Emily

Art swap with a lovely lady. Traded a graphite portrait for a fun photoshoot! Emily takes really pretty pictures, so I think it was a pretty fantastic deal. And it was wonderful getting to hang out with her for a bit (:

First large portrait I've done since my Ben portrait from 2010, I think... Good practice! 

Leaving for college in a little over one day!!! Crazy stuff. Taking my sketchbooks and pencils! Hopefully I'll still be able to make time for them (:

roots

It feels good to sketch and know I still can ... It's been so long since I've drawn a face freehand, and I've missed it dearly. There's something about faces which captivates me ... there are some photos I'll see online, and I just have to draw them. It's inspiring to see photographers capture not only someone's likeness but someone's spirit in a picture, and I've always wanted to mimic that with pencil and paper. I often find myself trying to do the crinkle of someone's eye justice, tracing the curve with my eyes and my pencil, only to erase and try again. Other times, the crooked smile I've drawn doesn't have enough charm, the bottom lip doesn't have enough shine, the hair doesn't look wispy enough. 

No matter how much I experiment with other mediums and how much I become enraptured by the colors I can mix with paints, I always come back to my pencils and fall in love all over again. The bare simplicity of grayscale graphite can create such a range of beauty, and there is nothing I love more than working with a single sharpened pencil.

Drawn with HB pencil only. Because less can always be more.

final painting

Final painting for class. This canvas won't even fit in my car...

One and a half weeks of school left! And then I'll be done with high school!

I am too much in the sun

Senior year is winding down. APs in a couple of weeks. Looking forward to being done.

-S

paint dump

cor cordium

First free choice done this year. Canvas is on the larger scale. It's supposed to be Love personified. The inscription in gold on the heart says 'cor cordium' which means heart of hearts in Latin. I had lot of fun with the limited color palette, and it was exciting doing something from imagination since I don't usually do that. The color red is really growing on me this year.

 Concentration

Free choice - I really liked how a sketch I did of a friend who sits in front of me in calc class turned out, so I turned it into a painting. This photo makes everything look really crooked... This was good hair and skin tone practice. And I really like how it turned out, especially against the dark chalkboard green.

 Assignment for class in which we had to paint something to do with the ocean for a local festival down at the harbor. It's technically a festival celebrating whales... but I didn't want to paint a whale... so I googled beach sunsets, found a pretty picture and painted it without the pier. I didn't try to keep this one realistic. Had fun with my fan brush doing rough, multi-colored strokes for the clouds and reflections on the water. The colors were lots of fun.

Assignment for class in which we took a field trip down to the beach and took a bunch of photographs for inspiration. My friend took this one of me, and I decided to paint it for the assignment. Meh. got bored with this one a bit. It's just... nice. Doesn't really do anything for me. So of course, this is the one my mom likes the most...

My next canvas is almost bigger than I am (:

Mr. Woods

There's a series of beautiful, framed prints of famous composers in the music hall at my school. Bach, Liszt, Mozart, etc. They're all by the same artist, framed with thin, dark wood, with these gorgeous Impressionistic/dabbed backgrounds in blues and reds with the greatest names in music stoically posed in front. And then there was this not-matching, huge, print of Haydn with a background of music notes and a gilded frame in the middle of all the others. Then the portrait of Haydn fell down, leaving an open space in the line of portraits.

So I painted the choir director/head of our arts program who was also my AP music theory teacher! I've been wanting to do a portrait of him in the same style and then the space opened up for it ahahha. I hung it up without telling him. Apparently he noticed it later that day, according to my friend in choir. And it seems like he likes it! Though he said he "didn't deserve to be up there next to all those great composers" hahaha.

Anyway, this was basically a thank you gift for everything he's done for me in high school. He's gotten me a couple of local gigs as a pianist as well as plenty of performing opportunities in school shows.

My drawing/painting teacher made the frame. (As well as the canvas since we make everything for our paintings in art class). I spraypainted the frame gold and didn't do that well of a job ahaha. Missed a couple of spots and had drippage. My teacher said he could tell I hadn't tagged anything before haha...

It was fun trying to mimic someone's style. Really pleased with how this turned out.

boring text update

I've been painting tons, I swear. I just haven't gotten around to taking pictures of anything since all my canvases are at school. Just stretched and gessoed a canvas almost as tall as I am today though! We'll see what that turns into.

Pictures will be up soon of at least three finished paintings! (:

-S.