Final 7x7 Design

In my last post, I showed you the nonobjective contour sketches that I did. Here's the final project that came out of it:

This is the 7x7 square mounted on a 10x10 piece of bristol board. We were being graded not only on the design, but also on craftsmanship  so I spent a lot of time making the lines crisp and clean. Below is the same design, scanned into the computer, with some editing in Photoshop to increase the contrast.

Although this was counted as an individual project, you have not seen the end of this design. There are two more projects to come that use this as a building block, so expect to see more of it!

Alphabet Photography

The first assignment for my Design class was to walk around Savannah and find the entire alphabet as it naturally appears. Basically we had to look around us at the buildings, the sidewalk, the trees, and whatever else we saw, looking for shapes that looked like the letters of the alphabet. We then edited the pictures in Photoshop and arranged them on an 18in X 24in poster, which was then printed at the college design center. I kind of rebelled a little bit, because my teacher had really strict guidelines about the margins around the edges. Her requirements were that the top and side borders had to be 1/2" but the bottom was supposed to be between 3" and 4." I thought that looked awful and unbalanced, so I made the top and side margins slightly larger and the bottom margin around 2 1/2". After all, I was paying to get it printed (that's college for you), so I didn't want to pay for something I didn't even like. This is what it looks like:

"Into Focus" Horses

The next thing we did in my drawing class after the ballpoint pen drawings was a charcoal drawing. My teacher called it an "Into Focus" charcoal drawing because of the method we used to draw. First, my teacher started with an extremely blurry image on screen. It was literally a big gray blob and a big black blob. As my teacher changed slides, the image slowly came into better and better focus. By the end of class (2 1/2 hours later), this is what I had:

The assignment for the weekend was to finish the drawing. So I spent another 7-10 hours finishing all the details. This is how it came out:

So now that you've seen my drawing, here is the actual picture that I was working off of:

Hope you enjoy the artwork!

Draw Until the Pen Runs Out

Yes, my teacher literally passed out a brand new Bic pen to everyone in the class and told us to draw until the pen ran out. The only other requirement was that our drawing had to show what home meant to us. It could have been a literal scene (like mine) or some idea that wasn't necessarily real. It was basically a "welcome to drawing class" assignment, so it was really open ended. I managed to make the pen run out though (Well, I may have scribbled frantically on another piece of paper towards the end). All I know is that my hand has never been more sore! It was so cramped by the end that it was not doing what my brain was telling it to do. Anyways, here is the finished result. It came straight out of my head with no references, so it's got a lot of room for improvement, but overall it didn't come out that bad.

Finished Piece #6

So here's the finished watercolor painting that is based off of the sketch from last week. It's supposed to look like a scientific drawing, hence the scientific name for this particular jellyfish. This was the first true watercolor painting I have ever done, and I'm pretty happy with the results.

Finished Piece #5

I did this piece around last November-ish. I was thinking of doing a piece with a hand in it, and for some reason this popped into my head. The more I think about this piece, the less I know about why I did it haha. It just kind of popped into my head, and I drew it, but I think it looks pretty cool. I did this piece in colored pencil because I wanted the balloon to have very vibrant colors in it. Other than that, I don't really have many thoughts on this piece, because it was pretty spontaneous.

Finished Piece #4

I just finished this piece about a two weeks ago, and let me tell you, I was glad it was done. This is a collage self-portrait, based off the technique of artist Megan Coyle. I think it looks pretty awesome, but it was also probably the most tedious piece of art I have ever done. Cutting and pasting little bits of paper, no matter what the finished product looks like, is not the kind of artistic process I enjoy. So, like I said, I won't be doing this again anytime soon, but I hope you enjoy this piece :)

Finished Piece #3

Not only was this one of the first pieces that I did in pastel, but it was also one of the first pieces that I did in color. The toughest part of this piece was definitely the different highlights and shadows on the bottle. I can't even count how many times I had to go over and over those to get them right. I think I could've spent more time on the background, which I kind of rushed, but I had to keep moving if I wanted to keep up with the demanding pace of AP Art.


Actually, there's a pretty funny and kinda gross story that goes along with this piece :P. My art teacher brought in this giant pumpkin for another drawing class, and it had been sitting in school for a couple weeks. Then I asked if I could draw it, so it sat there for another week and a half. The day before I finished this piece, I asked the teacher if I could have it for just one more day, because she really wanted to take it home with her. Well, that one more day ended up being one day too long. I came into school the next day, and there was a really bad smell. That's when I noticed that the pumpkin was leaking all over the table! It had essentially rotted, and was leaking fermented pumpkin juice all over the place, although you would never be able to tell by just looking at it. I thought pumpkins kept for more than a few weeks! We get pumpkins for Halloween and they lasted a couple months! I felt terrible, but we cleaned it up and put that day down as just another interesting (and slightly gross) day in art class haha. My teacher was really nice though, and fortunately wasn't upset :]

Finished Piece #2

So back to some more traditional art. This is the second acrylic painting I have ever done in my life (which, so far, is not many haha). The school assignment was to make a fantasy landscape. It could be anything we imagined, as long as it was some type of environment. I chose to go with a barren, icy tundra with a hulking, jagged projection of ice in the foreground, and jagged, icy, mountains in the background. Some reference pictures of actual icebergs helped with the color and texture of the ice, but most of the painting came straight out of my head. I am relatively happy with how it came out, however I believe the mountains in the background could use a bit of help. (It was my first attempt at painting any type of mountain, and I quickly figured out that they are rather difficult to paint correctly. Some more practice in that area is definitely needed :] haha)


This project was extremely fun to do, because it was one of the few things that we've done all year that wasn't based on some type of realism, or focused upon some type of technique or subject matter. The project was extremely open-ended, and allowed for some extra creativity, which is always a plus. This piece is also more like the kind of art I want to do more of, so I was very excited to get started.

Finished Piece #1

Here is one of my finished pieces, like I promised (and on time too! ;P). This was an assignment that we did in class to focus on how highlights and shadows define shape. It was also the first drawing I ever did with black and white charcoal on toned paper. I was (and still am) extremely proud of how it came out. I am very happy with the way I captured the highlights and shadows on the bow. I took nearly twice as long as most of the other people in my class to do this, but you probably know how high school art classes go (I was one of the only people there to seriously work on art).


Looking back on this piece, I probably would have added a shadow underneath the bow to give it some sense of place/ weight. I'm not sure if I left it out on purpose, or if there was just no shadow from the angle I was looking at it. It was over a year ago so I honestly can't remember haha.


Hope you enjoy this piece of art and once again, I always welcome comments and constructive criticism!