Well...

So Mrs. Glenn told us to put one of our weaker pieces on the blog. It is a wonderful idea. Apparently we all need help. Although I find it amusing that we are asking for help on how to make something better that we cannot change. I bet she wants us to learn from our mistakes and get better from them. THIS IS A WONDERFUL IDEA. Anyway, so the problem with this piece was that I wanted to do it in pastels, so that the color would be brighter. However, the problem was that I have never sucessfully used pastels, and starting with something on this small a scale would probably would have resulted in a ruined card. Thankfully, I took the time before I started coloring to try to draw with the pastels just on some paper. I now have an amazing amount of respect for Rachael and Rachel and Eduardo for being able to use pastels so well. I'm definitely not that good yet. So anyway, I decided to just use colored pencils instead, because although they are not quite as bright, I was confident in my ablilty to manipulate them so that the shapes would look right. UUUURRRRGGGGG. I got the shapes right. The color is awful. It is not quite as lifeless as in the picture, but it is much less awesome then I hoped it would be. Comments on possible future alternatives with more satisfying results would be much appreciated.

Stupid eggplants...

Hello classmates and fellow art geeks! It has been about a month and half since we started this card project and slowly but surely everyone's making progress. Despite this progress, Mrs. Glenn has proposed that each of us post about a particular card that we feel is weak or is giving us trouble. My card is...THE EGGPLANTS! (dramatic music, please). Something about them just seems...off, to say the least. I don't know whether it's the background or the eggplants themselves. I don't know if it's the color scheme, the prominent lines, or the small bite out of the smaller eggplant. I've been working on my other cards, but something just seems to draw me back to this one, and I don't know what! I'd really appreciate any helpful feedback. Thanks!

help

This is a korean singer. I tried to give him a black hoodie but when I colored it, it looked like he had blonde and black hair. The colors look different when I took the picture so that random light spot at the bottom right corner isn't there. I tried to use white to shade it more and press down harder with black around the face but I'm having a hard time.

Grrrrr!!!

This igloo is driving me crazy with the lines and shading. The lines have to be a certain way and the thing won't shade in the right spots and its just ugh!

Weak Cards Response:

We were asked during the duration of this project to pick one we thought was weaker and post it today. Above you see John Pallock Jay-Walking. It's more of an impressionistic idea since John Pallock was a splatter paint artist, thus hard to work with. The green spot in the upper left corner symbolizes the green light of a traffic light, when people aren't supposed to be crossing. The parallel, horizontal, black lines above are supposed to resemble a road's edges. The brown streaks are people, and the one on the 'road', surrounded by red spots, is the jay-walker. I simply dislike the poor ressemblance of the artist's style. I don't mind it having to be explained since it is after all fake splattered and the artist didn't really do images, but since my project was based around mimicing the artist's style, it would have been nice for his distinct type of splattering to come across more. Any advice on how to modify the above would be great.

~Rachel

S.O.S.

For part of this lengthy assignment, we have to post one of our pieces that we consider 'weak'. For me, the above is what I have chosen. The first of my next set of eight, I consider "O is for Organ" weak because I didn't have much of a plan and it didn't end up so well. Originally, I planned to do it in the style of the instrumentalists of Disney Fantasia in that all of them would be silhouetted, but I also wanted to do it grayscale. I found grayscale silhouettes difficult because of the different layers involved; the backdrop, the organ pipes, the organ keyboard, the player. Last minute I decided to attempt color instead, like maybe hints of color with a bright background, but this effect was... weak. What I ask from all of you is an idea of how to accomplish a grayscale silhouette version of the above without the silhouetted shapes into one mass of black with a white backdrop. I would like the player to be distinct from the organ, but I want them both to be black, so I don't know what exactly to do about it. And whatever it is, I'll have to be able to do it with every other instrument I'm using for this set, which includes strings and wind and stuff... so any suggestions are appreciated and will be considered. Thank you for trying to help!

Unoriginal Title of ABC Project

So the point of this post is supposed to be to show everybody two cards that we have done. Unfortunately, I only have one card done. Considering how long we have had to do this project already, I find this sort of depressing. However, since I actually HAVE been doing work, I included a sketch of what the final project will look like (relatively). The card that I have already done is P for poppies. Most of the rest of the cards have similarly easy to guess names, like E for elephant or K for kiwi, although some of them are a little more obscure. (a person crying for (X) Xanax and a yellow jacket for (U) unwanted) I did not try to make all of the cards follow a certain theme, but I wanted them to interact with each other. I am going to try to use as many different mediums as I can. I want some of the cards to spill out into others. I have no actual expectations for what I want this project to end up as besides that
I want to be happy
with the final result.
(sort of obscure, but that
is about all I really know
about my expectations
for this project so far)

Remembering Cursive

With this project I'm kinda winging it as I go along. I've finished with R and T and decided to draw a rose and my version of a tree house. For the over all theme though I'm just trying to refresh people on what cursive letters look like because of how many people have come up to me and mentioned how they don't remember any cursive or very little at all. I'm trying to make the cards look fun and interesting but I'm mostly drawing random objects that come into my mind when I think of the letter I'm on. Also I decided I wasn't going to just draw the objects just in pencil or colors I'm going to do both to mix it up a bit.

Alphabet Cards Response

Hello critics, friends, and strangers. First of all, forgive me for the quality of the picture above. A photograoher I am not. Alright, it's been established by now that we're all doing 2 1/2'' by 3 1/2'' cards for each letter of the alphabet. This was a challenge for me since I have such a hard time with large projects, or at least in deciding what they will be. First I wanted to do them all after crimes since they fascinate me so much, but then, being so unsatisfied with the ones I had to make up for 'Q', 'Z', and 'X', I switched to theming each card after a different color or spacific art style (Stippling, black and white, cyan, yellow, ect.). I started missing my former list of crimes, though, so I thought of a both interesting and challenging alternative. I would mimic somewhat famuos and well known artists' styles, making each artists' piece be in the process of a crime! Happy with this compromise, I have finally began working. Above you see A-Alphonse Mucha performing A-Arson (I put it under 'observation' since I was looking at Kate's profile and hair...) and K-Keith Haring K-Killing animals out of season (which I filed under 'imagination's group). Some of the crimes are worded less officially than others, and I still have the unsatisfying letters to deal with, but it has been fun so far with the four I have completed. Wish us all luck!

~Rachel

Alphabet Cards

Each of my cards will be composed of a comic book hero or villian. My medium of choice will be primarily pastels with a hint of charcoal for the villians. Here's the list:

A- Aliens
B- Batman
C- Captain America
D- Dracula or Dr. Doom (Dr. Victor Von Doom)
E- Emma Frost
F- Flash
G- Ghost Rider
H- Hellboy
I- Iron Man
J- Joker
K- Kickass
L- Lex Luther
M- Megatron
N- Neo
O- Optimus Prime
P- Predator or Punisher
Q- Question (The Question)
R- Ripply (Ellen Ripply)
S- Superman
T- Thor
U- Uncle Sam or Ursula
V- V for Vendetta
W- Wolverine
X- Xena
Y- Yosemite Sam
Z- Zombies or Zoro

(Picture is in horrible lighting. Most of those reading this post have witnessed these cards in person; Don't judge too harshly.)

Criticism please.