MOLLY’S COLOR SWATCH
MOLLY’S COLOR SWATCH
Š 2020 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced without permission The opinions expressed in this book are those of the author only and not of York College of Pennsylvania. This book is an experimental class project purely for educational design purposes. Design by: Molly Loy Printed by: Lulu
MOLLY’S COLOR SWATCH
TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface......................................................................................................................................................1 I Am An Artst........................................................................................................................................3 Graphic Design...................................................................................................................................4 Inspirations............................................................................................................................................5 What I Have Learned?.....................................................................................................................6 Tools..........................................................................................................................................................7 Color Theory.........................................................................................................................................8 Types of Painting..............................................................................................................................10 Dreaming of Paradise....................................................................................................................12 Refine Self Portrait..........................................................................................................................20 Still-Life Flowers...............................................................................................................................28 Water Color portrait.......................................................................................................................36 Spring Fiesta........................................................................................................................................44 Teapots And Fruits..........................................................................................................................52 Eclipse....................................................................................................................................................60 Wondering Chickens ...................................................................................................................70 Flowing flowers................................................................................................................................78 Pink World..........................................................................................................................................86 The Next Step....................................................................................................................................94
PREFACE
Hello! My name is Molly Loy, and let me just take the time to say thank you for picking up this book. I am currently enrolled at York College of Pennsylvania as a Junior. I am studying and earning my Bachelor of Fine Art in Graphic Design. I love listening to music as I design and doodling in my free time. But I discovered recently that I really enjoy painting a lot. Painting was something I didn’t think I would pursue in college. I didn’t enjoy it in high school, but after taking my painting class in the Spring of 2019, I really tapped into it and wanted to work with it more. It opened up a new passion for me. This book is dedicated to the documentation of my progress in painting in the fall of 2019. I am taking a painting II class to further enhance my skills and broaden my artistic horizons. In this book, you will be viewing my work in painting II along with a few personal projects I’ve created for myself, I will tell you everything I’ve learned and discovered in this class along with the research I’ve personally done. I doubt I would have learned these on my own, so flip to the next page and dive into my journey.
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I AM AN ARTIST Art is something I find that is self-driven. I believe that to be an artist to create, you need motivation before you do work, whether it’s a deadline for a commission or a client or something personal for you. What they all have in common is the emotion you put towards a piece of art. I could be completely wrong or viewing this from my personal experience, but no one is going to spend a lifetime working on art if they have no self-driven motivation. God bless the poor soul who would. It doesn’t matter how I got to be an artist or designer, but it matters as to why I am still an artist. What had been that tug of string that has kept me in college to study art and design? Is it my fear of failing or dropping out? No. Not at all. It’s because as much hell as I go through, I enjoy doing work. I love the steps from receiving a project from having a blank paper and turning into a poster or a book or a postcard. I love the overall process of how I got there and that process.
Photo taken by Talia Wilcox
I didn’t like painting in high school, and I groan when I learned that I had to take it in college. I was going to suck at it!! It was going to be a disaster! I’m just a designer. I’m not a Pablo Picasso or Emanuel Leutze. During that semester, I spent many nights and many weekends trying to figure out how to blend and properly shadow, and I suddenly fell in love with teaching myself how to paint. Yes, there were some frustrating nights and projects I was nearly ashamed to turn in, but I ended up taking Painting II a class that wasn’t required. How did I go from complaining about taking painting one and desperately wanting to take Painting II? Life is funny.
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Graphic Design So now you might be asking, why did I dedicate a semester learning on a fine art medium. Why didn’t I document something about my Graphic Design major that would be beneficial? Well, painting is useful, at least it is for me. Last year I had to pass the Sophomore Portfolio Review to continue my education in graphic design. I thankfully was given, but I read through the comments, and one of them stuck to me. I needed to be more experimental with...color. Color! Out of all the things I thought I struggled with, I would never have considered a color. The review stated that I was using the same blain colors in my design word. I looked at my graphic design work and noticed I was using the same colors, primarily red, black, and white. Oh dear God, my professors were right! It was like having a dramatic Jesus moment and coming to terms that I needed work. My professors commented I had a nice variety of colors in my photography and paintings and that I should try correlating my colors from my fine work to my graphic design work. I have a relation to art that I can fall into a mess and find my own way out of things. In painting, I jump in without drawing and slowly make my way around art and refine as I go along, the correct word is the process. Process process process! How long have you worked on a piece, and how many times have you come back to see something was wrong? What have you corrected? What got you from point A to point B? Graphic design is the same way. You find yourself in a pile of constraints and ideas, and you sort them out and follow through.
