Final Project

For DA2002’s last assignment, we were told to come up with an art piece based on an impression we have on our partner. My partner was Melissa.

Melissa is a very quiet introvert. Unlike many others in the world who would like to take risks and stand out from the crowd, Melissa usually goes with the flow. She is pleasant, gentle and demure. These are characteristics I know I wanted to portray in my art piece.

Also, as a few of my friends and I hang out together in school with Mel alot, we noticed that she has very straight, long, black hair (before she cut it). Hence, it gave me the idea of wanting to use her hair as an idea for my artwork.

PROCESS:

For the first draft, I tested out the colours and flow on an A5 paper using soft pastels. The colours I chose were pretty bright and light.

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Next, I went to create a second draft using acrylic paint. This time, the colours were a little too dark and it did not portray the feeling I wanted. Also, the lines were not very defined.
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I then went on to sketch out the final image on an A2 sized paper.

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Final piece pencil sketch
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Adding in colours

FINAL + EXPLANATION

My art piece is an abstract piece, in attempt to showcase my impression of Melissa. As the idea came from me wanting to showcase her beautiful hair, the painting revolves around her hair which also doubles up as the sea.

I picked blue and green as the main colours which are analogous colours according to the colour wheel.

In this picture, the human face is actually based on a photograph of Melissa. Her beautiful hair is the represented by the mixture of the colours- green and blue which reminds people of the Earth. On the Earth, there are mainly two types of people, the introverts and the extroverts.

As mentioned earlier, Melissa is an introvert. She is softspoken and always shy to speak out. Hence, unlike a large ship (top left) , she doesn’t always stand out.

While a large ship is willing to take multiple risks across choppy seas, Mel goes with the flow while putting in hard work and effort, which is presented by the simple wooden boat. Since the wooden boat is representative of Mel, it is always placed closer to her human face in the painting.

The green lacey ribbons hints on Mel’s demure character and is green also because green is known to be a pleasing colour, which also reflects her.

The circles in the paintings also represents bubbles as Mel is often found to be day dreaming or in a daze.

I have also made used of the rule of odds here, where the three colours that would stand out are the browns and beige which are complementary colours to blue and green. This allows the audience to continuously move their eyes around the picture.

There is also a framing element around the ship and boat, separating these two different items. The bluish ribbon and high waves surrounds the larger ship, while the smaller boat is placed entirely on the peaceful sea.

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CONCLUSION

One of the difficulties that I faced while completing this artpiece was choosing the right combination of colours. While I wanted the three items (ship, boat and face) to stand out, I had to be careful not to select a complementary colour, but at the same time, I wanted to create sort of a balance in the painting so that it would not be overly blue.

However, I felt that it was a nice experience to complete an abstract piece as viewers can have different personal opinions about the completed artwork.

 

Assignment 5: Crayon Scratching

The week before recess week, we had a night art session. In Year 1, we had a similar art lesson, hence, I thought that we were going outdoors to do our art piece.

However, during that session, we waited until the sky was slightly darker. The class was then told to go out of the classroom to take a interesting picture around ADM and return to class to work on an art piece with that picture. We were going to do crayon scratching.

Crayon scratching works with layers.

First, we can sketch out the rough image of our art on the board provided using pencil. Next, we fill the art in with selected oil pastels colours. The interesting part comes in when we have to paint over a layer of ‘black paint’ which was mixed from some tempera paint (?) and soap on dark/black areas of the art piece. We then use any tool to scratch out the ‘paint’, unveiling the bottom crayoned colours, creating texture and colours to the art piece.

After taking several pictures, I decided to select this picture because I felt that while the sky is of a lighter tone, ADM balances the image out at the bottom.

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We returned to the classroom and began working on our thumbnail sketches. In the thumbnail sketches, I went on to label the respective colours I would like to fill parts of my art piece with. This aids me in knowing where I would be filling the black paint later. Also, I attempted to vary the shape of the tree at the side.

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I selected different tones of blue for the sky. However, I also noticed tinges of purple and orange for the sky in the image, and decided to blend them into my art piece as well. Needless to say, I picked different tones of green for the grass and a darker shade of blue for the ADM glass panels.

