This quarter in art I kind of went in my own direction and got caught up in my artist recreation. I decided to do some of Andy Warhol's work. By now if you have been keeping up with my other art blogs you would know that he has become a favorite of mine. His pop art style is so eye catching, and to me, explains my personality.  The vivid colors are really my favorite part.  I chose to recreate the gun photo because it was so unique and I thought that it would be a challenge for me. It is an exact model of his work except for my own little touch I threw in. I have always been a fan on textured painting and as my last piece of art in SLA , I wanted to at least get a chance at it.  The pink background to me is the most beautiful thing I think I 've created. I mixed the colors myself,  tested and chose the exactly brush that I felt gave the stroke design I wanted, even down to the blotches of pink in some areas were all my creating.
        This year in art has really inspired me, it has brought out my artistic quality more than I ever imagined it would.  The thing I love most about art though is the class itself, being able to go at your own pace and have the freedom to create whatever you want is the best. Leaving SLA, I love Ms. Hull with all my heart, she has given me a new outlook on teacher-student relationships as well as art.  I always had it settled that when I went to college, I was going to stop my art. Now, I will go off if I don't get a teacher like Ms. Hull.
          My four years here are done, and its been great. : )

I like to explore all forms of art. Photography is one of my favorites. Its a way to show your point of view in a way that's raw and gritty especially in black and white. You connect with the camera just as you would your paint brush or pencil. It becomes an extention of your eyes and hands. Creating an image that is a reflection of what goes on in your head. You can leave the finished product as what shows up on the film or you can edit it to make it give the message you want to send.
 
​Photo editing is really fun once you get the hang of it. I am by no means the master of Photo Shop but with the skills I learned in digital video class I can make some pretty cool images. At first photo shop for me was a little intimidating but its not as hard as it seems. For this photo I wanted a edgy pop art confetiti look to the picture so I really just adjusted the lighting levels. Also around the eyes I went in and filled the area in with black to make the eyes stand out. And filled in the hair to frame my face.

A picture is really interesting because it captures all feelings and happening of one moment and freezes it. You can change and edit a million times but you still get the same feeling and emotion as the original.

For the past couple I weeks I just haven't been feeling my art. I have felt like I couldn't draw anymore and I was completely uninspired. I think it was because I started feeling depressed and unhappy with the things that were going on in my life. You would think that because the saying goes, a tortured artist makes the best work, that I would be finishing beautiful pieces left and right.

The past couple weeks I lost myself, myself as Desireé and my self as an artist. I need to get back to the person I was and the artist I had become. With this project I started from scratch. I set up still life objects as my models and started with charcoal between my fingers. Then just drew. It took more than four class periods with a couple of struggles. My struggles came down to a battle between my worst enemy, the human mouth, on the skull I was drawing. It was challenging but the most important part is remembering to be patient and not get frustrated. Everything doesn't have to be perfect that's the beauty in art.

During those class periods I only thought about what I was drawing not everything that was keeping me depressed. I drew until I felt finished. When I was done I stood back to take it all in. I wasn't completely in love with the finished product but I was happy with it and a little tiny bit proud that I finished the piece. 

P.S. Sorry about the Quality of the picture I had to use my phone my computer hasn't been functioning at its best for awhile now.  

These are the pictures that I chose to show you. None of them are edited, because I felt comfortable and I thought they were already pretty good without having to be edited. The one of the hat, is probably my favorite, because it was an accident. I was at a concert in the middle of a mosh pit and my arm got hit mid shot and that's what I ended up capturing. So I thought that was pretty cool. Three of the  pictures, are from when I was in New York City. Its my favorite place, so I thought I'd share the pictures that I could get off my camera. I'll probably end up doing some before and after pictures, maybe play with the lighting some...but for now I just wanted to put some of them up.


















































