Value still life graphite drawing

Form study plaster and wood sculpture

1. The two largest, most developed, and overall quality projects that I produced this year were my pencil drawing still life, as well as my plaster-wood sculpture. Both took a massive amount of time and refining, building detail by detail, to make a quality finished product.
2. In these projects, stretching and developing shined through, along with craft developing. The greatest elements were things like the refined shine on the can, giving it a realistic effect, and for the plaster, the ultra fine sanding was a time consuming detail that utterly changed the piece from interesting to a great work of art. Graphite was already a very familiar medium for me, but using specific lighting with chosen objects was a slightly different experience in how graphite could be applied. It was less abstraction, and more realism and representation, which involved some creativity in how to translate what one sees into a cohesive image. As for the sculpture, both were very odd, new materials. Plaster was surprisingly shapable, but also very delicate and light. Wood is very stubborn however, and much more high powered tools and precision must be used to manipulate it. Overall, both elements worked together, making a nice contrasting blend of light and dark, and smooth and textured. 
3. Probably my worst piece was my texture relief sculpture. The likely cause was my persistence on using the white piece of plaster in it. It was a cool idea, because the texture of smoothness was fairly interesting. But I could have done much better in how I did it. A smaller piece could have been used for one thing. I also could have poured it myself, rather than using a found piece, but I was afraid I wouldn't have gotten the same interesting texture. Also, the cracking could have been much more tactful. It was not well thought out at all, and it ended up screwing up from the very beginning. I wish I would've done more trial tests to see how plaster breaks. The overall project would have gone better, had I let it evolve, and not try to salvage something that just wasn't going to happen. 
4. In skills, I think my ability to make things as I see/visualize is fairly good. My paintings and drawings were fairly realistic I thought. And though it didn't start out as I liked, the basic idea in my mind of wood being smoothly blended with smooth plaster turned out perfectly, and exactly like planned. When I have an image, the basic details and the ones I can notice come through fairly well in my art. 
5. I have to say, I could have worked harder on blog posts. I didn't always get them in on time, and didn't always finish them, I would really just forget. That final detail, after finishing the project is the one thing I could have pushed my self to do, to follow through with the whole project. That said, I worked exceptionally hard on some of my projects, especially the two mentioned in the beginning. Very often I came in at lunch to sand my sculpture. The thing was practically my baby. So when I was working on projects I could connect with, I worked very hard.
6. (Mixed with answers for question 7 also: habits outside studio) I am excited to move into new mediums out of everything. It was definitely fun refining things like graphite, but I can always do that at home. Being at school, exposed to all sorts of resources, there are many exciting opportunities to pursue, especially in mixed sculpture. I love fidgeting with things anyway, so sculpture works well for me. Something I'm hoping to make next year is a special type of flute for a friend of mine out of clay. As for outside projects, this year, I'm going to start glass blowing at the crucible camp in oakland. I've done some glass work before, but this will be a new exciting experience. Also, when I turn 16, I will be eligible for bronze casting from a wax form, which sounds extremely exciting, and I look forward to. As for habits I learned, attention to detail and going that extra step was something I was taught. When you go all out on something and go the whole nine yards to really make it good, it pays off. This includes small details and persistance. I hope to use this in many projects I might encounter throughout life. 

Landscape

I first began this project by experimenting. The medium of ink, although very versatile and full of options, is fairly hard to manipulate. A variety of tools were used to spread the ink. Wood was challenging and annoying to use because it usually immediately absorbed the ink, no producing long lines. Calligraphy pens worked alright. One specific calligraphy pen worked fantastically, making long continuous lines, which were probably the most trying thing to create. Textures, mountains with trees and leaves however were a totally different problem. I found two techniques that I liked. The first was using a tissue to spread the ink, making it grainy and faded. I never tried adding water to lighten ink, but this was a nice way to keep textured noise, for things like background mountains. The other technique I found was just picking stems of different plants, which had very specific textures that could be used somewhat like a stamp, very good for replicating leaves and distant trees.
I'm happy with my final drawings, the only thing I don't like is the front title, which went a bit awry in writing my name. Other than that, it looks fairly nice in my opinion.
The photo process, having previous experience, was fairly straight forward. My favorite location was at the lake, where there were some amazing reflections on the water, and cool clouds in the sky. 12 pictures went surprisingly fast, but I like the one I got. My favorite picture is on the front cover, and I believe there was a mistake in the developing process. It created shaded areas, making the picture look somewhat like a piece of cloth. It came out interesting, and became a nice mistake.
The overall theme of the book ended up being mountains, which tended to be my best work.

Currently I am making the center figure to be among two smaller wood figures coming from the base. His arms will be made of wood. My project was inspired by the shape of fire, and I'm hoping to capture that in the movement of the arms of the three figures. They are supposed to be moving individually, but also as one syncronized form.
















This image is from later in the project, before the last step of smoothing out, and without the wood element. It seems to be coming together fairly well, although I could have thinned out the sculpture slightly more, I was just too afraid of shattering any piece of it.

Final Product: 

Completely sanded, with micro-sandpaper to have smooth texture.

