How can portraits convey authority? How can we represent the intangible in portraits? How can a portrait make a broader social statement? These are questions we worked towards addressing in this project, which is to paint a canvas portrait using acrylic, oil, or mixed media. The questions which I aimed to answer with my painting are the first two, and I did this because the first thing that came up to my mind when I hear the word “portrait,” is surprisingly not people’s faces, but a juxtaposition of human and animals…

[Final Work]

To achieve certain textures and desired effects, I used a combination of acrylic paint (blue, white, and black of the background) as well as oil paint (for the rest of my painting). In addition, I experimented with modeling paste for the wings, glitter to create a luminous effect, and tin foil to create suspense.

The title of my painting is “Interconnection,” which symbolizes the message that there is a mutual connection between humans and many aspects of nature.

The subject of my painting is myself juxtaposed with animal traits (such as the wings and antlers). I wanted to create a painting like this because I believe that animal mistreatment and environmental harms are some largely impactful and unjust issues that can be found anywhere worldwide. Unfortunately, this endangerment of nature has also been something which we have constantly ignored. My conjecture is that everyone——no matter how ordinary you are—— is always in some way connected to nature, which is now at a waning stage. Because of this notion, I’d like to raise awareness for nature not  by pointing fingers at celebrities, but by forming the bond with nature in an ordinary person like myself, which everyone could relate to.

I chose to base my painting upon the questions: How can we represent the intangible in portraits, and how can portraits convey authority? The intangible in my painting is the human-to-nature connection, addressed with the use of obvious nature symbolisms juxtaposed with a human (myself) as one unified and harmonizing figure. In response to the second question, the purpose of my painting is not to convey the authority of myself or humans, but to give voice to animals so they can be regarded as ‘human.’ I believe by connecting animals to humans, we provide them more power of speech compared to their current status because it is the biased opinion that: “all animals are equal, but humans are more equal than animals” which have caused animals to be so often discriminated.

Although the animal features in my painting may appear cliche to the eye on the first look, none of them are redundant as they are all purposefully chosen to convey poetic meanings. The imagery of wings, the branch-like antlers, and the fishes each represent a level that essentially makes up our world—— sky, land, and water. These symbolisms convey the ideology that humans are connected to all parts of nature. In progression, the tiger-striped mask and the circle of fish are relatively smaller in size, as they represent a smaller intangibility which we often ignore—— below the face of a tiger, a creature may also have the heart of a human; in a school of herrings, the fishes corporate and help each other, just like us. “Life is like a circle,” is a common saying in many cultures. If life is indeed an unbreakable cycle of life and death, then karma will come depending on how you treat others. In this case, the half-circle of fish is a prophecy half-filled, serving as a warning signal hidden at the back of our mind. The white cat in the arms of the subject is pristine to show its innocence, and it looks at the audience in a posture of curiosity and wonder, like a baby cradled in the arms of a mother. However, both the cat and the subject has peculiar eyes of a sinister silver glow, which is to enrich the mysterious atmosphere and show that even aspects such as the greed of luxury are echoed between humans and animals.

The mood of the piece is relatively dark and mysterious, with a touch of fantasy. To create this mood, I used complementary palette colors of blue (a calmingly depressing color) and orange (the color of fallen leaves and autumn). I chose to eliminate green from my painting because it is a color which can be used to represent life, which is the contrary of a downward spirit.

My initial inspiration for this project came from the artist Amy Judd, whose surrealistic compositions really intrigued me. I liked the way she juxtaposed nature with humans, and especially those with wings, which I also incorporated as a large element in my piece. Not long after being inspired by Amy Judd, I also paid a visit to the Art Beijing Exhibition where I encountered a painting trilogy featuring a girl with her back to the audience, who is carrying a cat on her shoulder. The existence of the cat made me realize that cats are an animal that can bring up the association of loneliness in a painting, and I was immediately inspired by the idea of having my subject cradling a cat.