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Inspirations To be honest, I don’t really have many artists I look up to. In a world that is so full of technology where people share art, it’s become insanely easy to follow people because you like their work. There are classmates and seniors I look up to because their art labels them. I think I am too young to really have a painter to look up to. I watched a little of Bob Ross growing up but out of entertainment. His gorgeous art pieces are treasures of this world. In fact, he and I share the same birthday. I could tell you my past inspirations that inspired me to be an artist back in my high school days. People such as Mark Crilley who is an American artist and author. He wrote books such as Broody’s Ghost and Miki falls and publish books on how to draw manga and poses. Not only that, he makes youtube videos on how to draw and fantastic timelapse videos. I sometimes watch his videos, but ever since I came to college, I became interested in other things. Another artist that inspired me was Kendra Scott. She was the girl I met at my town library, and her art was captivating. She drew Pokemon and anime characters using pencil and digital art. She collected these adorable dolls and keychains of anime merch, and I found her to be so exciting and talented. She offered to draw me a picture, and when she handed me the drawing, I was touched and inspired. I wanted to do work like hers. I wanted to evoke emotion into others as she did for me. I was in middle school, not really sure what interest I had until I decided I wanted to be an artist. I know I need to get serious about liking out artist’s work. As a college student, I like to see my classmates and a variety of their ideas. I love watching their progression and seeing how they think. College has taught me how to open my eyes and look at things in a new light.
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Rules I’ve learned During my Painting II class, my professor always chanted these essential rules to make us into better painters, and some of these I picked up on my own. These rules I carry with me whenever I paint. Use at least three brushes at a time, never just one or two. Showing that you use a variety makes you a better artist. Stand far back from the canvas and paint. Being too close to makes you miss the bigger picture. Keep your brushes soaking and your water clean. Do not grip your paintbrush to the near end, keep it in the middle for more control. Take time for yourself and walk around. Talk to other artists and get second opinions. A bad comment is just one voice and one person. It doesn’t mean your work sucks. If you need to sit, sit up straight. Paint with paint. Don’t draw with paint. Surround yourself with good art. Always mix your colors; there is no such thing as pure white or pure black. Don’t just mix with what is on the pallet but blend onto the painting itself. Always lay your colors out and in order when you paint. Excellent painters continuously draw. Even the smallest sketches make a positive impact.
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Tools A big lesson I’ve learned this year was the supplies you use do matter. Before taking Painting II, I bought the cheapest paint and the best deal I could find on Amazon. I was trying to save money and get through with what I had. My professor took a look at my supplies and said I needed to find premium paints. The brushes I used were too small in length, and the paint I was using holds me back. At first, I was discouraged and upset but took her words wisely and went to my local A.C Moore store. I picked up Galleria paints and brush sets to try out along with a few canvases. Once I tried out the colors, my world was changed! I could see a massive difference between the paints I was using then the premium paints I bought made my artwork glow in colors. My professor always recommends carrying a sketchbook around wherever we go. She wants us to draw and paint from observation and break out of drawing from photos. Photo reference can be helpful when you aren’t near the object, but you can’t entirely depend on it without your painting looking flat. Plexiglass makes top pallets! They’re cheap, and you can paint over and over them. Wood boards and regular pallet work as well, but plexiglass is easy to clean. You can flip them over and see all the exciting colors on the back. Baby food jars. Yes, you read that correctly! If you finished painting and you have untouched paint on your pallet Baby food jars store your makeup and keep it fresh. It saves paint and money! They’re small and easy to carry around, and you can also store more than one color in them. Reuse a plastic jug. Really! It is environmentally friendly, and it better than using a red solo cup. They last for a long time and hold a lot of water, so you’re not continually making trips back and forth to the sink.
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COLOR THEORY Primary Colors:
Secondary Colors
It is very important to memorize the color theory and apply it to your art. You can break the rules if that is the intent. But if you’re going to paint a landscape or a portrait color theory is your friend. Say you need a darker shade of blue maybe some Mars Black will get you there but if you’re looking for a more natural color blend some orange into your blue. It’s helpful to keep a color wheel book nearby if you forget.
Complementary Colors:
Key Terms: Tint - Adding white to color Shade - Adding black to color Tone - Adding grey to color Warm colors: Red, Orange, yellow, Cool: Green, bue, purple
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COLOR PALLET
White
Lemon yellow
Cadmium Yellow
Medium yellow
Cadmium red (light)
Cadmium red
Cerulean blue
Cobalt blue
Phthalo blue
Hookers green
Phthalo green
Yellow Ocher
Raw umber
Raw sienna
Burnt umber
Burnt sienna
Mars black
Ultramarine Blue
My professor recommended we have these colors on us at all times and lay them out in this order. This helps me keep color in order from white, yellow, red, blue, purple, green, earth tone colors, and black. Having more than these colors are helpful, but these are only the basics, and you can get by with these colors.
