For my expressive portraits artist, I chose Jeremy Sutton. Sutton was born in London in 1961 and was captivated by art from the age of three. He earned his bachelor's degree in Physics from Pembroke College, Oxford University, and studied art at the Ruskin School for Drawing and Fine Arts. However, Sutton didn't turn "full artist" until 1979 when he moved to the Netherlands. He started exploring digital media in 1991 and found his calling. For his artwork, Sutton combines photography, digital paint, oil, crayon, and acrylics in his work. He is also, the famous creator of Corel Painter Master where aspiring artists can try this new technique instead of the traditional. He often draws his subjects before turning to the computer where he constantly saves each new addition to the piece until he comes to the final product. Sutton even offers online and personal tutoring, for those who wish to learn how to work the program. His artwork is truly fantastic, filled with beauty and color, much like a traditional acrylic painting. The artwork I have shown here is his famous painting of the Golden Gate bridge in San Francisco (his current residing residence), along with the cities other amazing features. I could, personally, look at his pictures for hours. The detail is exquisite.

Happy Halloween!

From the WHS National Art Honors Society members.

Portrait: My little sister "G-Bug"

Hi everyone and anyone, this section's choice was expressive portraits or a portrait of any kind. The medium I used for this project was pencil on regular 11" by 13" sketching paper (my favorite kind, I love pencil and charcoal!) and it was my mama's idea to sketch my little sister. Normally, I'm very good when it comes to realistic and real-life drawings, particularly people, like this portrait . However, for some reason, my hand just wasn't on the same page as my mind was this time, and I'm disappointed with the drawing. The nose is slightly off balance and her cheek bones are a little too bold, though the shading is satisfying. I believe I can do better and I would like to try my sister again. But, for now, this piece is done. Any comments would be greatly appreciated as to this serious case of 'artist block.'

Expressive Portraits: M.C. Escher

The artist whom I chose to highlight is the famous optical illusionist M.C. Escher. This particular self-portrait is titled "Hand With Reflecting Sphere." In this work, Escher captures not only himself in the work, but also his surrounding environment. Somehow he manages to contain it all in this little glass ball.
The reason this piece is quite expressive to me is that is shows Escher's level of self-reflection; he constantly did self-portraits and various other "reflective sphere" self-portraits. It seems he liked to put himself under a microscope and scrutinize every detail of himself (much like myself).
I also can't fail to notice that his hand is done in a realistic fashion and his interpretation of himself seems rather cartoon-like within the glass sphere. I can only assume that what he's trying to say is that he views himself as a "joke" or maybe just as a funny looking person.
I am a big fan of Escher's illusions; his ability as a mathematician only helped his creation of absurd situations. Other good, well known Escher pieces are "Waterfall" and "Relativity." Be sure to Google some more of his "spherical self-portraits" to get a better idea of his self-interpretation.

Expressive Portraits

Over the next three weeks, Art 4: AP and GT students will be first working on graphite portraits.  Then their next project will be to create an expressive self portrait.  While working on these projects, students have been asked to explore expressive portraits by other artists and post the artwork that they have found interesting along with an example of the artwork.  Each student (eight students total) have been given different post dates, so please check back two or three times a week to see what interests our students have.

Mini Art Show

Here is a 'mini art show' of projects that have just been completed by Art 3: 3D Design students. They were working with form and studying architectural forms created by Frand Gehry.

These pieces will be on display in the WHS Media Center beginning Friday, October 24.

ENJOY!

New Feature

Hello Everyone,

Now that the students and I are getting the hang of posting work and blogging we will now begin to new features. First, since the majority of the posts so far have been of works in progress, when the assignmnet has been turned in and graded, we will post a slide show of the completed projects.

Second, students will be required to begin researching other artists to go along with the current assignement. Students will draw dates which will be their deadline for posting the information. These artists may be masters that we are all familar with or current artists. I am hoping by students reseaching other artists and through this discussion it will encourage them to work outside of their comfort zone and try new techniques.

Thanks for checking us out, we hope you will enjoy this blog and the students work.

Color: Reversal

Help! I am having a little trouble in deciding what I want to do next on this piece so any advice that can be given by thursday would be greatly appreciated.

Anyways, for this color piece I decided to do an ocean scene, mainly because I had it already drawn out on a canvas and it had just been sitting in a corner of my room. :) However, I didn't want it to just be a regular ol' ocean scene, so I mixed it up by painting a sunset on top of a sky full of clouds. Hopefully, this will cause my audience to think a little bit about the meaning behind it (if there is one that is ;) No, actually, this is kind of my own statement about the state of our oceans and that if we don't stop polluting them, soon the fish will be swimming in the sky, but the problem is that fish can't fly. The sunset, to me, symbolizes hope and new beginnings, which is why I decided to paint it.

Since the colors have to express some kind of emotion, I'm going to paint the remaining sea creatures wild and vivid colors to make them stand out against the sunset. Also, I was thinking I might paint a tree or land plant on top of the corral just because it's kind of wierd and cool, but I don't know yet (what do you all think?) Oh yeah, in case you can't see it on this image, over there beside the shark is a sea turtle and behind it is a huge wall of corral.

I've always wanted to paint an ocean scene, and I like how this is turning out. It would be nice to get some ideas though, because I'm a little stumped on what to do next.

CoLoR: Momentary Distraction

i really liked how this piece turned out....just not on my camera

the girl I imagined to be momentarily distracted from picking at her left hands' finger nails, and looking towards the source of the distraction. her tones i assumed would be brought on because she's acting out of her norm....which when she was would have been blank like the background.

this was my first time using watercolor pencils...though even though i kinda messed up, I really liked thier color..i just should have practiced using them first before directly applying them to my picture. But oddly the more i look at it the more i sorta like my mistakes messiness, i think it gives the colors a sort of boldness that they wouldnt have had without them.

