I think the part that communicates my memory the most wasn't the final piece, instead, the thinking and vision of what I wanted to do. I really don't think I could put the memory into paper, 1 because it was really long ago and 2 because I wasn't exactly sure how I wanted to use the dry media to show my idea. So I think that the planning of it in my mind along with the imagining really communicates my memory the best.

This picture connects to my response because if you were to just look at the photo, it wouldn't really display the image of a stereotypical eclipse, and I don't really feel like I was able to truly capture what I was thinking, which is why my thoughts captured this moment a lot better.

The portion of the creation that stood out to me the most was always the ideation process. I imagine something and sort of think I can perfectly capture it. However, when I actually try to put the pen to paper, it doesn't exactly portray my thoughts as I usually imagine a good quality image instead of trying to turn that into art really.

This picture connects to my response because even though it does portray the main idea of what I wanted to create, it doesn't capture it as perfectly as I imagined.

For this piece, I think the portion that stood out to me the most was the final product. For this piece, I really didn't know what I wanted. I was just thinking of ideas and trying to find letters the whole time. I think the final product, along with material exploration, best helped me understand what I wanted to do. And since I didn't have an exact vision in mind, I was able to go along with the flow and create a piece that I honestly had no large expectations for, which created the piece I'm most proud of.

This piece is really abstract, but at the same time, anyone looking at it would be able to understand what I had made.

I feel like we really got to understand struggle and play since especially in the beginning we had no idea what we were doing, and we really had to trust the process, since it looked like an actual tape monster in the beginning. Eventually, once we could actually see what we wanted, it started to become more playful and made the class really go by quickly.

I think the hardest part about simplifying forms into basic lines and shapes was never having done it before, so often I really couldn't see the shapes Mr. Larson saw, for example. I was not very used to looking at the drawings as just a few shapes, so it took me a while to understand them and know where to look for the shape, since sometimes they were the actual shape of the body and other times it would be the shape/connection between the body and arms.

The sketch at the bottom is the one that I focused on the most with line and shape. I broke up the arms and legs and body into a singular line with some branches like a tree, then I slowly added triangles and squarish shapes to form it.

Breaking down drawings into simple shapes really helps you understand the overall drawing and not just focus on the smallest details.

We didn't really didn't have an intention except for a little anger in the beginning, since we were gossiping a little about what made us mad and then after, we just wanted to be more aesthetic and colourful, something we'd be actually proud of which in a way shows a story about looking sort of appealing yet seeing the anger and darkness peak through at the same time.

I think we didn't have much direction in how we made this piece, instead we just chose what looked "right" to us. So when we started with the black ink, we wanted to fill the paper while still having some negative space so the whole page isn't fully one value and colour. After that with the pastels we decided that we wanted the piece very colourful but not add too many mixed colours that the colours would look muddy.

Habits from this exercise that I could carry over into more detailed or expressive drawing tasks is just understanding the overall shape of the subject can do a lot as even if we don't have details, the piece can be somewhat finished and we would have a understanding of the figure.

Blind contour

The biggest challenge in maintaining hand–eye coordination during blind contour is not knowing where the features of the face are located meaning we have no idea where we're putting features on the paper except for the memory of where we started.

Contour drawing with detail

A lot of the times, as I was drawing, I would notice the general shape looked wonky or that my eyes and hands were “out of sync”. To adjust, I'd just go back the part I was unhappy about and continue making another line that follows more of the overall shape.

When adding details from the reference photo, I wanted to focus on making the facial features as accurate as I could make them and at the same time very creative with the colours which we can see in the photo as she is blue with pink and yellow blush. I also wanted to exaggerate my favorite features like her eyes and lashes which sort of turned this piece into my own personal art style that I just discovered while making this piece.

I also got inspired by Phil Lord’s work with his characters' shapes and figures, always having a sketch-like feel that I wanted to have in my piece as well. His animations and sketches are never perfect lines, instead, they always look partly unfinished yet still full of colour. His drawings in Spider-Man, which he’s quite famous for, have multiple lines outlining characters and buildings, which I liked, as the particular style is something that seems very aesthetically pleasing to me.