Gel medium and mat medium are glossy clear acrylic that make your paint shiny
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Types of painting Acrylic is one of the most common types of paint. It’s the most original paint to handle out of all three. It dries quickly, and the artist can control the thickness and thinness by adding water. Acrylic comes in many varieties: Heavy Bodies, Medium, Open acrylics, and more. Massive Bodies is the thicker paint used for pallet knives, but they dry very quickly than the other types of varieties. Medium acrylic is, well, the medium type of acrylic between the open and the massive bodies. They have the same pigmentation as solid-body acrylic but not as thick and takes a little longer to dry then a considerable collection. The Open acrylics is very thin and takes a long time to dry. Acrylic paint is the best type of paint to start out with, It’s easy to blend and make shadows and highlight or add tint or shade too. However, it is good to know that when your acrylic paint dries out, it will dry out two shades darker. I’ve mostly used acrylic paint through my painting career. I think it’s the best thing to start for a beginning painter. I was surprised that there were many different types of acrylic, and each has its own purpose. I’ve tried using substantial body such as Liquitex, but I was unhappy with how quickly it dried, so I found Winsor & Newton Galleria to be my favorite brand because it doesn’t dry as fast, and I was pleased with the color results. You can express texture and shadow in your work better than in oil and watercolor. I was surprised to learn that there are many different types of acrylic, and the branding you buy expensive or cheap does matter and can leave a massive impact on your work. Watercolor is the art of paint soaked in water and used for painting. It's own unique medium. Watercolor painting began appearing more during the renaissance age. People used watercolor to paint landscapes, wildlife, and scenery. Today artists still practice this technique controlling water and paint. It has its own distinctive aesthetic. Unlike acrylic, you need to go light colors to dark colors. The reason is, the darker color is hard to wash out once you lay it down. You must wait and paint in all of your light colors first before proceeding to the next color. 10
I do not have much experience with watercolor painting, but I have tried it a couple times. In this book, you will see my first attempt at painting a small self-portrait of myself using watercolor. I tried doing a couple more during my painting II class; it is a robust medium to control and understand. The reason why I enjoy painting is that it’s easy to paint over your mistakes, but you can not do that with watercolor painting. Whatever mistakes you made in your picture will show through, and if you’re really good at a watercolor painting, if it becomes an aesthetic, but for beginner, you may need a lot of luck. I’m not saying to give up but to keep practicing. For now, I will practice, but my main focus is acrylic painting. What I love about watercolor paint is, if you need it and you only have acrylic just water down the acrylic, and you have watercolor paint. It works just the same, and it’s convenient. Oil painting is a particular type of paint. Unlike acrylic, it takes a very long time to dry, so the process is slow. Oil paint also has more pigment in then acrylic, and it makes the colors brighter and vibrant, and it won’t dry two shades darker. Oil painting is something I am unsure I will ever get into. It was the first time I learned about it this semester. One of my classmates is learning to use oil paint, and my professor taught us that oil paint is highly flammable and the horrid stories of what happens when you don’t properly store your oil paints. I’ve heard that oil paint is really hard, and it takes a lot of patients to have when making a painting and waiting for the art to dry. Also, you need the proper items for oil painting, a unique set of brushes, paint thinners, and a container for everything. Oil painting is costly. You can not mix water and oil together, so you must have turpentine nearby when you need to clean your brush. Right now, I am very young and need lots of guidance if I were to learn this type of paint. I am still learning the basics of painting.
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DREAMING OF PARADISE
DREAMING OF PARADISE This was the first project I received in my Painting II class. My professor gave everyone in the class a free 16x20 inch canvas. She wanted to see what interest we had. I decided to paint this portrait out of a dream I wanted but never came true. Over the summer, I’ve worked two jobs trying to come up with enough money for the school year. I had expenses such as interest rates on my loans, tuition, car insurance, and a budget. Following those jobs, I had no time or freedom to enjoy a vacation on a beach to see the water reflect and feel the ocean breeze. Instead, I had the simple joys of possessing a country sunset from home with family, especially my father. My father has had life-threatening health problems, and it has affected my life profoundly. The sunset in this painting reflects the many sunsets my father and I have watched together. We would sit out on the porch watching our chickens head to the roost while the sky got darker and the moon would start to shine. In this painting, I have learned about the different brush strokes and how they affect one another. I was learning a lot from art, more than ever, in fact. I started with a purple background, just mixing some blues and reds and whites into the canvas. I tried working with the contrast of color
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DREAMING OF PARADISE and practice my color theory by painting a purple background and using shades of Lemon Yellow, Crimson Red, and Orange to create a magnificent sunset. Then I painted in hillsides and a lake to add landmass. I decided to make one hill a blue color and the other a dark grey color. As I stretched out, my first significant mistakes were the brush strokes and using vivid colors, the further I got. I started adding a taste of green, and it made my colors too dull, and it didn’t fit with the overall color scheme. But I was learning with how objects and sunsets worked with each other with shadows and highlights and found it essential. Another flaw I noticed was the paint I was using, it was cheap!! I was very innocent in applying paint, not knowing what was good or bad. I thought paint was paint, and nothing more. My professor sat down with me and showed me the difference between my color and the other paint my classmates were using. Their paint was glowing and had a better quality to them then mine showed. This painting took around two weeks to complete. It was experimental to test myself and learn how reflectance of water and shower come into play. It started out as a blue
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DREAMING OF PARADISE night sky and has a cold color scheme then I change it to a warm sunset to remind that good, and hopefully, things lie in the future. That even though a day is gloomy, there is always tomorrow. I love the color aesthetics with this painting, but I wish I added a more subject matter. This painting was made up and had no photo reference. If I were to redo this painting, I would make it have a narrative. It needs subjects, and there's nothing to look at except a mountain and a sunset. My favorite part about painting this was the sunset, and learning that adding a little blue adds a darker effect. I believe that was the most successful part about painting was the sky. It just illuminates and makes it brighter. This was an excellent start to the semester I was able to reflect and see my strengths and my weaknesses. My professor gave me feedback and tips for improvement. Many other of my classmates tried experimenting with still life or trying some personal. One girl sat next to me, and she was having trouble figuring out what to paint, and she began to paint Niagara Falls. We helped each other back and forth, critiquing each other’s paintings.
