In our first unit, we focused on portraiture and surrealism.
My artistic skills have improved greatly in these first few weeks, shown mainly through my portraits. On the first day of art, I drew a portrait with no value, and thick, solid lines. When I decided to redo it, I used a grid to help get more accurate proportions. I also used value to make it look more realistic. There's a huge difference between the two portraits, which shows how I've grown during this unit.
I find inspiration for my pieces based on my real life interests. I found inspiration for my portrait from my favorite actress on one of my favorite shows. I chose her because I thought it would be more entertaining to draw a portrait of someone I recognized so I could see my progress more easily. The inspiration for my surrealism project came from my interest in mythical creatures, mainly because fantasy and sci-fi are my favorite genres of film and literature. I love the idea of mermaids and crackens living in the oceans, so I wanted to portray it in my artwork. I use Pinterest as a resource to find interesting compositions for my pieces, and use elements from other works to make my art more interesting.
One of the challenges that faced me in this unit was drawing the hair in my portraits, because hair has a difficult texture in which to draw. I warmed up by drawing the face of my portrait first, working on my shading skills before I attempted the hair. One of the challenges that faced me with my surrealism drawing was making it look not only magical, but also surreal, which is why I used a galaxy pattern as the sea in the piece. One of my successes on the surrealism project was my blending of watercolor in the background of the piece, and my blending of colored pencils on the mermaid's tail. Overall, I think both pieces are successful.