Halfway into the session, many of us realised that the colours on our boards were not staying on. Some of them were even flaking… It was then we realised that the container of pastels contained chalk and some old crayons that will result in flaking of the colours. These flaky tools were not very nice to blend with and many of us ended up with very inconsistent, bumpy pieces.

Nonetheless, I continued on with my art piece, being more careful to use oil pastels instead of crayons or chalk.

Here’s an image of resulting art piece before the black paint was added (Except the black stairs which I have already filled in with black paint):

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After we were done, we added in the black ‘paint’ forumla into our art piece.

I chose to paint over the green grass and ADM because they were the darker tones of the image and I wanted to add texture to them as well. I also decided on painting the tree with the black paint without scratching out any colours, because I felt that it had one of the darkest colour in the image.

We had to make sure that the black ‘paint’ was not too wet but not too dry before scratching out the colours. One thing that was advantageous was that, should we make a mistake in our scratch, we can lay over another layer of the black ‘paint’ and redo our scratching.

I started by painting over the grass patches, I used one end of a chopstick to scratch out the black ‘paint’, unveiling the green grass. Initially, I scratched out similar dots and lines to create texture for the grass. It was a very tedious act, but it felt satisfying at the end. However, Keith advised that objects nearer to the viewer should be bigger and widely spaced compared to the back, I redid the grass patch and was even more satisfied with the result.

I did not plan on scratching out the dark blue ADM building at first. However, I felt that it was rather out of place before scratching as it looked very flat. Hence, I decided to scratch it as well. It gave a better dimension to the building.

Lastly, I added on the tree at the side using a small brush and the black ‘paint’.

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Conclusion:

I felt that this piece of art was rather tedious especially if you need to scratch out repeated patterns like the grass.

However, I still did enjoy this art lesson. When we were young, we were exposed to scratch art using a paper and rainbow under layer. However, in this lesson, we made our own under layer and created our own art piece!

Furthermore, while we may already be exposed to blending of colours with paint and watercolours, we learnt how to blend colours using crayons and pastels in this lessons.

Assignment 3: Part 2

Over recess week, I attempted to redo 3 pieces for assignment 3. This time, I heeded Keith’s advice on picking a film. I browsed through YouTube and found this short black and white film – MONDAY.

I picked three scenes from the short film and did my thumbnail sketches first.

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Sketches

For the first scene, I picked a close up shot. In my opinion, I found that it was not the easiest piece to do a cut out especially the part of the screenshot that was blurry (fading). I also found the spectacles a challenge to cut out because of the thin frames and fragile paper.

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Scene 1
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Cut Out 1

Next, I went on to another scene. For this scene, I attempted to bring out the details of the door. Also, not to mention, the spectacles for this scene was even much a challenge to cut out. Initially, I intended to go deeper by putting in the details of the car and house  in the background. However, it looked very out of place when I attempted to put them at the white spaces.

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Scene 2
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Cut Out 2

Finally, for the last scene, I found that this was slightly difficult especially at the top part of the shirt (with the folds) and the curtains. I also realised that it was a little challenging to bring out the colour tones of the cupboard (at the bottom right of image).

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Scene 3
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Cut Out 3

Conclusion:

After redoing these pieces, I felt that it is slightly easier to reference my cut outs from a film instead of coloured images. I figured it was because films had the black and white tones which we can easily decipher which are the strong, mid and light tones.

Assignment 4: Colour Mixing

In this lesson, we learnt about the colour scheme. While most of us were familiar with the primary and secondary colours, we were introduced to the tertiary colours. In the colour wheel, it was also interesting to find out which colours complement each other while which colours would make a strong contrast to other colours.

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Image credit to google

The assignment for this class only allowed us to use three of the primary colours – Blue, Yellow, Red. We were also allowed to use black and white acrylic paint. Using just these colours, we are able to obtain other colours according to the colour wheel.

A few still life were set up for us. This was the angle that I picked, with the violin being the main focus.

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Still Life

I started out using a pencil to sketch the basic outlines of the still life on my art piece before filling in the colours.

I first painted the violin. We played around with all three primary colours before obtaining a slightly orangey shade of brown. As I did not want the painting to appear too flat, I attempted to mix in different tones of the same colour at different areas of the violins. I also attempted to mix in a little black paint to my brown for the areas of the violin which were darker in shade.

