Triptych - Spring is Here

Name:Spring is Here
Medium: Acrylic on MDF board
Description:
     Behind my house is a rose bush, older than me. Every year it returns growing wildly blooming in every direction, winding its way up the fence. This bush has survived being cut, mowed and over twenty five winters, refusing to die. Its vibrant colors and expansive growth has come to represent the time winter turns to spring for me as without fail it returns at the same time every year even after wilting away in the winter cold.

     This triptych was a large project for myself done in a short amount of time(about a week). The process started by cutting down some MDF boards to consistent sizes for the three pieces. Next the background was done with a mixture of Floetrol, water, and house paint in a acrylic pour which created the "wooden" looking background, emulating pattern on the fence that grows behind the rose bush. From there the plant was painted with traditional acrylic paints. Blending colors already on the canvas was a skill I consider myself weak at and I feel I got a good amount of practice doing that on this piece and I feel satisfied with the outcome when compared to work I did earlier this semester.

Series Painting 2

Name: A Warm Bridge in a Cold Winter
Medium: Acrylic on Mixed Media Paper
Description:
     Countinging the theme of bridges I went with a wooden covered bridge in the middle of winter. The darker maroon color of the bridge contrasted hard against the snow which stuck with black and white values with a small areas frozen branches, snow topped rocks and a glimpse of dirt showing through through small patches of thin snow on the ground. The branches, the path and the tree trunks all bend towards the center of the piece to attract the viewer's eye to the bridge.

     Part of the reason I chose a fairly low on color image for my reference was to get more practice blocking out values within layers of an image and translating that to a painting. There is only a small amount of blending of colors present in this image, mostly in the shadows of the bridge. Overall I was pretty satisfied with this piece, I felt the perspective on the bridge wasn't terrible and that the snow covered branches that frame the image had some depth to them along with the trees that sat at the end of the bridge in the center of the image. The biggest change I would do if I were to redo the piece would to be to add some variety to the farthest back layer. As it stands its just a flat dark gray, which while it allows the snow to pop, is very dull if you look past the branches.

Series Painting 1

Name: Unnamed
Medium:Acrylic on Mixed Media Paper
Description:
     This was the first of a series of paintings I did with the central theme being bridges. I like bridges, they come in many sizes, shapes, materials, age and purposes. They invite a sense of wonder as to where they will lead. In this piece I went with a small more traditional stone bridge that crosses over a river with mountains looming in the background. As this is a more natural environment, plants grow from cracks in the rocks and bridge, further back trees and bushes grow near the bank of a river, and in the far distance mountains have grass grow against them towards the sun.

    Over all this piece was mostly for me to experiment with brushes and an attempt to get better at blending colors. While I have a better understanding of how the brushes will stroke on the paper I felt that my color blending on this piece was very weak and I wasn't very happy with it. I attempted to add depth to the mountains by having them get lighter/foggier as they go further back from the view towards the center of the piece. Another thing I needed to practice more from here was doing trees. The tree behind the bridge looks more like a big bush as little to none of the colors behind it bleed though and is instead a large amorphous blob of greens. While I learned a fair amount from this one, I felt it wasn't much to show off.

3D Box Project - Complete

Medium: Name: A Midday's Rest

Medium: Acrylic on wood

Description:

     This piece started with a piece of MDF board which then was primed and sanded several times using an acrylic house paint primer. After that the piece was painted with traditional acrylics and then some wood was glued to the MDF board. A frame was then added and a small sculpted figure of a cowboy with his hat over his face made out of epoxy was glued to the frame.

     The idea for this one initially came around after seeing a framed 3D box project that used LEDs and layering to create a forest that glowed. The plan was to have a small LED sit in the top right corner and shine down the "branches" on to the resting cowboy to create shadows like the sun would during the day. Problems arose when trying to glue the wood to the background as the wood did not wan to hold position and the glue began to mess with the paint. Other problems with the soldering tool that was going to be used to attach the aforementioned LED to a switch lead to more complications and ultimately led to major parts of the concept being dropped. I was fairly disappointed with this one and would like to try to revisit the idea in the future.

My Story Project

Name: Roads and Decisions

Medium: Acrylic on canvas

Description:

     This piece is just traditional acrylic paints on a standard stretched canvas. Originally a rough sketch was drawn and then reprinted onto the canvas to create a rough guide for painting.

     This one was created under the prompt of telling something about your self/life within the painting. Two paths are presented, one obscured, the other that leads to another crossroad which are both obscured from sight hiding their true end points.  I went with a series of cross roads because through out my life I have suffered from indecisiveness from what I wanted to do in life, especially as a teenager. While I have gotten better at picking a choice and seeing it through, questions like "what do you want to be when you grow up?" were some of the hardest I was asked as a kid/teen because I had no idea and felt directionless for the longest time.

     This one was more difficult in many regards than the previously done portrait. While both pieces had me redoing parts as I felt I mixed paints poorly to create colors, I felt that even stronger here with the abundance of greens that I tried to use. When I initially started this one, my selection of colors were more limited I as didn't have any vibrant yellows or greens to blend which led to the first colors on the piece to be very subdued. As my color library expanded I learned that greens can be a REAL pain to mix into a color you want.Ultimately I wasn't very satisfied with my blending on this piece as I was really inexperienced at it at the time and I feel it shows quite obviously.

Social Project

Name: Unnamed
Medium: Acrylic on canvas
Description:
    This piece was done on a piece of coarse canvas drop cloth which had been cut to an appropriate size. Two laters of white gesso were then applied and sanded to create a surface for traditional acrylic paint to stick to easier. Finally the piece was painted with traditional acrylic paint.

     Steve Irwin was the closest thing I had as a childhood hero/idol. He was a crazy Australian man who followed his passions and attempted to teach people to respect nature through a very different and hands on view of nature in contrast to the standard documentary format that had been traditionally used. The quote on the piece reads "Whatever you want to do in this world, it is achievable. The most important thing that I've found, that perhaps you could use, is be passionate and enthusiastic in the direction that you choose in life, and you'll be a winner." which is a qoute I took to heart as a kid and I try to apply my passions to what I do in my life.

   As for technical thoughts,  this was the first time in over half a decade that I had painted. I hadn't used enough gesso on the canvas prior to doing the actual painting and this lead the surface to be rough with many crevices and bumps which in turn led to making high detail areas like the eyes difficult to do symmetrically on both sides of the face. This also made it very hard to do the text on the piece and lead to it being very uneven looking and rough. Lastly while I decided to call it finished so I could move on to the next assignment I feel the lack of a background really detracts from the final product.