For themes and style, I noticed I kept going back to ideas around identity and deep messages from certain scenes, so I made sure I chose scenes and references that I felt really expressed something. My particular message after deciding my reference was a character staring at characters from her imagination, ones that are perfect to her and feel free.

As I worked, all the colors felt a little flat with no dimention even when I tried different pain strokes especially in the hair, so I wanted to use gesture lines to make the experimentation more loose.

I am again following Phil Lord's art, which often shows a mix of many styles, which made me want to try combining loose marks through gesture drawing as well as with more controlled elements like grids.

Confort zone

• Pattern - I feel like this is very repetitive and simple.

• Repetition - I feel like this is very is very simple.

• Variety - I feel like this is very simple as well.

Risk zone

• Proportion - When it comes to having things of different sizes, I feel I can do. However, making sure faces or bodies are proportionate seems a little new.

• Contrast - I think having contrast may be easy, but tying it in and making the contrasting subjects work together seems a little trickier to me. I think to get used to I just need practice with this principle.

• Balance - I think this is in the risky zone because balance, to me, might be hard to perfectly obtain.

• Emphasis - I believe this can be easy, making something stand out more with certain techniques, but what's hard is trying to get it to still blend with the piece.

For all of these, I think I just need more practice and work with them while doing art to get used to each of these principles.

Danger zone

• Rhythm - I feel like this would be something hard to integrate into a piece, as it seems more like part of music, and I'm not sure how to correlate that with physical arts.

• Unity - It seems like something hard to make look nice, and it is very new to me.

• Harmony - I'm really not sure how to make something with this in the first place because I'm really unsure

• Movement - It seems similar to rhythm and also very challengin,g as we have to make something unmoving seem like it is moving.

I think to overcome my hesitation with using these principles, I need to learn more about them and discover how they can be used and how they have been used by other artists

For the use of space, the dark silhouette of the tower against the very light sky and the lighter bottom spiderweb looking ground creates a very obvious positive and negative relationship. The middle sketch is the strongest in Notan terms almost a pure black shape floating above a white background. Focusing on spacew however, I chose to have a very full looking city that at the same time felt empty with the contrast. I have multiple overlapping buildings and shards that break up the picture.

For the lower and higher angle I wanted to make it look very drastic so that it exageratted the scale using lines as the high angle seems to almost diminish while the lower angle seems to explode out of the ground.

For principles of design I used many different ones

- Emphasis: The string emphasizes the city as well as the tallest central building in every iteration immediately draws the eye. - Contrast: Extreme contrast with the black tower shape compared to the white ground/sky

- Movement: Diagonal and zig-zagging string that leads the eye upward

- Repetition: Repeated buildings and sharp shards

What I would present is my longshot front sketch as it has the most detail and what I exactly invision. The other 2 were about figuring out angles which I really liked especially the higher angled one as it looks a bit like it has a fish eye lense as well which I think would add interest and depth to the piece. Presenting the front/long shot though would give a good idea for the sculpture we will make.

Since the beginning, I’ve actually had a pretty constant vision of what I wanted which was an abandoned modern city. My original concept didn’t change dramatically, but the iteration process helped me clarify and add certain details. For example, the theme of a triangle base and the structure of the overall city being a triangular pyramid was developed over time as we sketched and it just appeared.

The sketches also helped me see how to express my original idea more effectively like how tall the buildings should be and how they would be proportinate to each other or how they should overlap. With each drawing, the overall look stayed the same, but the execution became cleaner and more intentional. So even though the vision itself didn’t change, the process helped make the final version more clear and organized with exactly what we wanted in mind.

Even with a consistent vision, there were still some unexpected things. One pleasant surprise was realizing how much more dynamic the composition looked with the way I layered the buildings as their angle and height added to the piece. Along with what I mentioned before about the pyramid shape of the city and triangular base came a long the way and added a lot to the vision.

A drawback was that keeping the perspective consistent became harder because from the start perspective was something new I worked with already and as the buildings became more complex it became increasingly hard. Some angles or proportions ended up slightly off. To solve this moving forward, I plan to use more guiding lines or light grids to help maintain clean alignment and also I believe more practice would help me.

Material list

• Popsicle Sticks - To act like the support pillars - the look we need for our city

• Yarn - as the string that wraps around every building

• Skewers - More support looking items