This is the drawing that I did, I tried to re-do a drawing by Alex Pardee. This is the heart off The Used album In Love And Death. It's one of my favorite albums by them, and I absolutely love the album cover. The problem that I have, is I don't give myself enough space when I draw. I'll draw to close to the edge of the paper, or I'll just draw to big to where I'll have to cut parts out of my drawings. This sadly happened when I was trying to do the album cover.
http://www.whokilledbambi.co.uk/public/2008/02/loveanddeath.jpg
As you can see by looking at their album cover, the heart is ha nging by a old tree, I wasn't able to include that in my drawing because I didn't give myself enough room to work. I was going to start over , but I thought that this turned out really well...for not being exactly what I wanted. Alex Pardee is one of my favorite artist. I love his style so much, and I only wish that one day I can be as good as him. So I've been practicing a lot lately draw ing in his style.

Bike Drawings:
This is my line drawing of the bike that you gave us to draw in the art room. It's not finished, and  left out some details like the little light that was on the front wheel and what i think might of been a bike lock on the body of the bike. I found this both easy and challenging at the same time. I'm not very good with drawing lines, because they never come out looking straight...but the actual bike wasn't as hard as I thought it was going to be.

This was my attempt at a negative space bike. I'm not sure if I even did it right, because I never did one before. If I did, then I think it's kind of similar to line drawings. just you're drawing the spaces around the bike.

I also spent quite a long time on my paper beads. I have seen Emma and Kimberly try to do this and I have always been interested in recycling paper in that manner. I took a while for me to get the strips cut out the right way and then keep rolling them around a toothpick. It was very tiresome. I got that much done and thought yarn would work to thread them together but it ended up failing. The yarn of course wouldn't go through the beads and just overall wouldn't be able to hold them together. I looked though a few website and they have suggest that hemp wouldn't have worked perfectly. I didn't have enough time to obtain that though. I'll probably grab it though sometime in the future to finish the project.

I must admit the bike drawings were quite challenging. I wasn't able have to finish it completely. I usually get a better turn out when I'm really captured by the object. The bike didn't hold my interest for long. But one thing I was able to take away from this drawing is that sometimes you won't fall in love with every drawing you do, you just have to keep drawing until you do fall in love with a piece.

So for our final Senior Art Portfolio we were supposed to make a sculpture, take 200 photos and edit a select few, copy a piece of work by a famous artist, draw a bike, and then draw observations from outside. However, as you can see, I sort of drifted away from the assignments, going back to how it was 1st semester. The first photo you see is what I worked on for basically all of the quarter. It was the most proudest piece of art I've ever drawn/painted. I found this picture off offline and fell in love with it. I knew from the first time I saw it that I wanted to recreate it. The hardest part was making the eyelashes and also creating the pupil of the eye. I didn't know how to make such feathered looking eyelashes and it was hard to mesh the colors in for the pupil. Other than that it was great making the painting and I had to step out of my comfort zone in order to create it.

The painting below is another picture that I found offline that I fell in love with. It's still a work in progress but I'm very happy with the result as of now. Especially with the sky inside of the hand. Those small stars were really tedious yet felt great when they were done because it made the piece look so much better. I can't wait to finish it but hopefully it will look like or look better than the original painting.

These are my final pictures for this course. The Picture from a famous artist wasn't exactly famous like art gallery famous. But he is famous in "media" because he draws all of anime. This particular one was from the anime Kenichi: the mightiest Disciple. Now I didn't finish and that was because i lost my picture trying to start my new one.

The Next three were for the bikes. I didn't really get that one so I just drew it I guess it was so I could understand the dimensions. of something that was just lines.

The last one I drew was one that I 4 got about It was of a structure that we could find. So i wanted to be different and I drew the "Batcave". Batman's secret hideout because it was different and I never tried it before. Now i thought for my first time that I did very well. But i do know that with more practice it could be better. If i getter a better grasp of depth they will all look better.