<—Inspirations

To start off the creation of my painting, I first used Photoshop to make up a reference image, which I then projected onto my canvas with the projector. I first used a pencil to lightly trace the outlines and some directions of the shadows and then applied some modeling paste onto the traced wings and a few of the fishes, in order to create dimensions in certain areas. After that, I painted my background with acrylic paint to make sure it dries in time for me to paint the figures with oil paint. I decided to first tackle the part which will be the most challenging for me, and I knew from my media testing experiences that the challenge for me will be to work with shadows in color and to not get tempted into over-blending the tone with the shades. In effort to overcome this obsession of over-blending, I watched youtube videos on how to paint folded cloths in observance of the technique of painting the shadows (which effectively helped me out of the struggles of painting the wrinkles on the clothes) and also printed a copy of my reference image with a high contrast in the clothes. After this part is completed, I worked on the skins, hair, and antlers of the subject, adding in the overall hue first and then creating the shadows with tints and shades. When this initial layer is completed, I decided to work on the background of fishes so that the paint could dry. Afterward, I polished the face, hair, and antlers, as well as outlined the region of the masked, then started to give colors to the cat. When all of the oil painting bits are completed, I added in smaller details, such as the shadows of the wings (following the grooves of the modeling paste) and the tin foil. I added the details of the mask and the glitter effects at the very end with matte medium, to avoid being in conflict with wet paint. Looking over my final work, it did not change too much from what I envisioned at the start in terms of composition. But in the case of effects and media, the ‘starry background’ and the glitter in the foreground were all things I didn’t plan for, but they all turned out to be rather effective in creating suspense in the piece.

Final Plan⬆

⬅Final Work

In this project, I had the chance to stretch myself through experimenting with new medias and to take ‘risks’ beyond outside my comfort zone. Before the project, I never thought I would be able to complete (to me) a large canvas like this when I had so many things going on. Quite the opposite to what I initially thought, the size of the canvas made it possible for me to experiment with tools such as the palette knife and medias such as the molding paste in such a large section of the canvas. I also challenged myself to go messy with the background, instead of making the thorn-like prickle texture, which I always liked to create before taking this step of stretching myself as an artist. I also made an attempt at painting clothes wrinkles, which is not something I would usually do, and this allowed improvements in my skill of working with shadows. The size of the canvas also drove me forward to keep me engaged with the big picture and to not be overly concerned by minor details, which allowed me to put myself in the best work mode. Not only did I take advantage of class time, I also came in after school to work on the project, so that I will be able to increase the level of precision and sophistication in the painting.

Engage & Persist

As previously mentioned, painting the clothes wrinkles were things I found challenging, and the hair of the figure was also difficult to manage as there were no highlights in the hair of my reference image. But rather than giving up on them, I made several attempts and always persisted in the creation process to make them end up as realistic as possible, by focusing to depict the changes in the values. This meant I had to be patient in the process of painting, and that I must be engaged with my artwork to be able to observe its lightings, in order to predict the highlights of the hair. Additionally, my engagement for the project can also be noticed through my many works upon creating references for my piece, which are mostly documented in my sketchbook. Because my composition is different from the compositions of my reference artists, I had to diligently search for relevant images on the internet and put them together in photoshop and made several envision attempts at how my portrait would look like.

Observe

During the process of painting, I took notice of many aspects of the painting (such as the color scheme) in order to create unity in the piece. By way of illustration, when I took notice that the right section of my painting is relatively lighter and warmer due to the glow in the center, I added tints of yellow to the highlights and shades of blue to the shadows (especially for the cat, where I might’ve used pure grey for the shadows, had this observation not been made). I also paid a high attention to details and how they might affect the visual of the piece, because I knew the details are things of high importance to any types of work in art. When I looked over my painting at the finalizing stage, I observed the grooves of the feathers and their dimensions to add in shadows correctly. When the finishing touch of glitters accidentally spilled on my work, I took note of their effects immediately and used a pen knife to take out the unwanted bits, which also required a high degree of persistence as well as observance.