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REFINE SELF PORTRAIT
REFINE SELF PORTRAIT Last year for my painting I class, I had to paint a self-portrait of myself, and I thought it was going to be a disaster, but after putting a lot of hours into the painting, it came out as spectacular. I believe I did very well on it. This semester I bought this painting in for a critique and received terrific feedback on how I can better this portrait and make it better. It was okay, but I knew I could better improve on it. For one, it was the background; it was a minty green plain background. My skin tone was super pink, and my hair was very flat. My professor challenged me to work around it and fix those changes. I decided to go back in and refine the painting and make it better. I felt that my self-portrait was one of my most successful paintings from Painting I, and I wanted to improve on it with the feedback given. By this time I went out and bought myself some good quality paint and was experimenting with the new paintbrushes and the new paint tubes To start off, I refined the background by using a mix of colors. I decided to go with a darker tone background and add a shadowy effect behind the girl in the painting. I blended Lemon yellow, Phthalo blue together because, remember, you can’t use paint straight out of the bottle that is bad practice. I was blending different shades of green, then slowly adding the yellows and blues into the painting and blending.
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REFINE SELF PORTRAIT Soon, I started mixing shades of yellows, blues, reds, and whites into the background, and it brought my painting back to life. I cleaned up the edges and kept blending until I felt it was just right. Next, I started to fix the skin tones making it look more natural. Last year I recalled blending yellows, reds, and blues together and combined it with white until I got a skin color, but it turned out a little pinker. This year I taught myself the secret. A dash of yellow, red, and yellow ocher with some white, and you will get a realistic white skin tone in your painting. My Professor encouraged me to work on those dark areas under my eyes to make the picture look not so cartoony I blended shade of purple and blue into my canvas with the skin tone, and it started to combine with the skin tone really well. I started working on minor details on the painting. For instants, I decided to darken my lips a little bit since I made the background darker I think this was a smart decision to do so. I also worked on my eyebrows, adjusting the shapes, and darkening them. Since last year after painting this portrait, I dyed my hair auburn red. Going to college has helped me break out of my shell and find my own identity. I discovered that I loved having my hair a red color everywhere I went people said they loved it and it suited me well. I gave the painting update, and I fixed the hair color and made it look less flat. 24
REFINE SELF PORTRAIT I’ve learned that changing up the brush strokes really makes a difference in the texture, and blending colors in the painting itself is better than on a pallet. It is gentle. My professor stressed at the time to never use the color straight out of the tube, and you must keep blending to make it look more realistic to nature. Nothing in this world is pure white or pure black or pure red or blue, there's always a shade that comes into play. That’s why I challenge myself to blend and create new colors I’ve never seen before and apply them to my work. I definitely enjoyed refining this painting. It has definitely improved. It showed progress from what I’ve learned in this class and how it’s been applied. I wouldn’t change a thing about it.
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STILL LIFE SUNFLOWERS
STILL LIFE SUNFLOWERS If you don’t see me every day, it may be hard to tell I absolutely love floral things. I wear a lot of floral pattern clothing, and I have a few plants I like to keep growing. I want to say I have a green thumb and a green heart for nature. One day in class, my professor surprised my class with a set of flowers and cloths. For class, we could paint a still-life painting. I set up my easel at an appropriate spot. I haven’t painted floral paintings in a long time, and it was a great way to take a break from the portraits and landscape paintings. My professor showed us a demo of how she painted still lifes. Nothing had to be accurate in the beginning. She started to lay down the paint, getting a feel for space. She was keeping it loose, which is another strategy I learned, She started working on the background and then applied more and more layers of objects, and she would go back and work on them. If she made a mistake, she would paint it out and start over and started making the painting more accurate. After her short demo, I sat down and laid out my pallet with all of the colors and got to work on the art. I started to paint the background going for a beautiful purple background as a starter. I felt that the purple would have a
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STILL LIFE SUNFLOWERS nice contrast with the yellow sunflowers. After all, yellow and purple are complementary colors. After I add a bit of background color, I began to paint the sunflowers I was loose and not thinking crazily about where the items were placed. That gave me more freedom to just relax and paint. In the demo, my professor didn’t seem to worry because she knew she could go back and fix those mistakes. The best part about still life? No one is going to compare your still life painting like they would if you were painting off of a picture. They can’t question if you laid out the objects just like the way it was when you were painting. They are left with a painting to look at. Anyway, I continued to paint the flower pot along with the purple flowers inside and I, unfortunately, began blending the background to nearly the same color I tried to change it, but I was running out of white paint at the time, and I couldn’t lighten the color any. I was becoming unsure about the background being purple and decided to focus on the sunflowers. I started adding leaves and details, and once I had the flowers, I decided to change the background to a warmer blue color so we could get a more delightful feature of the purple flowers and the sunflowers. Lastly, my professor
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STILL LIFE SUNFLOWERS recommended that I bring the glass jar down and pant the cloth to the end of the right side. After doing that, my painting was complete! I really love this painting I am planning on showing it in future exhibitions. This is one of my favorite pictures I have created. This painting was done on an 8x10 inch canvas, and I wish I did it on a larger canvas. That would probably be the one thing I would change about this painting. However, I wanted to practice on a smaller canvas and have a variety of sizes to try out this semester. I think the blue color was a fantastic choice for the background. It was not too dark tohide the purple flower and not too bright to take away the sunflowers.
