Abstract Watercolor - Stonewards Glyph

Title: Stonewards Glyph

Size: 11 by 13 inches

This piece is a warm on cool abstract watercolor portraying the symbol of the Order of Stonewards (from Stormlight Archive).

I set aside an hour and a half of my schedule for this painting. The sketch of the glyph took an hour and a half. And don't even get me started on the taping. It was rather exasperating. 

Ta-da! There's what the tape looked like...

The Order of Stonewards is a pretty mysterious group, and so my knowledge of them is quite limited. But I thought that drawing their (awesome looking) glyph would be a nice way to sort of "get to know them" a little better.

So apparently the Stonewards' color is amber. I tried to get as close to that as I could on the glyph, but still wasn't completely satisfied with how it came out. Then I was given the brilliant suggestion to try using pen and colored pencil to bring out the contrast even more. I really like how that turned out. :D

Another part of this project was to use complementary colors to bring out the 'abstract shape', so I used a lot of violets in the background. But then I wasn't quite happy with the amount of red in the initial wash, so I ended up adding a lot of teal and blue before the water dried.

I'm not normally a "tape things out first" sort of painter, but I think tackling a project with such a huge amount of taping has helped me learn to better appreciate the usefulness of painting. It was a fun (if time consuming) project. ;)

Captain America Pony

Title: Captain Ameri-Pony

Size: 4 by 5 inches

This piece was my attempt to draw what Captain America would look like as a My Little Pony.

I... actually have no real excuse for this drawing. It was late and my sister and I get into some weird conversations. That's all I can say.

This piece was actually super fun, though. I really enjoyed trying to work out how in the world I could make Cap's costume work on a pony. Every time I look at this drawing, I start cracking up. It's just so random! So that's why I ended up posting it here. Hopefully, someone else can find it and be amused by it too. :)

Week 9 - Final project

Title: Keep Calm and Shall On

Size: 14 by 11 inches

This unfinished collage piece shows Shallan, sketching the shattered plains.

This picture's title is a play on words, because the girl's name is Shallan.

For my final project for Art 1, I decided to do another collage project. I had never experimented with collage as an art style until our assignment earlier this semester, but I had so much fun last time, I simply had to try it again. This time, I decided to do Shallan, as show on the inside cover of Words of Radiance. Here's my reference image:

So I started by drawing out a grid and contour drawing in my sketchbook, and then started looking for pictures of clouds I could use in the background. The picture at the top is the result of nine and a half hours of work done in ten sittings. I'm incredibly happy with how well it's turning out and looking forward to continuing to work on this project. :)

For anyone who might be interested in seeing how the collage came together, I've been tracking my progress from session to session on this document.

Week 9 - Owls

Title: Strigiform Portraits

Size: 10 by 14 inches

In this piece I tried to portray the facial expressions of a few different types of owl.

I love owls. They're fascinating creatures, quite cute, and their facial expressions! Owls have very expressive faces. Some (like the eagle, snowy, or great horned) seem perpetually grumpy. Others (like the long eared, great grey, or saw whets) seem perpetually surprised. I realized I hadn't done any owls for this class yet, so I figured that this would be an excellent assignment to bring them in for. :)

I had tons of fun trying to come up with different owls to draw. I think my favorite is the barn owl. I've always had a soft spot for them, and my barn owl turned out surprisingly well, I think. This assignment was interesting because I had to try to translate the owls' faces onto paper while highlighting their expressions. It was fun. :)

Week 8 - Aerogami

Titles: The Jason Write (above) and the Crooked Nosed Cruiser (below)

Sizes: The Jason Write is about 5 inches long and 4 inches wide, and the  Crooked Nosed Cruiser is about 9 inches long and 4 inches wide.

This pair of paper aeroplanes portray the balance between flight and aesthetics that appears when one ventures into the world of aerogami.

Where to start... Well, to be honest, I wasn't stoked about doing paper airplanes this week, but now, I'm have totally gotten into the spirit of aerogami. :)

It's like origami (which I enjoy) combined with flying (which I assume I would enjoy)!

The Crooked Nosed Cruiser is a Merlin from paperaeroplanes.com. It seemed like a straightforward choice for the distance contest, and straightforward did it fly! After a few initial crash landings (crinkling the front of the plane and earning its name), followed by some quick reading on paper airplane calibration, my plane was flying better than I had imagined! Of my three throws, I had an average of 23 feet and a best throw of 31 feet. I'm quite proud.

The Jason Write is a Ketch from paperairplaneshq.com. I'm afraid I had to name it after the main character from Defending Elysium, which is currently my favorite science fiction short story, due to the plane looking sort of like a spaceship of some kind. It still won't fly straight, despite my efforts, although it will do some rather interesting flips and twists. :)

Anyway, I'm very glad I got to do this project! It was a bucket load of fun!

Week 8 - Animal

Title: Munchin' on Some Lettuce
Size: 8 by 6 inches
This piece shows my little brother's pet tortoise, Squirtle, as she chows down.

I enjoyed doing this sketch. I've never drawn a turtle in colored pencil before, so I had fun trying to show the texture. :)

Week 7 - Watercolor Painting (Part 1)

Alright. So for art this last week, we've been working on putting together a great big watercolor painting. Unfortunately, I'm not quite finished yet. For my watercolor piece, I'm trying to replicate this image:

I've not quite put in the time I'd like for this project, so I'm not quite finished yet. Fortunately, I am making progress from the blank piece of paper I started with. Here's what I have so far:

It's 14x11 inches and currently under the working title "watercolor bighorns". Very original, I know. There's still a lot of work to do (mostly with greens), and the picture still has rather blurry look to it, but I'm looking forward to trying to bring out the eye popping color this picture deserves. I'll try to remember to post the the final product when I can find the time to polish up the piece. :)

Photo from http://glacierparkmagazine.com/wordpress/?p=65