"It is not the form that dictates the color, but the color that brings out the form."

Howdy, Art Gang. As you can see, my peice isn't quite finished yet. I really need some advice for the background because I am clueless! So any ideas concerning this matter will be highly appreciated!



Even though I'm not the biggest fan of color, I really enjoyed this project. It was really easy for me to get lost in my own world and focus on nothing else when I started painting this particular peice for some reason. The colors I chose demonstrate me, really. I love variety and any thing that catches and holds my attention. However, I wish I could have blended the colors better especially in the chest area. It looks very blotchy while the rest looks smooth. I really want to paint the background black but leave some areas to incorporate color. I was also thinking about using tinfoil for something, maybe even cover the black stripes with it or the eyes. .

I tried using colors that really mesh well together. Making it look as if it was walking towards you was one of the most difficult processes for me. I used a light brown for the stomach and kept the tail end the same color: orange. The funnest part was making the whiskers. I got my paint brush and mixed the main colors used throughout the project and simply made a long, sinuous brush stroke. I had to go back with a small tipped paint brush and add a little yellow, though.

Seeing as how it's the first tiger I've ever drawn, I really like it. I know its not my best but I'm happy with it. With a little more practice I hope to create another one for my mother. I hope everyone likes looking at it as much as I liked creating it!

Color: Life...In Color

What I expect viewers to see in this photo is that even though the "stream-lined" life may be fun and colorful, some people remain forgotten.

To our left we have the pivotal (but out of the way) character who sits with a guitar in hand and is anxiously awaiting tips. However, you can notice that the poor lad has given up and is staring sadly down towards the ground. All around him we see that the world is colorful and happy, but is it truly happiness that surrounds them?

The woman in purple is waving to the green man. The green man is on his cell phone, perhaps he's making a business call or maybe he's getting a promotion. The woman in purple, however, is waving...waving ever so hopelessly to the green man. She may have known him from high school...maybe she had not seen him in years. She thinks to herself "I remember you from high school!" and waves. But the green man is too busy to notice or care.

The world is orange; warm and happy. The people in the world, however, is what shapes what it truly is. The road, a sickly hue of black and yellow, is what man has did; we defiled the natural roads we may have had and placed down pavement in nature's place (leaving the earth quite unhappy). The surrounding areas are hues of light periwinkle and yellow, but they truly don't matter.

My message is that despite a happy color, the object that the color is resting upon may not convey the same internal emotion.

I almost forgot the character that resides in between the two color worlds; the happy greaser. He is styled from the image of the "greaser" stereotype that existed in the 50's (and was popularized in the novel The Outsiders). He sort of combines both worlds. Even though his clothes are colored, he's smoking and has some inner demons that you'd never guess about him...just because of his appearance.

I can't forget to thank Josh for recommending that I turn my mistake into a lamp post; without his assistance, I would've probably scrapped my entire painting.

Comments are appreciated.

Color - Gold Vine

This was something I did in my sketchbook awhile before we started this project. Looking back at it, I think I could change it to make an interesting piece. My plan is to redo it in paint, make the “thorns” less thorn-like to try to make the shape more fluid, and use a dark or cold color for the background to give it a lot of contrast. I like contrast. I did this sketch the same way I always use color: do it all in pencil (my element) and add in color when I’m done. I’m going to try using paint for this specifically to avoid my habits and force myself to use more color. My problem is I haven’t done much work with paint…or color…so I’m not sure how well it will turn out. Any advice would be great.

Glorious Morning.

For my color project, I chose to do what I think is the most colorful thing you can possibly find: flowers. These particular flowers are Morning Glories, some of my favorites!
This was my first time working in watercolor (aside from just messing around with them that is.) and I think it turned out nicely. It’s not quite finished yet though, I want going to add something else to it. I considered a faint, pinkish sunrise in the background for a while, but then got the idea of putting in a bird. I think I may do the bird, a Humming Bird perhaps. What do you think?
I liked doing a project on color a lot. It helped me expand my interests to color instead of the usual black and white I find myself drawn to so often. This was a good idea. I am even more exited about our next project; portraits...yay!
= D
~Kate

Color:: Pluto

Once upon a sleepless night, I decided to break out my acyclic paints. It seems like everything I've done this year has been completely spontaneous, because I had no idea what this would be when I started it. I'm happy with the result, though. I wanted to sort of take inspiration from Picasso's Blue Period for my color project and twist it into my own thing.

I had a lot of fun with this, though maybe if I had planned it out before-hand, it would be more anatomically correct and all that jazz. I kind of like it warped, though.

I just want to clarify as a ending note that my emotions did nothing for my inspiration of this piece. As weird as it sounds, I was dancing around and singing out loud, very happily, as I painted. Soooo........I'm not sure where it came from.

(This is completed)

Color: Household on Eggshells

(Dear Ms. Glenn, I tried to take a better picture of my piece this time, but my bedroom has blue lighting, my bathroom also has crummy lighting, & my camera was running out of battery power.)

Okay, the focus for this project is color. At first I was just going to dye a bunch of eggs, smash them up, and make something pretty. Like an egg mosaic. Then, though, I dyed a bunch of eggs and realized how many eggs a mosaic would take...so...I thought of my mom's words, "Gosh, it's like a home built on eggshells," and I decided I wanted to portray that.

The paints in the background are dark purple & bright red swirls. I think they're very dramatic colors and also mildy creepy together, which is what I wanted.

I have more eggshells to glue on, and I also have to make the house that is going to be built on top of them...but I have no idea how to make the home or what I want it to look like besides dysfunctional.