Up-Close and Personal

        This is my Up-close and personal project. My two ideas that I chose were snake/Scales, and a frog, as seen in my thumbnails. Our medium choices were oil pastels, colored pencils, or chalk pastels. I used chalk pastel pencils that I had and I believe it turned out great.One of the problems I continually faced was excess chalk getting EVERYWHERE. On others papers, on backpacks, and on any white space on the paper. As you can see, the addition of a background reduced the brightness of the snake and in turn made it more natural.I enjoyed using the chalk pastels, as I have never used them before. It was a new experience that brought complications, but overall was enjoyed.I wasn't sure adding the background was a smart idea, considering I usually would not, but I decided to take a risk and try it. I am definitely pleased with the results, and will hopefully be using this technique again.

Scientific Drawing

                        These are pictures of my Scientific Drawings. We had a choice of pen, pencil, or charcoal as as a medium for this project, and I chose to use all three.The first picture is of my thumbnail sketches, of which I chose to sketch Bigfoot or electricity. Both of those are relatively scientific. I got the Bigfoot idea from Robert Patterson's Bigfoot video filmed in California, and I chose to do one of my topics on Bigfoot. I got the idea to put the Bigfoot in a forest from a picture of a snowy forest i found on pintrest. The artistic element that we used was Value and Contrast. I felt that electricity, or specifically lightning would better represent this, so that's what chose.I used the familiar shading of pencils with the harshness  of charcoal to create deep pools of darkness with an epic contrast of white lightning.The hardest part of this project was getting the different shades blended to look natural. Another problem was that I kept getting black charcoal fingerprints in the streaks of lightning, and that was frustrating.Fortunately my rubber eraser lifted them easily, and it also helped create highlights on the kite. Overall, the encouragement of my peers helped me get through this project, from the constructive criticism to the words of encouragement around the room. I enjoyed this project, and it greatly improved my artistic abilities.