 19:34:40 UTC

| The picture right above is me

nnjaastad — 2015-01-22 16:43:32 UTC

Niko Njaastad / Root Man Strikes Back

nnjaastad — 2015-01-27 16:19:56 UTC

And starts off by creating a Human Figure in its likeness.

But in all seriousness, this was my first time using Watercolors like this and if you saw this in person, it probably shows. Skin Tones were not my most efficient skill, but I think I understood it more after the trial and error on this piece. Despite the change from pencil to watercolor and the tedium in painting the roots, it was still fun to create and I feel pretty good about it for my first real attempt.

Update: Now this is framed, so it must be special, right?

Roots Inspiration #4: The Ear-view

nnjaastad — 2015-01-27 16:23:34 UTC

Admittedly, I should've used a more realistic ear as opposed to a diagram for the shading of a real ear, but I think it gets the job done.

Roots Inspiration #1: The Chin

nnjaastad — 2015-01-27 16:24:47 UTC

Along with the lips to accurately draw lips on a face, this was used in the bottom right-hand corner

Roots Inspiration #3: The Brain

nnjaastad — 2015-01-27 16:26:02 UTC

As the basis for this project, I wanted to put the care and detail into it. In the end, only the pencil sketch part was really detailed, where as the paint was more or less lazily done. But regardless, I didn't know how to accurately make a brain, so this was needed anyway.

Roots Inspiration #2: Eye-side view

nnjaastad — 2015-01-27 16:27:30 UTC

This was used for the upper-right hand picture, and this was used to help make eye-brows and eye-lashes. It helped me get an idea of how eyes work from a side view, like there is some space that looks like the eye, but as a reflection. It looks simplistic in the end, but hopefully that can change with practice using this medium.