The colour of the glass cup at the back was a little challenging because it is relatively smaller and has less room for blending. There are also certain obvious parts whereby the sunlight hits it and it appears white.

The cloth the violin is lying on is supposed to be red according to the still life. However, I found that the violin may lose its focus if the cloth was red in colour. Hence, I used a slightly purplish tone of red instead.

As I could not finish the painting in time, I brought it home to continue my painting. I used poster colours for the dark brown-black background. I did not follow the table colour of the still life, also due to the similar reasons that I felt that it is too similar to the colour of the violin.

The paints at home did not seem to blend as well as acrylic paints in school after mixing. I am unsure if it is because of my paints or the fact that they were poster colours.

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Still life painting

In conclusion, I still find it pretty amazing how so many colours are linked by just the three primary colours. In fact, just by these five colours (including black and white), we are able to complete an entire painting!

Assignment 3 – Paper Cutting

During this lesson, we were shown some black and white films and practiced how to shade which tone in the film is dark, light and mid tone.

The image below is the practice activities that we have done in class:img_7653

We then had to come up with five images which consisted of paper cut outs. We were only allowed to use three different colours – black, white and a mid tone colour of our choice. I came up with a few sketches from a few well known movies before I started with my cut outs.

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For my first cut out, I did this cut out based on The Lion King movie. It was quite difficult to cut out the details of the animals especially the smallest one. However, this piece was my favourite out of all my other pieces.

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The Lion King cut out

For the second cut out, I did one which is of the film I had watched recently – The Secret Life of Pets. My cut out featured the main character, in an arched position, with the landscape as the backdrop. As there was quite a diverse use of colours in the film, I found that this piece was a little hard to portray all the different colours and had to improvise on them.

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The Secret Life of Pets cut out

Third, I decided to try something non animated. I suddenly thought that doing a cut out on one of the all time best movies Titanic would be interesting and hence, I decided to carry on with this scene. This piece was rather challenging because of the small details, such as the neck areas having different tones and shades as compared to the face. Nonetheless, it was a rather fun piece to do.

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Titanic cut out

Fourth, I decided to do one on The Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol movie! I thought that it would be a good idea for me to do this scene especially because there was a clear distinction of Tom Cruise being the the darkest shade, while the building would require mid tone parts. What did not cross my mind at the time of the decision was how to portray the buildings which were fading into the background. For this cut out, I noticed that the building had some shadow and hence, filled it in with black cut outs. However, as Keith mentioned, the width of the shadows and windows should have been thicker to thinner from left to right.

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The Mission Impossible cut out

My final piece was the most disappointing piece for me. I did on on WALL-E and eve. I figured that the background of the cut out would be white while the spare parts at the bottom would be of the darkest tone. In this way, WALL-E would stand out. However, after I finished the cut out, I realised Eve was blending into the background and hence, I attempted to add in a mid toned colour for the trees at the back to contrast with Eve. However, at that point, WALL-E started to blend in with the trees… Hence, I tried to put the black paper as the background behind the trees for a subtle contrast.

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WALL-E cut out

In conclusion, I found this assignment a little more challenging than the others. Although cut outs may sound simple, it was challenging not only in terms of precision, but also in identifying what is the darkest to lightest shade and making use of 3 tones to represent them.

However, I am sure that this assignment will allow us to have a keen eye for detail, tones and composition.

Movie images credits to Google.

Assignment 1: Part 3

This is the third attempt that I am doing for assignment 1. Definitely, there’s still lots of room for improvement, but I feel glad to look at how the drawings are progressing.

A5 Nature:

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Similar to the piece that I have done in my second attempt, the A5 nature drawing focuses on the abstract ‘river’ which is highlighted by the bold tones of inked pen and marker. However, this time, I replaced the regular, repetitive boxes with other lines and shapes.

In my attempt to portray peace, I included flowy/swirly lines (also partly to represent the river). There are also small dots and circles all the way from the ‘arch’ to the bottom of the drawing to represent drizzle/sparkles.

I felt that the dots and circles were a better alternative compared to the three rounded edged curves I placed at the bottom of the drawing in assignment 1.

A5 Urban:

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For the urban piece, I finally came up with this idea to make the drawing look more abstract and less realistic.

