Baby's First Christmas

Hey Everyone!
This project's criteria was to portray a Christmas scene, or some portrait relating to it. However, I chose to stray a little bit from the requirements. (It's okay. I have approval from Mrs. Glenn.)

For this piece I drew my inspiration from my new, two week old cousin, Maggie Marie. My family has been waiting for her for two years, so she's definitely a big deal. She arrived on November 11 and this will be her first Christmas. The drawing will be my gift to her. Fortunately, when she gets older, she'll be able to appreciate it. (You have no idea how nervous I was trying to draw her. I wanted her to be perfect!)
The scene portrays Maggie holding my father's finger, which was copied from a picture we took while visiting her and her parents. I chose it to show the viewer how small and vulnerable a new born baby can be. She's a gift herself and just looking at her I get maternal feelings of my own! Maggie is special, and I can't wait to see the kind of person she grows up to be.
For the medium, I used charcoal pencils and set it on regular sketch paper. The picture is 13"by11".

Expressive Portrait: And Life Must Go On...

Hi everybody. I first want to apologize for my lateness, Mrs. Glenn. I'm very sorry that this project has taken me so long to post. However, I'm glad to announce that it is finally completed and I really enjoyed creating it :-)

To begin with, I had ALOT of trouble finding out what I was going to do. I believe I changed my mind at least seven times throughout this project. Every single peice I started on was almost finished but I decided I wasn't happy with them. I was so busy rummaging through old pictures that I didn't even think about just drawing it from my mind. Nevertheless, I finally sat down and just drew. One of my friends had given me this really neat wooden box filled with colored pencils, every kind of paint you could think of and this very oily based crayon which is what I made the piece you see here with. The background is just a common black poster that I got from Mrs. Glenn's room.

I really like how the colors came together. I used the white to bring out the chiseled structures of his face. I didn't want to go overboard on his eyes so I kept it simple by just outlining his pupils which made them really stand out to me. Overall, I really liked this piece and hope you do too!

Expressive Portrait: Rebel Without a Cause

Howdy everyone!

I drew my inspiration from a photograph of James Dean for my expressive portrait, because he's a really interesting person and was also a bit of an artist in photography. I wanted to convey a feeling of anger and resentment because I tend to "draw" away from showing it in my art work. I also wanted to convey James Dean's charm and his overall air.

I'm not quite finished with this piece because I plan to add color with pastels. However, I'm not sure exactly how I should go about it and what colors I should use to get the effect I want. So any suggestions and criticisms would be greatly appreciated. I'm enjoying working on this piece and this project and also the previous one has helped me tremendously on my portraits and proportions.

Thanks! Katherine :-)