Up, Close, and Personal

While developing ideas I was thinking a lot along the lines of looking very closely at someone of something like in someone’s mouth or up their nose. 

Then I was thinking about things situations where people are intruding on personal space. With this I thought of busy city streets, packed subway cars, and a full elevator. Being in an elevator is one of the most awkward situations because there is no personal space. At this point I had the “close and personal” part but I didn't have the “up”. Then I realized that elevators obviously go UP and down so I used a large bright upward triangle to stand out in the picture and emphasize the upward direction of the elevator. 

By using partially-dull colors for the picture the bright yellow creates a lot of emphasis because its difference in value. I chose to use watercolor and pen and ink to do this project. I felt the watercolor would create the dull color I was looking for and does not involve much detail. I wanted the picture to remain impersonal so I made the shapes of the people very rough and did not include their eyes. The pen simply helps to show the figures better and add value by using crosshatching. The risk I took in this assignment was the watercolor and pen. I had no idea how it was going to turn out and did not know how to use it very well. I had experience with the pen and the crosshatching but I had never tried to use watercolor the way I did.

Narwhals

What's the Point?

 

Some of my ideas for “what’s the point?” included, pencils and pens, needles, pointing, sword fish, hedgehogs, narwhals, compasses, and unicorns.  I chose the narwhals for my project because I felt like the pointy horns on the narwhals really demonstrate the theme. The horn/point is the focal point of the artwork. I showed contrast in my work by using a black and white theme. Both of the pages have very dark backgrounds and most of the picture is dark. The contrast is shown because the point of the narwhal is completely white, creating contrast against the dark background. I also used a black and white border creating even more contrast, and tying the two pieces together by using the opposite color as a border on each page (black border on white, and white border on black). I used a black and white color scheme. With the white paper I decided to use black charcoal because it blends well and can create the rich dark color. I also did the same picture on black paper with white chalk and white pencil. The white chalk blended well like the charcoal did on the other picture. I also used the white pencil to help make really sharp, contrasting, white lines that the chalk was not able to do. I used a lot of blending and value work in this project. Because I only used black or white charcoal/chalk the value of the charcoal was important in making the different parts of the pictures. The blending helped to make the water look more life-like.

I took risks in this project by using different mediums. I had never worked with charcoal or white chalk before and I didn’t know how it would blend or look on the black/white paper. I also experimented with the black paper. I finished the white paper narwhal first then decided to make another one but on black paper. It was a risk doing this without planning for it in the original thumbnail.