The buildings are replaced with simply lines, but in different boldness, while intersecting each other to represent a fast-paced society in the futuristic world.

In order to make a contrast to the regular straight lines, I added a semi-circle outline.

I also came out with this alternative idea by making use of simple shapes that make up the shape of the vehicle. The idea came from a thought that in the future, everything will likely be digitalised with technological advancement. Hence, I attempted to portray the future with a style a little  similar to The Matrix codes.

Conclusion:

Compared to the first and second pieces, I find that I preferred my third pieces more, not only visually, but also in the way it expresses feelings.

(Side note: Sorry for the bad photography and lighting skills!)

Assignment 2: Duck and Bottle

This week, we worked in groups of 4-5 on a painting assignment based on four design principles taught: BalanceEmphasisMovement and Rhythm.

Firstly, we were told to randomly pick two folded strip of paper, one of which consisted of an animal and the other, an object. My group picked the duck and the bottle.

To start out on the paintings, we made up a story relating to the duck and the bottle before sketching the idea out.

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Sketch and ideas process

The idea of the story starts out with a peaceful day by the beach.

The beach looked beautiful and scenic… until we look closer at the coast and realised that the beach was filled with rubbish and plastic bottles left behind by inconsiderate users.

An innocent duck then got attracted by the colourful bottles at the beach. It was then, it decided to swallow one of the bottle and ended up crying and struggling as it choked.

PAINTING 1: 
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In part 1 of our story, we painted a scenic view by the beach. We made use of the design principle, balance as the two blues seem to sandwich the middle gold. The clouds meant to weigh out the waves.

However, we noted after the teacher explained to us that the painting did not widely illustrate balance as the objects to be balance were not obvious. Perhaps there could have been other objects in the sky as well as the sea.

PAINTING 2:
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For the second part of our painting, we showcased emphasis. This is the part whereby we zoomed in to the beach and realised that the beach was filled with rubbish. Quite obviously, the emphasized rubbish is the blue plastic bottle here.

However, we also noticed after painting that the colour of the bottle blends in with the colour of the sky, hence, losing the emphasis. We could have made use of a different colour for the bottle or the sky. Comments by the teacher include perhaps, making the sky more purplish illustrating sun set.

PAINTING 3:

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In our third painting, we used the design principle, movement. As the duck got attracted by the colourful plastic bottles on the beach, its whole world seemed to be surrounded by the bottles.

We made use of the wavy white lines and the bottles pointing towards the duck to showcase movement. However, we also note that the movement was not significantly displayed as we could have made use of bolder colours for the waves and other types of shapes and lines to depict the movement.

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In our last painting, and also the last part of the story, the duck had decided to swallow the bottle, resulting in it struggling and crying. In this piece, we wanted to create rhythm.

Initially we started off with just the duck flapping its wings as it choked. However, we felt that the rhythm was not well described. Hence, we decided to add in the background patterns consisting of different shapes and colours to bring forth the rhythm.

Comments by the teacher included that it would be better if there were larger variations in terms of the sizes and colours of the shapes around the same area.

CONCLUSION:

I think that besides the design principles that we were taught, another large takeaway from this assignment is on how to blend the colours in paint.

We started with simply two objects and came up one big story described in four paintings. It was definitely a fun and interesting lesson!


Assignment 1: Part 2

After comments by the teacher, I went back home to attempt on assignment 1 again.

A5 NATURE:

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Nature A5

For PART 1 of assignment 1, my A5 Nature was a little messy, while I tried to make the river stand out, it did not work out too well. This time, after the teacher’s advice, I attempted to bring out the river in forms of rounded boxes.

The made use of an ink pen to draw the river. As I did not want to make the river too rigid looking, I added circles and dripping boxes to balance out the river. Lines inside the boxes are meant to depict the stream flowing. The dots are illustrating the sediments and sands inside the river. I also tried to contrast the river by colouring specific parts black.

At the background, is the obvious pattern of a mountain which is shaded faintly so as to make the outline of the mountain appear less harsh, but at the same time, not allowing it to fight for attention from the river.

I continued the idea of adding the swirl at the top, as I found that it added a gentle and peaceful feeling to the image. The addition of the circles that looks like bubbles and/or also makes the drawing looks light and airy.