[Attention to Details]

Reflect

Not only did I constantly take a step back from my painting to look for falsities, when I was painting, I also reflected upon the work of many other artists. Some of these artists are my peers, who I actively gives feedback to; others are artists of the art world, who I look up upon for analysis and inspiration. This reflection benefited me in terms of my problem solving and observing skills. When we first started this project, we looked at paintings from successful artists such as Hung Liu, Jenny Saville, and Kehinde Wiley and learned about their approaches to the 3 guiding questions. After this, we each made a detailed analysis on how artists utilized Elements of Art and Principles of Design in their works, from which I gained my understanding from Chloe Early’s ‘Encounter’ and Zhu YiYong’s ‘Memories of China.’ During the visit to the Art Beijing Exhibition, I also took a number of photos of the artworks I liked or found interesting. After I got back from the visit, I looked over the photos and reflected upon what it is that made me like these pieces; when I arrived at the conclusion that it is a mixture of the color choice, harmony, and attention to details, I arranged the works into albums so they will be able to effectively guide me in the later steps of my painting.

[Reflection Upon Other Works]

 Title: Fading the Border

How might two cultures conflict with each other? In what ways can they be unified? In this project of ‘Converging Cultures,’ we were challenged to use Adobe Photoshop to create a composition (or a series of them) to poetically display two cultures that importantly connect with us.

To me, a Chinese girl who lived in Vietnam for almost 3 years, the two Asian countries seem to have some similar cultures that could be expressively blended. With this idea in mind, I created this composition with a fading border to convey the message that there really aren’t any distinguished borders between the two cultures, and they can be coherent as a whole.

When I first planned out this piece, I was inspired by Victoria Seamer (Witchoria)’s cup compositions, as they seemed really creative and well-done. In my mind pictured to have a teapot pouring out everything (things of China and Vietnam) into a cup, but to make it not plagiaristic, I decided to change the perspective the cup is viewed from. However, throughout the development of the piece, I noticed that having a cup border does not seem to unify with the composition, which was baffling and challenging for me as I have just lost my ‘work-guide’. Coincidentally, that is when I found my work unintentionally inspired by the transparency works of Rene Magritte, so the final piece developed into something more Magritte-like than Witchoria-inspired. Additionally, it was very frustrating and challenging for me, someone who has a huge ‘database’ of ideas, to keep the composition consistent. In act of trying to problem-solve, I made a lot of rough sketches to plan them, and also kept my photos and layers organized so it will be easier for me to change ideas.

[THE FINAL PIECE]

In this project, I was constantly challenged to learn and use new tools/techniques, such as the “feathering” technique when it comes to refining the edges, different selection tools when I have to select parts of an image with unclear borders and seemingly simple skills such as adjusting the colors and values of a picture. In act of trying to achieve certain effects, I watched tutorial videos on effects, such as the dispersion effect for the bamboo border. The dispersion might’ve turned out better if I had a larger variety of brushes, but because I didn’t, creating this effect was rather challenging. To try to problem-solve this issue, I founded dispersed dots on the internet and changed their colors with the gradient overlays, which helped to the dispersed border to look more natural. Knowing that Photoshop might not always be ‘friendly’ sometimes, I took full advantage of all the time I have to work on my piece. During this project, my growth as an artist came from being patient and trying to not overthink things. As previously mentioned, working with Photoshop can sometimes be stressful and difficult; but as I work more on the project, I was able to sit down and reflect upon it more patiently and for a longer time without being distracted. Skills-wise, from this project I familiarized new tools such as the “layer masks”, the “brush tool”, and even the “magic eraser tool”; all are tools that I did not know how to do beforehand.

Untitled (The Process of my Work)

Develop Craft

In my opinion, trying to figure out how to create certain effects and how the tools work can sometimes be quite time-consuming and difficult. To help achieve effects such as the dispersed border, I looked up online tutorials that are very handy to learn from. From these tutorials, I learned about how to create the dispersion effect and the disintegration effect, which helped me to create the fading photo frame and draw focus to it. There are also additional helpful tutorials such as tutorials on creating fogs, brushes, and borders, which I media tested but did not include in my final piece to avoid visual confusion resulted by complexity. Not only were we introduced to Adobe Photoshop in this unit, we also learned about the process of how photoshop artists make their artworks, as well as the art form of surrealism and its surreal devices through taking away key ideas from videos and images. Using this artistic knowledge, I am able to think more like an artist in terms of the usage of these devices and the awareness of color schemes and unity.

