Paper Quilting

I took a class in high school called Art Affects. We did a lot of experimenting with different types of projects using a variety of mediums. For one project we had to make a paper quilt by sewing paper together with different kinds of stitches to make a design. We had to make the paper we wanted to use by using several kinds of paper making techniques. For my paper quilt, I used the technique of marbeling paper, acrylic paint and water colors. I also accented my quilt with nickel by sewing it in the corners as well as the middle of the project.

Pastel Your World

When I first started my drawing lessons, my teacher started me off with charcoal. The charcoal I was working with only enabled me to draw pictures in black and white. I love working with color so I was excited when I got to start using pastels. Pastels are kind of like chalk but I softer consistency and they leave more color on the paper. There was a large assortment of colors in my pastel box and included many different shades of the same colors. That enabled me to add dimension to my pastel drawings. The drawing seen to the right is the first picture I did using pastels. Pastels can give a smoky or blurry to a drawing when they are blended. That is one of my favorite effects that pastels give to artwork and oil painting does not.

Bowl Fest

The first annual Bowl Fest was held at Haddon Township High School (my school) my junior year. It was a fundraiser to help raise money to feed the hungry and raise money provide food to local soup kitchens in the Philadelphia area. It is held every other year and recently held at HTHS this past March. My high school arts & crafts teacher, Ms. Karen Kiick, runs the fundraiser and supervises the making of the bowls.

Ceramic bowls are made and sold to people to use and keep when they attend the soup dinner. The people who attend the soup dinner get to pick out their favorite bowl to purchase and also choose from a variety of soups to put in their bowl and eat. The students in both the Arts & Crafts classes as well as, Art classes at HTHS are responsible for making the majority of the bowls but there is also an event held at the high school, where people can come into volunteer to make bowls for the event. The bowls are made out of clay and fired to make them ceramic. They are then painted with glaze to add color and finish them off. The bowls pictured above are two of the bowls that I made for Bowl Fest. The one on the left is made to look like an elephant with big ears, feet, a tail and a trunk and the other just has a finished edge and a foot.

Sketching

A sketch is a free hand drawing that is used to gather and collate information. It is not intended to be a finished drawing. Sketching can be a fun way to relax or a laid back activity to do in your spare time. It can be fun to keep a sketch book and work on your drawing skills. The more you draw, the better you get at it. 

Pen and Ink Wash Drawings

In my drawing class last semester we learned how to draw using ink pen and ink wash (ink wash is just watered down ink). Drawing with ink instead of pencil or charcoal is harder for some people because you can't erase it if you make a mistake. In order to make the shade of ink wash you want, you have to pay attention to the amount of water you are putting into the ink. The ink wash is used for shading in the drawing and showing dark and light. You can also use a technique called hatching to show shadow and texture. Hatching is making different kinds of pen markings and lines. 

This is a pen and ink drawing that I did in honor of the Phillies winning the World Series.

Portrait Drawing

I always liked to draw people but I was never very good at making them look real. Whenever I drew a picture of someone it never really looked like them (it usually looked like a cartoon of them). I was never taught how to draw a portrait of someone until last semester, when I took a drawing class at Philly U. My teacher taught us how to make the eyes, nose and mouth proportional to the size of the head. We learned how to line up where the nose should be compared to where the eyes are and how to make the eyes not have the "deer in the headlights" look. Everyone in the class had to draw a self portrait and we also had to draw other people in class. After a couple drawing classes I think I got the hang of it and I am a lot better at drawing people. I enjoy drawing faces and making the same features as the person I am drawing and I often find myself doodling portraits in my notebook. 

This is a video of how to go about drawing a portrait of someone.

High School Art Classes

I took an arts&crafts class all four years of high school. It was always my favorite class because it enabled me to be as creative as I wanted and I got to work with my hands rather than writing notes the whole period. I didn't learn how to paint pictures or draw like I did in my private art lessons. The projects we made in my arts&crafts class were for the most part objects that served a purpose. 

My freshman year we designed our own paper by using a marblelizing technique. We then used that paper to make books by stitching the pages together. We also worked with copper, nickel and brass to make things like jewelry and wall hooks out of metal. When we were working with metals we learned how to solder the metals to make them stay together. My teacher also taught us techniques to use when working with clay. We used clay to make sculptures, bowls and tea pots and added color to our projects by glazing them. Once we were done building with the clay we would put the project in the kiln to harden and become more solid. Then we painted the glaze on to make our project whatever color we wanted.

One of my favorite projects we did in high school was making mosaics. We had to find a piece of furniture of our choice and design a mosaic to put on top of it. I decided to mosaic a stepping stool (pictured above) and it turned out to be one of my favorite things that I made.

My high school arts&crafts teacher has her own website where she displays her own art projects as well as the projects of her students. There are not many schools in our area that offer an art program like the one at Haddon Township HS. She gives an example of every project her students are working on so people can check out what kind of projects students get to do in her class. 

Oil painting

Oil paint is one of my favorite media to use ever since I was introduced to it. I am able to mix any color I need and am able to make oil paint any consistency I desire. Using different types of brushes, such as a thin brush or a fan brush, enables you to create different effects with the paints. A fan brush, which has the bristles of the brush spread out flat is usually used to create strokes that look like grass. Unlike acrylic paint and water paint, Oil paints do not dry quickly. Although that quality in oil paints can be annoying to some people, I like it because I can continue to blend colors without them drying up and I am able to erase any mistakes or strokes I don't like. Since oil and water don't mix, you need to use turpentine to clean the brushes or to remove paint from the canvas. 

One of my favorite oil paintings that I have done is my painting of Barnegat Lighthouse in Long Beach Island, NJ. My favorite part of the painting is the clouds. I enjoyed painting them because I had to use different shades of blue and purple to create the fluffy effect that they have. I love painting sunsets and clouds because of the range of colors. The colors in sunsets are very warm and often the sky will be blue at the top and then turn into pink and orange at the horizon. Considering that these two colors are at opposite sides of the spectrum, it is fascinating to me that blue can fade into a color such as orange in just one step. I love recreating that effect with oil paints.

My Beginning

I have loved to draw and paint since I was a little kid. It was always my favorite thing to do and a pencil and paper would keep me occupied for hours. I loved art class in elementary school because I was so enthusiastic about learning how to create new things. I started taking private art lessons at the age of 13, so I could flourish in my artistic abilities. I first learned how to draw with charcoal and use the charcoal to shade in my drawings to show shadows. The shading brought a 3-D look to the drawing by giving it a sense of light and dark. Then I moved onto pastels and learned how to give my drawing the same realistic look but using color instead of the black and white charcoal. Once I learned how to use color to give my drawings the idea of lights and darks, my teacher began to teach me how to oil paint. There was less color variety in the set of paints than there was in the pastels. This meant that I had to learn to mix the colors I was given to make the color I needed for my painting. My teacher taught me ways to make a color a shade darker or a shade lighter without having to use black or white. I have always found it fascinating that I was able to make any color for my painting when I was only given 9 different colored paints to work with. Black was not one of the 9 colors I was given because black can be made by mixing dark blue and brown. My art lessons made me love and appreciate art even more than I had before.