In order not to make the bottom too plain, I added in rounded edged curves depicting the plants instead of the lines I initially drawn in part 1 which appeared messier.

A5 URBAN:

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Urban A5

For the new drawing for the urban abstract illustration, I kept the space shuttle, but varied the shapes and patterns inside the shuttle. Similar to the new nature drawing, I made use of an inked pen to bring out the shuttle which was the main feature.

As for the background, I tried to make use of boxed shapes to showcase older, regular buildings to bring out the futuristic vibe of the shuttle. Some buildings are seen to be in flames and leaning on the other, showcasing the stability of the futuristic shuttle.

I made use of pencil shadings and blended it out with tissue to allow the background buildings to appear more dirty and old.

Then, I realised that the buildings were competing too much with the shuttle because a lot is going on at the back. Hence, I created a outline around the shuttle, partly to make it stand out more, and also to show that the shuttle is protected regardless of the chaos.

CONCLUSION:

Similar to the first part, I enjoyed myself when I was creating these pieces. However, I felt that I could relate more to these new pieces compared to the old ones, especially the A5 Nature.

Assignment 1: Part 1

For assignment 1, we were told to pick two photographs. One of which was to be urban themed, and the other was to be nature themed.

We had to come up with 8 thumbnail sketches leading to the final A5 size drawing. We had to convey an emotion from the drawing based on the photograph abstractly using what was being taught (dots, lines and shapes).

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Thumbnail sketches

URBAN THUMBNAILS:

From the top, I intended to make everything very boxy, showing the restriction of an urban lifestyle. I attempted to bring forth the bus in the image, but it was still not very contrasting.

I then went on to attempt making the background buildings the main feature.

Following that, the next thumbnail was where I tried to make the sketch more fun by making the objects rounder.

The top right thumbnail was an attempt to make the urban image confusing and eerie, hence the subtle jagged lines.

NATURE THUMBNAILS:

At the bottom left, I attempted to make the nature sketch look angry. The fuzzy lines from the borders are like flames reaching out for the center.

Next to it, is an attempt at bringing out an eerie vibe as the branches creep in to the center like fingers.

The third thumbnail meant to portray peaceful, hence, the very obvious clouds and circular pool in the center. The plants at the side meant to look weightless and gentle.

Finally, the last thumbnail at the bottom depicted entirely by lines was intended to make the sketch look fun and cartoon-like.

OTHERS:

The other images are my attempts (as well as the teacher’s) at playing around with shapes and contrast for the urban sketch to give a futuristic vibe.

NATURE A5:

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A5 Nature

I ended up settling with an abstract peace of nature depicting ‘peaceful’. Although a few of my friends were able to tell that I am trying to depict ‘peaceful’, I personally felt that this piece could have been made better by being more abstract and usage of different tools.

As I was trying hard to bring out the river as a contrast, I found that since I was using a similar tool (the pencil) throughout the drawing, the river looked very harsh instead of standing out.

The swirls at the bottom were meant to represent plants, but they did not seem to carry a large significance inside the drawing.

The ribbon liked light swirls at the back illustrating the calm winds passing, along with small lines and dots to represent the birds in a calm setting seemed the most peaceful and pleasing to me.

URBAN A5:

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A5 Urban

This piece was meant to bring out ‘futuristic’. It was based on a photograph showing a retro cabled bus moving down an urban street. However, as the image was clean and mostly white, it gave me a futuristic feeling to it and hence, I decided to draw that emotion.

I started off by outlining the space shuttle (the bus), and giving some parts of the shuttle bolder lines for an effect. As futuristic to me shouts ‘sleek’, the shuttle’s shape had to be smooth and coherent.

I looked into modern buildings online and found out interesting architectures to add into the background. The background is also noticeably fainter as the main feature is the shuttle.

However, after finishing the piece, I realised that the image was far too realistic compared to abstract, although such shuttles have yet to exist. Also, it was commented by the teacher that the lines were all similar, to which I have to agree.

Nonetheless, I enjoyed myself creating this work!

CONCLUSION:

As this was the first time that I tried to draw abstract based on a real image, I found it difficult to depict a feeling based on the photograph. However, it was definitely an eye opening experience to know that the most basic dots, lines and shapes are able to make large differences to our drawings.