[MEDIA TESTING E.G.: LEARNING HOW TO MAKE CLOUDY FOGS]

[NOTES TAKEN WHEN LEARNING ABOUT SURREAL DEVICES & THE PROCESSES OF MAKING PHOTOSHOPED ART]

Stretch & Explore

I was stretching myself and embracing challenges in this unit as I have to deal with the new tool Photoshop, and because I did not have a fully planned-out idea before I started working. Although I had prototyped a collection of compositions in my sketchbook, I am also aware of the fact that the availability of raw materials, time, and limitation of skill are all related to the feasibility of what I planned the piece to be. I did not limit myself down to the following everything as planned, but rather to use the plan as a guide and explore creatively onwards. For example, the inclusion of the fading photo frame was never thought of when I was planning but just appeared in my mind as the project became more-and-more put together. If I have followed everything in my plan and limited myself down to it, I might never have been able to learn about the dispersion of an object, and nor might’ve played around with the surreal device of transparency. I was also aware of the accident where I changed/erased a layer but later regretted the decision yet the original is already long gone. Instead of crying over this accident, I took it as a lesson and made hidden backup layers for images that are difficult to crop, remake, or are of relatively higher importance, which actually proved to be quite useful.

 [SCREEN SHOT OF NAMED BACKUP LAYERS]

Understand the art world

Surrealism is a rather interesting form of art, and sometimes the stories behind its scenes can be quite intriguing. As the unit progressed, we were able to learn more and more about the development of surrealism (from Salvador Dali to modern artists like Victoria Seamer)and each creative and unique styles of the surreal artist. Although we did not have a guest artist in this unit like the previous ‘In-a-Box’ unit, we had more chances to seek feedback and ideas from our artistic peers in the classroom. These art critiques allowed me to step back from my work and think: what is the actual message I am aiming to convey? And how can I express it in a more clearer yet poetic way that could appeal to the diversity? By both giving suggestions and receiving feedbacks, I am able to think more critically and open-mindedly in thought for symbols, unity, and many other parts of an artwork. In my perspective, feedback is very important in not just the art world but the larger world. By watching how the surreal artist Maggie Taylor received and benefited the feedback from another artist (Jerry Uelsmann ), I now understand that artists do not work alone, but rather seeks for feedback to improve their work like any one of us. I would like to say that I found the suggestions from my peers very useful when it comes to picturing and developing my work. Without the suggestions, I might’ve been troubled for a long time just to think on how should I fill up my background, and without the bits of help received from the interactions, I might also have struggled as I tried to use new tools.

[SKETCHBOOK NOTES & RECORDED FEEDBACK]

[WORK COMPARISON: TRANSPARENCY,  INSPIRED FROM ARTIST RENE MAGRITTE]

Sky Ladder is an art documentary which captures the amazing firework-based works of the Chinese artist Cai Guo Qiang, who (in this documentary) is working on a mission-impossible type of project— a propellant-based, half-kilometer tall ladder that ‘leads up to the sky.’ More out-of-the-ordinary, this project of his was launched not to earn money, but to achieve a decade dream of his.

To me, it is really surprising that something so short-lasting could be regarded as art, and that art could come from the act of destroying another art— in Cai Guo Qiang’s projects, he spends a long time building the pathways for the propellants (and some, like the sky ladder, are by themselves already things of beauty), but then destroys them for a just a ‘second of glory’.
It is true that political views could affect an artist, artists, or more than artists. For helping to “add modernity” to the Olympics held in China, Cai Guo Qiang was questioned for why he was helping the government to run political-related activities (such as the Olympics and APAC). Though to him, this act of brightness is the ‘door that could help the world see the beauty and development of his country,’ and there is nothing wrong or shameful about it. Despite his rebuttal, some still find his actions ununderstandable, and this is rather depressing for Cai.

As long as you have the passion, the bravery, and the persistence for something, then “what you can imagine is what you can create” (Erik Johansson). This positive message is one of the key takeaways from this documentary, and one should never flinch from their dreams but to step up to achieve them.

Card 1; Audience: Mom

This first Valentine’s day card is dedicated to ‘thank’ my mom for caring for me so much in a not-so-cheesy manner. Elements of art/principals of design in this poster-like card include color, shape, and proportion. It is inspired by an Emily McDowell card that gives the message “you are the most important thing in my life,” but I had a play with the scales to have my intended audience seem like the least important thing of my life, which was used for humor.

