Art History

My group did the piece Frida Kahlo "Portrait" for our art history project, it was a challenge at first to see what piece we could represent. There was a large variety of different art works of Frida Kahlo, and after thinking about how we could do our picture and what props or material we needed; my group and I finally selected a picture to do. The movement for this piece was expressionism, in which expressionism in used in paintings, drawings, and sculpturing.  In which it forms from nature or exaggerated colors for emotive or expressive purposes. Frida Kahlo is a very well known piece created by the Mexican painter who is most popular from her self portraits Frida Kahlo. Everyone in my group had a job, most of the jobs were props, the power point for the presentation, and planning.  Hunter bought props and different materials to make our picture come more to life and look exactly like the portrait, such as getting the yarn for the hair.  I helped with the planning like what we should do in the video, what part we should have, and how we should use these different materials/props in the video. Caitlin helped with the props as well and while we were filming the video Caitlin was holding the sheet behind me as the background.  We all worked together and found information to help create our power point to present, and after all that we were done with the project. If we were do to the project again then I would probably want to add more detail, we had enough props for the video but I think we could have added a little more. As for example the blush on Frida's face in the portrait we could have done and instead of just the eye brows we could have drew some hair above my lips, like the picture.  if there were more details then the audience could easily see what we were indicating and it helps give our video more life and making the video look exactly like the picture.

Portrait

Artists Take Risks...
1.) In this project I wasn't sure if I should use pencil or colored pencils while doing my portrait. At first I was thinking about shading with my pencil because that seemed easier, and I had more practice with that; but the picture I was using had a lot of color and if I just used pencil my project would have been boring. So towards the end when I was done sketching my portrait I decided to use colored pencils instead. Also when I was picking the medium the main thing I was worried about was the shading of my grandmother's face, because in a portrait, details and shading are a very important feature that you need to make your project more realistic. But later in my project I made the shading work with my colored pencils and I feel that when I added this material it made my picture come more to life
2.) I picked colored pencils that was pretty different for me, because I usually use pencils for portraits and sketching faces and their details. Pencils are much easier for me to use and I mostly use them anyway for the last projects so I wasn't sure how colored pencils would work especially for the shading part, but my project turned out really well.  The one struggle I have is doing portraits because there are so many details and it takes time to get them right and to make them realistic, so I didn't know what to do about that and it took me some time to get it just right. But with some practice and time my portrait started looking more realistic, and I really like it.
Artists Reflect
1.) While I was doing my project there were many times I stepped back and stopped to look at it, like how the details were and to see if my portrait was similar to my picture. But the main time I stepped back and analyzed my drawing was when I stared shading in the skin tone and when I was doing lightness and darkness to the neck and face. The colored pencils were very challenging to work with while shading the face, and I never could notice the darkness to the lightness like shown in the actual picture of my grandma.  After I had some help from my class mates and teacher and learned more on how to shade the face, such as having the light spots like shapes so I wouldn't get confused between the dark spots on the face.
2.)One idea I thought about before doing my project was the mediums, like should I use colored pencils, paint, pencils, oil pastels, etc. But when I was thinking about my mediums I also put in consideration what would make my picture look more realistic, and how good are the mediums to help me shade and add very descriptive details.  After thinking about what would be good for my project I finally picked colored pencils and I think this medium was perfect for this project.

Survival (illustration Friday)