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WATER COLOR PORTRAIT
WATER COLOR PORTRAIT I wanted to experiment with watercolor and try handling running water. This is a medium I barely practiced in high school, so I was nervous. I wanted to try doing a mini self-portrait, so I pulled out my phone and looked through some of my selfies. I found one of me getting ready for the day with my cup of tea. In fact, I took this photo a few days after the fall semester began. This semester was extra special because it was my first time getting an apartment. This is a step more into adulthood, learning how to cook for me, and maintaining a budget for groceries and cleaning your own dishes. I felt that the selfie would ease me in and make the painting easy. This was pretty fun, and it added an individual aesthetic to work. I learn to work with light colors and gradually go darker. The selfie I used gave a sense of tiredness and just going with the flow. In painting, it is not a bad idea to go loose at the beginning, you’re not laying anything out permanently. In fact, it becomes the art of process. Watercolor has taught me patience and self-control. This isn’t the perfect piece, but I plan on learning from this. I added too much color, or I let the paint run too quickly; it was common mistakes a first-timer made. I freaked out when the paint ran over the lines it thought it would be a disaster, But
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WATER COLOR PORTRAIT watercolor has a friendly style that makes it look very unique then acrylic paint. I learned that regular sketching paper isn’t the best canvas to use, and I should go with watercolor paper or cardstock to practice. Regular paper is too soft, and it would allow the water to run through and have it damage the piece or easily tear a hole into the paper. I began sketching the artwork with the outline. First, I started adding a skin tone color and eye color. I have a lot of pink around my cheeks, so I kept the color swatch simple. I used the same color for shadow and the same color as the panda’s inner ears. Next added black to the panda mug and the pupils of my eyes. I decided it was time to give the painting background and when with a beautiful medium light blue color to contrast with my reddish-orange hair. Lastly, I began adding details: the shadows of my finger and the highlights of my hair and the shadow of the mug. I kept the color pallet simple, only using colors such as Cerulean blue, white, lemon yellow, crimson red, mars black. I think this piece turned out exceptionally well. It was a quick, simple, and secure practice, and I’m glad I experimented with it. I know that portraits are complicated, and I have a
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WATER COLOR PORTRAIT lot to learn about human anatomy. I think the successful part was my hair and showing the highlights and shadows and the movement of the messy morning hair. The shadows and skin tone weren’t too off either, and you can still see pencil marks I made at the beginning of this painting, and it works well, it's not a distraction. I want to try this medium again and challenge myself to work on skin tones. I want to try a landscape as well and maybe patterns. You don’t have to buy watercolor paint you can use color pencils or watered down acrylic paint. That is was I used for this piece, and I used my acrylic brushes for this piece as well.
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SPRING FIESTA
SPRING FIESTA My roommate and I made a quick trip to Walmart one night to do our regular grocery shopping, and as we walked around, I found myself in the art section looking at the canvas sizes. I picked up a set of four small square canvas in a pack, and I knew I needed to buy them and use them. I wanted to try making each of them correlate with one another. I wanted to try this new idea out and make it have a simple theme. I decided that as the weather was getting colder and the color of the season was getting duller, I wanted to bring some spring back in my life. I drew with pencil deciding on the pattern layout of what was going to be painted and what shape it was going to be. Maybe a flower or a circle or a petal. I always drew these kinds of things in notebooks, especially back in middle school and high school. Sometimes in college, I’ll sit in a marketing class or a history class and do the same thing! After filling the space, I gently layered the square canvases in light green it was thin enough to see the drawing show up I then decided to paint the most significant object in one color that almost resembles yellow ocher. Next, I painted in the other objects that resembled leaves and flowers. I was going for a more pastel color scheme with soft colors reds and blues oranges and greens. I wanted them all!
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SPRING FIESTA I broke the rules. Or at least I felt like I did. I wasn't mixing the colors as much as I should have, and the painting looks really vibrant and bright. It began to feel like a paint by numbers by all of the paintings I was doing to fill in those pencil marks. I followed the lines, and some I did not. But you know what? That’s okay! This was experimental, and so long as I thought this piece was beautiful, I was happy. I did make a ton of mistakes and back turns, but it was part of the painting journey, and my goal was to make it better. Sometimes I would recolor an object because I didn’t like the shade of color, and then I noticed my art piece didn’t have that same pastel style to it anymore. I was okay with the change, in fact, it was looking better. I tried different ways to make some objects stand out more than others would. In conclusion, I was overall happy with this piece. I made each square become a theme for the painting itself. The title of the painting eventually came to me, and it rang like a bell. Once it was finished, this was a pretty stressful piece because I was trying to keep in the lines, it was like a coloring book! There were things I had to remake and designs I had to dropped, sacrifices had to be made. It wasn’t a total loss.
