Q1 Artist Statement Thea Risher

Artist Statement
Thea Risher
This quarter, I was very proud of the art that I made. To start, we painted ceiling tiles, then did fall wall hangings, and finally self portraits. Throughout the quarter I had a lot of inspiration and had to independently come up with my own ideas for most of the projects. 
For the ceiling tile project, I found it very difficult to find an idea. I knew we had to paint with acrylics, which was a medium I did not use before. I went through a lot of rough sketches because I did not like my ideas. For inspiration, I thought about past art pieces I made and eventually came up with the idea of a hot air balloon. I looked up some photos and finally made a sketch that I liked. I use past art of mine as inspiration for a lot of my work. After this, we got a ceiling tile from the ceiling and I remade my sketch onto the smooth side of the tile after cleaning it off. Next, I painted the a light blue for my base color to represent the sky. Because the paint supply was getting very low, I ended up using water to make the paint last longer. This ended up being a very effective technique because it also made the texture of the paint very smooth in addition to using less paint. I thought that painting with acrylics would go very quickly, but I spent all of my work periods as well as one lunch period on the project and just barely finished in time. The paints required a lot of mixing and different layers and such. I enjoyed this art piece because I think I expanded a lot of knowledge about different art mediums and worked really hard, so I was proud of it. I learned about acrylic paints, which I look forward to using more in the future. 
The next art piece that I made was a fall wall hanging. We had a lot of creative license for this project, so I easily decided to make a charcoal drawing because charcoal is one of my favorite mediums to work with. I wanted to make a tree because I was inspired by my neighborhood and all the falling leaves in autumn. Nature often inspires me as well. The tree that I drew started as a tracing of the basic outline. Then I began to texturize the bark and branches with pencil because I like sketching in pencil. Finally, I went over and shaded with charcoal and added more color as well as added leaves and more background setting for the tree. I think for this project I managed my class time very well and focused the entirety of the time. I liked this art piece a lot because I think I exercised old techniques that I don't use in my artwork as much as I would like to, and I think this expanded my different techniques. 
The final project was a self portrait. I was a little nervous about this because a strong point of mine has never been peoples faces, especially my own. I find it very difficult to replicate peoples faces in general. Because of this, I used the technique of tracing. I found a picture of myself on my computer that I wanted use, then traced the screen using tracing paper. I downloaded a photo of my tracing to the computer, then projected it onto a larger paper where my final drawing was going to be. For my medium I decided to use pencil just because I think it is very easy to draw small details with pencil and a face has a lot of tiny details on it, such as wrinkles and eyelashes. Once I had the basic tracing outline of my face on the paper, I used my phone to look at my reflection and started filling in all of the details. This was harder than I anticipated, because a lot of the details are very hard to replicate on paper. I spent a lot of time shading in around the eyes, but I think the end product was very well done. What this project taught me about art is it requires a lot of patience and dedication, but the time you put in will pay off if you focus and invest yourself in it. 
I learned a lot of new things about art this year. I learned more about mediums that I thought I was familiar with, such as pencil and charcoal. I learned more about shading and how to lightly use pencil as well as charcoal, and I used more blending techniques with both of these mediums. I had never used acrylic paint before, so I learned that watering them down makes the paint smoother and the colors mix very easily. I learned throughout that you need to always be working and use all of your time, because you never have to be finished with a work of art. I learned that focusing and trying new techniques pay off and you are always expanding your knowledge. For process, I would want everyone to know that I am still learning and improving but this is my art so far and I am happy to share it with you! 

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