Card 2 & 3; Audience: Younger Cousin

These 2 cards are made for my cousin who is 3-and-a-half years younger than me, to show my appreciation for her (since I have no siblings, being able to have someone to play with and talk to was quite important to me when I was young). The first design includes the usage of colors, line, and contrast; while the second had same but a more open sense of space.

The first card especially was light-voiced and simple. Because her English name is ‘Princess,’ I wrote my message very straightforward:“you are a sweet yet messy princess” to show how she looked like to me. The word “princess” is also a unique play on words that could only have a double meaning towards no one but her.

The second card was inspired by the anaphoras from the book trilogy Daughter of Smoke and Bone of “Once upon a time… a… and a… ….(did something) ….(the outcome)” The sentence:“They made a great pear” in my card was a pun to show our friendship and her importance to me.

Title: The Promise

Theme: Society

Thesis: The balance and equilibrium of privilege are in many ways lacking in current society. The freedom and rights of the ones with lower social status are in many ways limited compared to those at the top, who, despite their power, oftentimes make empty promises to the powerless.

How could a box be used to uncover a theme? How do people’s interpretations of themes and symbols differ or change through time? In this studio challenge, our task was to use creative media and a box as our base to display a poetic interpretation of a different theme (which we all drew randomly from a hat). The theme I got was ‘society,’ and for a while, I wondered on a seemingly absurdly simple, but complicated question: “What is society?”

I first brainstormed on the things/concepts that first pops into my mind when I first think of the word society, and picked the most interesting or broad ones to further brainstorm. One of the first things I thought of in reaction to the word ‘society’ was Animal Farm written by the famous author George Orwell, which was interesting but also unfortunately limited to the certain book. I then made a few initial design ideas, and something in common about them was that I wanted to incorporate a bottle to show danger lurking in the society. However, later in my 2nd final plan, I decided to take it out because my message about society has gone from drugs and their dangers to another idea: hierarchies. Because in my initial plans, the bottle was supposed to be put on towards the end, I left it in my collection of items and started by covering the box with newspaper and initially planned pictures by applying matte media. When this was finished, the box turned out to be much more ‘cluttered’ by newspapers than I had envisioned, and I soon discovered that the bottle had become not very unified with this background. This was the time when I was extremely conflicted in my mind, having to decide if I will keep the bottle and repaint the box or vise versa. After all, since news and propaganda seemed a better description of society than drugs, my focus point shifted to the promises and hierarchies in society. My final piece did turn out to be different in many parts, but not by drastically. In summary, making the choices of what to keep and what to take out was the biggest challenge I had to face —there were so much media that I wanted to use and so many things I wanted to incorporate, but such a small space— this forced me to make my choices carefully and reflectively.

In this project, I worked with many different items as well as new tools like the matte media. I also used the glue guns stylistically to achieve interesting details, for example, the droplets on the matches which created a sense of pacing in the piece, and the holes on the net were purposefully made by using the heat of the glue gun. Since I had many ideas to include and knew time passes by fast, I made an effective use of the class time so that my piece will look fully finished and well-polished when we meet the final deadline for the exhibition. I did apply my best workmanship in making this piece, and although some of the paper cranes in the net were barely evident to see, I still folded each one carefully. The same goes for the newspaper background, every section was covered by small pieces instead of massive sheets of newspaper to created the overwhelmingness of propaganda. Throughout this project, I have grown as an artist by working to avoid literary and obvious symbols. By way of illustration, I once had and planned to have wire-made people working in the box to show contrast between the rich and poor, but working figures have become over populated and due to that not very unique; for an alternative, I made paper cranes and trapped them in the net, which also shows limitations to power and trapped freedom, but now in a more poetic way.

Final Piece

⬆️<Click on the above link for a better quality Image>

Observe

In this project, I’ve observed symbolic details in others’ work, for example, the contrast and depth the choice of colors   creates in a box of Joseph Cornell’s, as well as the clothing of the silhouettes in Kara Walker’s work (who was another initial artist for inspiration) and what they might have related to the American Civil war. From viewing works of artists, I learned that details could create strong emphasis on the theme and mood if carefully applied and repeated. This takes away from making observations taught me to be careful and thoughtful when adding details to unify the piece. In my final piece, a majority of the writing on the newspaper prints read words related to wealth, and other details such as the cracks on the coverages of the radio and images allowed the piece seem more sophisticated and real than compared to abstract.