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SPRING FIESTA I was able to try new things and new ideas to add to this pattern piece. I expressed my love for flowers, and I put my doodles from class into a work of art. I received a lot of compliments on this piece as well. People who were art majors or non-art majors were watching me paint and told me they loved the colors. If I were to repaint this, I would make my objects a lot bigger to help with coloring in. This is definitely a piece I will hang in my apartment.
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TEAPOT AND FRUITS
TEAPOT AND FRUITS I went back to practicing still-life techniques. My classmates and I set up a still life using flowers, a teapot, and a small bucket full of fruit. I liked the set up because it had blue and yellow subjects that took up the main course. I decided to start out with a black canvas. I was not worried about the background; I knew it would come to me. I painted the outlines, getting a feel of the negative space. After that, I applied primary color down and took a break waiting for it to quickly dry before I lay more colors on it. One of the mistakes I made was jumping into the color of the pears. I didn’t analyze the color accurately and laid non-accurate colors down, and it made me lose some time. It wasn’t a total loss because I could paint over them again. That is one of the joys of painting. If you mess up, you can paint over your mistakes. What really worked out was the edges of the leaves to the background; it added a pleasing aesthetics to work, and my professor recommended that I leave it as such. When I came back to my canvas, I decided to make the background purple in compliments to the yellow pears. At first, this was a good start, but this took a few class sessions to finish. When my class and I set the still-life back up at the beginning of each class, the distance and
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TEAPOT AND FRUITS proportion changed, and I had to repaint a couple of areas. I was getting frustrated, and it felt like I would never get this painting done. Eventually, I slowed down and focused on one area at a time, and I decided to rearrange and turn the teapot to face me, so it had a better structure. I had an excellent evening working on this until it was completed. I decided to repaint the green vines and make them brighter. After I repainted the teapot, the dark green vines weren’t doing it for me. I challenged myself to paint the transparent vase. I wanted to push myself to try new things, and I’m glad I did. It was my first time, and I was nervous! Though it may not be perfect, I personally love this piece. The best part was practicing shadows and highlights with the way the light was reflecting in the shadows. The lemon between the teapot and the flower pot was the most successful part of the painting because I zoned into the panting portion and focused intensely on the shadow and highlights, and I successfully made an object without lines of shadows it was an object. My other favorite part was the fabric and adding a floral pattern to the one on the left. I decided to leave out the lines of the teapot because they were getting hard to paint out evenly and spacing them. The
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TEAPOT AND FRUITS colors I have used have been yellow ocher, lemon yellow, cadmium red, ultramarine blue, phthalo blue, raw umber, white, mars black, and burnt sienna. I really think this was a successful painting. I believe it helped me with negative spacing. The contrast of the colors works really well with each other, and I learned a lot from highlights and shadows and shiny hard objects such as the teapot and soft texts like the lemons and pears. I plan on submitting this piece into juried shows. I want to start putting my painting our there for the world to see that I am an artist and designer.
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SOLAR
ECLIPSE
SOLAR ECLIPSE In 2017 I had the pleasure to see the totality of the solar eclipse in Tennessee. It was a fantastic experience, and I miss every second of it. It was the evening of August 20th when my brother, my cousins, and I drove all night from Maryland to Tennessee to witness the totality. When the moon blocked the sun, there was a 180-degree sunset around us, and when you looked up, it was night time with a black dot covering the light. It was phenomenal! After that day, we had an incredible trip back home, making our way but up from Virginia. We took advantage of it to see the sights. Two years ago, I was giving a painting kit for Christmas, and it came with a 16x20 inch canvas. I remember when I decided what I wanted to paint a solar eclipse out of imagination. I painted the background blue, then added trees and dark grassy lands and a waterfall. I was using paint straight from the tube, and I wasn’t following the theory of light. Obviously, this didn’t follow any of the elements. The lighting didn’t make sense, and there was so much that could be reworked. I pulled out this piece and decided I wanted to redo the painting. So... combining the knowledge I knew about a painting, I restarted. I painted it white and began my new adventure!
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SOLAR ECLIPSE Starting off, I painted over the two-year-old painting, and then I did some research and looked up a couple photo references of the totality of the solar eclipse. I was going to paint the scenery like I did with my old one, but after looking at some reference photos, no nature is seen, everything becomes a silhouette. So I decided to look at the actual eclipse and work on the lighting effect of the moon covering the sun and creating the glowing effect. This was the objective I made for myself. No going back... I started with an underlying dark background with a mixture of black, blue, and purple. It was just a starter and nothing more. It was a thick layer of paint covering those two years of what I call “no skill.” Next, I painted the black moon over on top of the background, trying to make a perfect radius. It was challenging, and I still can’t get that perfect circle, but I left it alone and decided to move on to my next challenge. I painted a white border around it and slowly made an outline. I did some research to see how the outer-lines glow. The hardest part was creating that glow effect, but that also became the challenge of this painting. I blended a lot of blue’s and oranges to get that dark deep blue and mixed it
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SOLAR ECLIPSE more mysterious and more ominous. After the had the glow and the background blended together nicely, I decided to add some thick clouds to cover it and reflect the light off the hidden sun. After making small detail adjustments, this painting was completed. I was so happy with the results I loved seeing how much I improved and was able to do things I couldn’t do in a matter of two years. It amazes me how looking at your process can make your personal day brighter.