During the fourth quarter in senior art class, Ms. Hull gave us one assignment to to do every week. The art assignments that we had to complete this quarter were challenging in their own ways. They included building a sculpture or craft of some sort, take 200 photos and edit 5 of them, copy a piece of artwork by a famous artist, draw a bike three times, and draw an observation from outside. Below are pictures of descriptions of each of the assignments. 
Build a Sculpture:
For this assignment, i didn't necessarily sculpture something. Instead, I built a guitar. I decided to build a guitar because I've always wanted to make one. There was some extra wood in my back yard from some work that my step father had done on our house. The week that the specific assignment was assigned is when I worked on this guitar. I had my bother help me make the guitar, and I let my younger twin brothers color it. Making this guitar was fun. I put a lot of work into making it. It sounded great when it was finished as well. 

Take Photos/Edit Photos:
For this specific assignment, I took 200 hundred pictures of the most random things. After taking those pictures, I just randomly picked five of them. I used photoshop to edit the pictures in a variety of ways. The photos that I edited were of things in the school like the clock on the wall on the second floor, the big painting of the animals, the masks that Ms. Manuel's spanish class made, and a pair of classes that were on one of the tables. The last picture that I edited was a photo of myself. There was no specific reason why I choose these pictures, but I thought what I did to edit them was pretty cool.

Famous Artwork
I decided to copy a painting done by Paul Kleen. The painting is of some type of star. I choose to do this because it looked cool and it was easy to do. Paul Kleen is one of the few painters that I actually know of, and I like his work. As I looked for something to copy, this stood out to me because of the design in the painting and what it means. This painting probably doesn't strike anyone as exciting but it's meaning makes it have more than how it appears.

Draw An Observation From Outside
This drawing is my worst of the quarter. I actually forgot to do this drawing during the quarter, so I drew this just s I could have something to turn in. I attempted to draw the my observation of the store from across the street. There is no type of detail in this drawing, I was focusing on getting this drawing done more than actually turning in a piece of quality artwork. 

Draw A Bike
I only have one picture for the bike assignment. Sade helped me draw this bike. It wasn't hard and it was ultimately a fun assignment. 

​For this last Quarter of senior art we were given another series of tasks. We had to make sculptures, take photos, copy a piece of artwork by a famous artist, and draw a bike (the only one I didn't do)

Below are my descriptions and images of each. 

Sculpture

For my sculpture piece I made buttons. I made a lot of buttons for myself and I also made buttons for a few of my friends. I chose to make buttons because I like to collect buttons and making my own is fun and I get to have my own personal buttons that no one will be able to duplicate. 

Marvel Comics Button


Baby Taz from the Looney Tunes


Spider Man 


I love Desi Button


Harry Potter


Paramore


Winky Face


I love Alaya Button


I'm With Ugly (Rashaun)


Tuskegee University 

Photos

I took photos of my friends and some of the things I saw while walking to the park during gym class. I took photos of Rashaun Williams and Antony Torrance while they were dressed up for their competition. I took photos of Alaya White being silly. And I also took photos with Teila Almond when we were both wearing stripes. I chose too put these pictures on my blog because these are a few of the people who I spend the most time with and have a lot of fun with so I wanted to express that by putting them on my blog.

Rashaun and Anthony


Alaya White


Me and Teila

Little Birdie


Flowers

Copy a piece of art work by a famous artist.

I chose to do art by Marvel Comics. My inspiration was Stan Lee and although he didn't draw these characters he invented them. I chose to draw Spider-man because he is my favorite superhero of all time. I also drew the Avengers (Ironman, Thor, Hulk, and Captain America). I wanted to draw them because, I love marvel and they also have a lot of movies coming out this summer that I am extremely excited for. So I wanted to express that excitement in my artwork. 

The Avengers (Ironman, Hulk, Thor, and Captain America)



Ironman


The Hulk


Spiderman


Carnage


Thor the God of Thunder

​For the week of 200 photos/photo editing I went out of order and used the photos from Spring Break. MY family and I went to Chincoteague, VA and at the end of the week I had nearly 1000 pictures so I figured I had a good place to start. Editing the pictures was difficult because I had never used photoshop to do more than color editing and contrast changes. So, I used this week to delve into filters and such. I'm not sure how I feel about some of them but I do like the two of my little sister (the pink-purple one and the one with words).