Reflect

Viewing and reflecting in this project allowed me to benefit from both the pros and cons of a piece, whether it is mine or someone else’s. As a starter of this project, we looked at precedents from artists such as Joseph Cornell and formed a detailed analysis on his use of design elements (such as the Elements of Art and Principals of Design) for one of his pieces. When I was making my piece, I constantly took a step back from the box to see what had worked and what seemed unfitting, then made adjustments upon the critiques. In the attempt make the most effective decisions, I sought to get feedback from my peers, and also documented my changes so that I could remember and learn from why I removed a certain part from the box. I also listed the pros and cons of some of my ideas in my sketchbook for comparisons when I was making choices, by doing so, I could make sure I’ll be able to put the best ideas in use instead of the weak ones.

Critique

Final Plan (2)

Faces

⬆️<Click on the above links for better quality images>

Engage and Persist

I was always engaged and on task during this project. Even though sometimes things might not turn out as I’ve expected them to, I always persisted to settle these issues. The droplets on the matches might seem a minor detail, but I had to persist through many trials and errors before getting hold of the trick of making them with glue guns, as did the wire-people which I later removed to avoid visual cliche. My engagement and persistence of trying through different ideas can also be observed from the constant changes I make to my project plan, which are documented in my sketchbook. In my opinion, engagement and persistence are two very important concepts: without being engagement, the details in my piece would’ve already fallen apart and likely have never even existed; without persistence which was driven by engagement, I never would’ve folded so many paper cranes which are some key symbols in my artwork. Securing the cranes onto the net using the hot glue gun is especially difficult for the net melts to heat (which is how I made the holes), and has tiny holes in its weaving. Despite the challenge, I did not give up on the paper cranes instead managed to glue all of them on. As a ‘reward’ I was especially complimented by my peers on the usage of the cranes.

 

Introduction

In this studio challenge of “You are What You Wear” our task is to create a large piece of charcoal drawing of cloth or other daily wears (such as shoes or watches), that defines or relates to us in someway or another.

Final

Click on the above link for a clear picture ⬆️

The first step was to pick four items of clothing that are special to us, but to me it’s not necessarily the easiest step, since every piece of clothing in my closet appears special to me in someway. The second step was to set them up in a creative/meaningful way and take a picture; then to make some quick but interesting composition sketches of different sections or angles of them in the sketchbooks. Afterwards, the task is to pick a sketch idea as final and compose it on a larger piece of paper with charcoal. In order to create a thoroughly composed drawing, I first used rulers and pencils to make out guidelines on the paper and printed copy of the actual image, which divides them into smaller sections. Using those guidelines, the next steps are solid, which are to outline and shade in based on the image printed. My actual studio piece ended up with both similarities and differences to what I had envisioned, and the biggest difference is the mixed-valued patterns on the shirt, which I had envisioned to look almost the same as in the picture. Out of all the challenges, time-management and perfection were the two biggest ones, because certain areas could take up more or less time than planned, and for charcoal it’s almost impossible to keep everywhere clean and perfect. I overcame the first challenge by taking my art home to work on during the October break, this way I can make sure the project can be fully completed on time; and I used ignorance to overcome the second challenge by not focusing on certain spots until the end.

I challenged myself in this project through ways such as using the side of vine and compressed charcoal to create texture, for example when attempting the patterns on the shirt. Focusing on details and completing my steps with care, I believe I have applied myself to make the best work possible, and also took advantaged to use class time reasonably. When I look at my artwork, I am sure I have grown and matured as an artist by taking risks that might be out of my comfort zone when doing this project (such as going dark in areas and adding highlights). I am also sure though, that there are still more room for growth and improvements.

Express

I expressed a personal connection with my artwork through the pieces of cloth articles I chose to draw of and their arrangements. Every article I chose has a relevant personal connection to me, and I used values and focus points in my art to further address them. For example, I chose to arrange the watch and the black cat on of the rule-of-thirds focus points, this way they could draw more attention and express how time is  important to me, and suggest my love towards cats.