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WONDERING
CHICKENS
WONDERING CHICKENS I wanted this book to have a variety of different subjects. I told myself I had to include an animal painting of some kind. I was thinking of dogs, cats, or bunnies, maybe even a hamster, but those are natural animals you would expect. My closest friends know back at home. I have a variety of farm animals. Cows, cats, bunnies, dogs, and chickens I proudly call my pet. We bought four chickens two years ago and raised them from peeps to spoiled chickens. One Barred Rock, Rhode Island Red, and two white leghorns. We gave them names, and as we grew them, we found that each had their own personalities. They all don’t like to be picked up and handled, the Barred Rock tried to fly, the White Leghorns run like wild, and the Rhode Island Red doesn’t cluck like a chicken, but rather then she honks like a goose. We think she’s confused… Anyway, over the summer, I had the joy of taking care of them and making sure they were fed and put to bed. These chickens were spoiled. They roosted where they wanted to: in the garage, the chicken coop, or on top of the dog kennel. One sundown, I caught a couple sitting in the trees. I quickly pulled out my phone to snap photos as I was laughing. Sometimes the most unusual things make me smile, and
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WONDERING CHICKENS I like to capture those kinds of memories. My pet rooster eats cat food, and my dog goes on car rides. Animals are significant to me. I looked back on the photo I took last summer and decided I wanted to attempt this painting. I tried to draw chickens, and I could never get it to look right so this was going to be challenging, but I decided I was a better painter than a drawer, so I took a chance and grabbed a canvas I agreed with a light blue shade for the background as a start. Then I painted in the outline of the chickens getting a sense of the spacing I had around them. I played around with the placement of the leaves and branches, trying to find out where I should place them and then repainted the background dark green. Next, I painted the foreground of the lighter green leaves. I have an exciting way of painting green leaves. I like to think of them like branches and V’s, and I replicate that pattern over and over again. I touched upon the details of the chicken feathers and taught myself how to work with the texture and pattern. The black chicken is a barred rock chicken with white specks and a variety of gray shades. I had to really study the anatomy of the chickens and how their feathers change throughout their bodies. I worked on the background and adding more
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WONDERING CHICKENS leaves. Most of the colors I used were Phthalo Green, White, Lemon Yellow, Cadmium Yellow, Cadmium Red, and Cobalt Blue. As always, I was at this point where my professor drilled the rule “Never use paint straight out of the bottle� in my head. After I finished the details and refining, I could call this painting a finished piece. I was really proud that I pushed myself this far to paint something I felt that was impossible to draw. I was pleased I could paint an animal. I really enjoyed taking care of and watching them. Chickens are silly little entertainers, and not many people know that. All they know is these creatures lay eggs and roosters become food on your plate. Some of the most unusual animals are the best.
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FLOWING
FLOWERS
FLOWING FLOWERS I’ve painted on paper, cardboard, canvas, and pallets. But how many of you can say you sketching on your sketchbook? Back in high school, when I took art classes, the teacher would want us to decorate our sketchbooks using a collage of pictures of anything we wanted. When I was thinking of a new painting to do, I recently have gotten ahold of my art teacher from high school and kept her up to date on things going on at college. As we talked, memories of high school played in my head, and I wanted to bring some of the high school back to life. I recalled how we decorated our sketchbooks, and I wanted to try to personalize it. I found an old painting on my phone that I did back in my freshman year of college I remember I threw it out because I thought it wasn’t right and now I really wish I hadn’t. So I decided to bring this painting back to life and try to replicate it on my sketchbook. I found on Pinterest, a lot of artists did this to show their talent and again, to personalize it. I looked at this photo, and I started to sketch out how these painting will be done. I began to paint the sketchbook a pure black color lathering on a thick coat of black paint. I waited for the black paint
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FLOWING FLOWERS to dry. After it finally died, I used white paint to outline the leaves and flowers, and it made a really cool black and white painting, and it made me excited to paint this painting even more. As I waited for the white paint to dried, I grabbed a quick dinner with my friends and asked them what colors represent me besides pink or green. I got purple, blue, white, and minty green. I let that one slide. I went back and laid out my primary colors of the leaf and the flower and then used those colors my friends pointed out and started to paint petals around the leaf and the flowers. I added this pattern and layered it over and over again I’m sure I layered it ten times with pastel colors. After that, I started working on the flower and adding highlights and making it look less flat, and I did the same to the leaves. There was a point where it got to be so many petals in the background I had to restart and paint the background black. It was frustrating, but I knew that’s what had to be done. I did take two and repainted the petals and told myself to take a step back from time to time and make sure I don’t overdo it. Finally, I had everything ready to go, and I finished my design sketchbook.