Wood included, carved using first ribbon, then a large handheld wood shearer, followed by the belt sander, the sander drill attachment (large table mounted sander), then a small handheld dremmel, and finally a few sets of increasing grade hand sanding.

Throughout this project, I improved my craftsman ship with graphite massively. Shadows and certain details of light and shading were very interesting to experiment with and learn about. One of the things I improved most was actually skill with the eraser. Using different sizes, eraser shields, different pressure and other techniques, I gained many new skills with shading. Erasers are actually just as important as the pencil, because they represent the light, while shading with graphite is just shadow or absence of light. Learning how to use an eraser well greatly improved the realism of my drawing and shading.

Three dimensions were much harder to represent in this project since one must draw depth on a two dimensional space. One of the ways to represent it was directional lines, or curves, much like on the edge of the can with lines contouring to the can's shape. Another is diagonal lines going into space, like on the wood blocks.

The next thing to represent was value. This was very intricate, and complicated, especially with metal that has reflective properties. This makes lots of different light and dark areas, depending on what is around the can reflecting off of it. There are ways that I eventually found to simplify it, and not doing too much detail, while preserving realism. Small horizontal curved lines worked well for metal since cans have a bit of light distortion and jitter in their reflections and surfaces. Therefore, it didn't have to be a smooth gradient (with blending), but instead layered lines. Shadows were simpler, also with shortcuts: Pitch black, thin outline on very bottom on opposite side of light source. Then fade out with simple smudge gradient for a soft edged shadow.

Graphite was definitely my preferred medium. It has risks, since it is very hard to replicate or precisely erase if an error is made. But overall, it is much more versatile, with many more possibilities due to the simplicity of the medium. Photos are very exact, and the creativity really ends after the photo is taken. The rest is only to make it look as sexy as possible when it is developed for show. Graphite however has many options, from realism, to sketchy, to simplistic, to expressionistic. Even when doing realism, there is lots of room for creativity, since one must figure out how to accurately represent exactly what they see, which is a lot harder than it sounds. Overall, I feel much more comfortable and free using graphite.

One of the ways to improve my experience with pencil is to put down scrap paper so I don't smudge anything. A lot of times, when far into a drawing, it starts to get much more opaque due to smudged graphite. This could be solved if I protected the project with a piece of paper where I'm not drawing.

For photography, I would say the most important step is making sure when you actually take the photo, it must be perfect, otherwise, you can't really get it right or any better when developing. There was lots of noise in the photos. I'm not sure of the reason, but I think a more precise photograph would at least help. After that, I just need to be more patient and careful with the baths, since often I don't develop it right, or I have developer on my fingers when taking the photo, and screw it up. I'm not to fond of the long process, but there were certain easy fixes to make my work better.

Test Strips helped a lot in this project. One of the best ways to learn how to use the materials was by experience to get a feel for the effects of exposure time, developing time techniques, and filters. Light, though simple, has very profound effects with only small changes. At first it is quite tedious to learn the methods to improve a photo, because there are so many steps where something can go wrong, so it is hard to be consistent enough to perfect anything. It definitely takes persistence and patience to get it right, since each failure takes about 10 minutes to discover. Eventually, I did warm up to it, but actually, my very best photo was my first, by some luck. It was my favorite photo anyway, so I am fine with one good one. The easiest thing to perfect was focus, since it is immediately noticeable. The hardest was exposure time, and filtering.

This project definitely developed my artistic practice, since I've never done any photo developing besides the previous rayogram project. I've learned a lot about developing techniques, and how light behaves. This is fairly easy to represent dimension, since it is automatic. Value however, is harder, because contrast and exposure must be adjusted. I learned that filters create more contrast with whiter whites, and darker darks.

Texture Composition

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• This was a very interesting project for me. It wasn't a usual medium I have tried before, and it was challenging, a bit frustrating, and but also expansive for my art experience. I was a bit to selective on the textures I choose, which made the 10 collages time consuming. I like how the overall composition turned out, but I would've like to have changed two things.

• The flow of the piece and the placement is good, but I would've like the points where they join a bit smoother.
• Going along with the same thing, the craftsmanship could have been slightly better.

Texture Relief Project

When I started this project, I immediately saw this piece of plaster during one of the presentations on how to set it. It had a nice smooth surface, but I wanted some variety, so I decided to try to make a shatter transition. It didn't go as smoothly as I would've liked, but it turned out fairly well. One of the main things I recycled from my last texture rubbing was the directional movement sweeping through the center of the design. I wanted to preserve that here. I also had some dotted textures and a horizantal row of lines, so I preserved that, and the dotted texture was translated into the 3d nails with round tops.

I like the basic idea here, but there are a few things I would've like to improve:

Firstly, I would've liked to take slightly less attention from the main white blob. People were slightly confused with it, and they noticed it took away from the rest a bit. The sticks laid out did do this to an extent, but the plaster was a bit too massive, and it was slightly hard to not keep coming back to it and not being able to see the rest. Along with this idea, I would've liked a slight bit more variety in the materials and/or the design techniques I used. I relied mostly on directional movement, which was nice, and got some good feedback, but a bit of contrast might have been good. On the far side of the plaster, there is an empty space that probably could've been used for one more element, possibly a slightly larger version of the pile of screws in one corner.