Articles 

Click on the above link for a clear picture ⬆️

Envision

Planning several of perspectives by doing compositional sketches in my sketchbook before creating my final artwork helped me to picture what scale or angle are reasonable to use for my artwork. Although the final piece was not composed out of any of the 4 composition sketches, I had a better understanding on focus point and is more aware of how the rule-of-thirds can be highly impactful when creating a composition.

Compositions

Click on the above link for a clear picture ⬆️

Develop Craft

Throughout this project I learned how to handle and correctly use different types of charcoal materials, and was able to reflect on each’s pros and cons based off from my art process. It is especially interesting for me to see and experiment with the different effects and texture a piece of material is able to create just by using its many different angles, surface (e.g. tip of the vine charcoal vs. its sides), or its pressure on the paper.

Art Materials

Click on the above link for a clear picture ⬆️

In this fast-and-slow drawing project, I made an A3 drawing of the rickshaw using water color and pens, incorporating gestural lines and continuous contour lines.

Gestural drawings are quick drawings or even sketches created to capture and present the basic shape and form of an object or figure. In a gestural drawing, the media  can be lifted off from the paper as many times as the artist likes, putting all focus on not the details but the overall shape. On the other hand, continuous contour line drawings are unbroken line drawings made of a figure, which focuses on its details and drawn as precisely as possible, which is the complete opposite to a gestural drawing. It is also important that the drawing instrument only leave the paper when essentially needed and as minimum as possible.

For this project, 3 small portions of different water color paint (which were of analogous colors on the color wheel) were my media for the gestural drawing; and pigma micron pens of different sizes were the other media, which is used for the continues contour line drawing. My sequence overall is watercolor/gestural, then pen/contour, and at last even smaller but non-continuous details. More specifically, the first thing to do (after finding a suitable drawing level and perspective), is to create the gestural drawing with the water color. Before starting, add a suitable amount of water to the paint, so that they won’t be too dark nor light on the paper (in my opinion, having lighter water colors actually works better than having too much paint). As an approximate 1 minute timer is set, quickly outline the figure with the paint. I found that it also works the best if the 3 colors were mixed and water added to the colors temporarily, to create a sense of dimension and values. Once the colors dries, I used the pens to make more proportional outlines and to add in the details. I also adjusted the thickness (when need, to add the sense of value) to indicate shadow and value. In my work, I spent most time looking up at the rickshaw and observing it, rather than at my paper, which is another thing that should be included in a continuous contour drawing.

For ones who might be interested in doing a fast & slow drawing similar to this project, several of pointers for this project includes things such as the focus point, timing, and other reminders. When doing the fast drawing, it is possible to look at the object, and just follow the outline with the brush to draw a quick outline out with a lighter color. Then, still going fast, go over some parts of the former color, add in values and mix the colors to represent how dark or light one place might be compared to another. After that for the continuous contour lines, always remember the outline of the gestural drawing may be completely out of scale and different to the real figure. It is important to recognize that the contour line drawing may turn out into something completely different than the gestural drawing, but always remember to look up at the object often and check if the lines are going correctly. Finally, don’t be afraid to draw the lines with a single move, just take your time to go slow and accurately.

For me, not being able to use pencil is the biggest challenge I faced in this project. As we all know, pen is thick and not erasable, and I always found it hard to use without having an outline to trace over or reference. I did have the lines from the gestural drawing, but they actually caused more confusions than help or reference, because it is sometimes hard to determine if they are right and make choices between looking at them or the actual object. The temptation to shade also caught me as a challenge, and I did shade the cover layer of the rickshaw when I first started with confusion and frustration, but in the end I managed to force myself out of the habit (as shown by the right section of my piece).

From this assignment, I learned how to calm and work myself through when faced with an enormous project without pencil and erasers, this takeaway could possibly help me with my charcoal drawing in Art class. I also learned/improved on using pens of different thicknesses to add value to my drawing and make them more stand out. If I were to do this project again, I would defiantly pay more attention to the wires of the wheels (which I found hard to analyze which goes where) along with its details.