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FLOWING FLOWERS I layered gel medium over it after I was finished. Gel medium is a gloss artist put over there painting to make it shine and keep it protected. I want to use this sketchbook, and it’s going to get used and shoved in my bookbag from time to time. I was happy I could two things from the past and bring them back to life and use them to define me. This was a neat project I created for myself. I hope artists will be inspired to personalize their own sketchbooks and show a piece of them and their talents on their covers as well.
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PINK
WORLD
PINK WORLD I’m not a big fan of abstract art. Some can be really beautiful and used for professionalism, but other times I stare at an abstract painting and wonder what the meaning is or if it even has one. But it’s been a long time since I tried making abstract art, so I decided to make one for the last piece of my book. When I created this, I was going through a lot of stress. Deadlines were coming up, and so were the holiday’s and I know some things needed to get done. I felt like my anxiety was kicking in really quick. The semester was nearly over, and the assignments are piling up? What do I do? Well, art has seemed to cope with the anxiety a little bit. I felt that it has been helpful to make art, and that's where this idea came to play. I challenged myself to create an abstract piece and to take it easy. I took a small 8x10 piece canvas and decided that it was time to just have some fun and pour paint and make something abstract this whole semester I've been planning art piece, or I have to think or blend enough color I limited myself to three colors, white, cadmium red and gold. I bought gold
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PINK WORLD paint and wanted to make use of it. I learned from this piece; it is tough to blend gold with other colors, but it adds a beautiful aesthetics. I started blending red and white and painted over the canvas. I dipped my brush in white and draw a line just letting loose. I mixed wet paint with wet paint to make a cool creamy color pattern on the canvas. I let the paint rest for a couple of hours before going back. I returned to use more of that gold paint and just blend the white and gold together. I pour water into my painting pallet and flicked mixtures of red, white, and pink on the canvas. This process was amazingly relaxing, and I let the art and colors speak to me, and in the end, I produced this beautiful piece of work I felt pretty proud of it. I felt that my stress levels lowered and that making this painting made me feel in control of things, and the pink color represents empowerment for me. It reminds me of those paintings you see in a Walmart or a dollar store at the home decoration section. I noticed that even though this has no planning, some of the
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PINK WORLD things I have learned this semester reflected. For example, the brush strokes look really lovely, and the layers of paint overlapping each other is beautiful. I found more appreciation for abstract art because of the process a person goes through. It’s like a daydreaming product, and I’m happy I took part in it. Overall this piece inspired me to do more of these kinds of painting. It helped me unwind and relaxed during the most stressful time of the semester. I want to share with my friends to turn to art during your troubling moments and just let loose. We’re all human and need time to work, rest, eat, and enjoy our short life.
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THE NEXT STEP So far, I feel that I have sharply improved on painting, and I owe everything to my professor for pushing me to paint regularly and quickly. She held exercises to match colors to an object, and it immediately taught me how to get to a specific color. This practice was beneficial on time and wasting less paint. I personally found it easy to get really close to the color, but it’s an exercise I would take with me beyond college. I think the more time I spend on painting, the better, but as a college student, time is usually robbed by things, and you have to make a list and figure out what needs to get done and how much time do I have. Some nights I spend trying to figure out how I paint and what I need. I think those are the best moments because I’m teaching myself and learning When I was in middle school, I discovered I wanted to be an artist and express joy in other people’s lives. I was given a drawing by a friend I met in the library, and I couldn’t keep my eyes off of it. The color and form blended so well, it was beautiful, and I felt so moved and touched by this girl putting in time and effort into something she was going to hand to me. High school, I was in the anime era and always sketching it out for fun. I was interested in pursuing illustration until I went to a votech school and fell in love with the adobe programs and found my passion for Graphic design. Once I got to college, I learned that I needed to have a variety of skills than just “being good” at Adobe Illustrator, so I was taking drawing classes and other electives. I feel that York College is developing me more than to be a designer but also an artist with a background of knowledge of elements of art and design, color theory, light and hues, and use of white space. I feel that pursuing more into different mediums of art will only strengthen me as a Graphic Designer.
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After I graduate college, I want the painting to become a side hobby. Something I do on my downtime. It’ll exercise my eyes and give me a break. The difference between design and art is design is a constraint. Art is expressive freedom, and I will need to break away from limitations and find that freedom to create Sometimes art doesn’t have to have meaning or a backstory. You can create because you found something cool, or you just want to express something, or you just wanted to do it with no explanation, and that is okay. We’ve reached the conclusion of this book. During my three months of constant painting, I had an intense awakening occur to me. What does my work mean to me? Does a piece of myself stick to the art? I’m not talking about my style, but I’m more so talking about a narrative. During Painting I, we were told what to paint, and we did it for the grade. My professor this semester didn’t give us hardly a deadline in any projects she wanted us to continue painting, and that’s all she asked for. For me, it was a strange class. I’m used to going to a class given an assignment to complete it and have it graded. A classmate did a show and tell of his personal paintings. He described each and every one of them. Everything in his paintings had a purpose. He talked about his life growing up. It called me to start doing work, that means something. I’m not saying every art piece should have a meaning, but up until this point, half of the paintings in this book could give a deeper meaning than what they are.
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