Mixed Media
1. My idea was to make a scene depicting imagination. I think imagination fits into amusement because if you use your imagination, then you can create anything. The imagination is shown with the colorful thought bubble that takes up most of the piece. To create variety, I colored the remaining space gray, to symbolize the dullness that the real world can sometimes be. This helped to show the opposite of creativity and to emphasize the fun that comes with imagining.
2. The two media I chose to create this piece of artwork were water colors and oil pastel. In the beginning, I thought that the oil pastel would repel the water colors making it so that the colors would not overlap the pastel that I put down like acrylic paint would. And they did, to a point. If I accidentally went over the lines, then the pastel would prevent the water colors from setting and I could wipe them off without harm. Though in a couple areas, the water color did end up overlapping the pastel making some of the pastels look darker while I was able to fix others. Despite all this, some of the water colors came out looking almost silky, which I really liked and decided to keep.
3. To be honest, when we did the visual journals, I did not really enjoy it that much, seeing as it was a bit messy and you weren't always guaranteed that the tissue paper would look the same way it originally did when you finished. The only thing I really took from it that I applied in this work was the layering, and what you applied first. I used the oil pastels before I used the water color which did the pastels stand put more than if I put the pastels over the water colors.
4. There were a couple challenges I faced. One, when I was applying the different water colors, the white pastel did not seem to repel the water colors the way the other colors did, and in some areas, it completely gave way to the paint. In the end, I had to go over the paint again with the pastels. I did the same thing in the areas that the water colors went over the colored pastels. When painting the gray parts, the gray did not seem to act like water colors and completely covered the E in the Imagine on the side. Due to this, I had to redraw the E in a darker color.

1. I chose to TRY and make a portrait of my girlfriend. I chose her because obviously she's special to me but she's also impacted my life in a big way. She provides me with support and also knows how to cheer me up and keep me goin. She's one of the most important, if not the most, people in my life.
2. When I was trying to come up with the materials for my project I was looking to try and do something different that seems like it would be common but still trying to follow the idea of an uncommon media. The choice of duct tape was fun but made the portrait look very abstract and boxy and it became hard to make a portrait that looked like my model no matter how much I followed my picture. This made for a hard time constructing the piece though it was fun.
3. One of the risks I took in the project was trying to make the picture look as close to the picture I was following as possible, despite the natural boxy look of the tape. This brought on the challenge of shaping the lips and eyes to be somewhat circular as well as the minimal coloration of duct tape. This caused the project to lack value which was expected though I imagined it would be a simple fix. This was not the case as the duct tape did not let the color of the tape behind it pass through and affect the top layer as much as I thought it would.
4. My choices did make the construction of this piece really difficult. It may have been easy to put together but it was not easy to make it look like her. There are a couple distinct things I added to make it look like her, such as a small protruding piece of tape on one of the eyebrows to make it look like the unruly one that she has and the V-neck because she likes to wear a lot of V-neck tshirts. There is not a big connection between her and the duct tape though it does sort of signify the fun things we do together that although they are fun, they can get to be a bit annoying. An example of this would be like eating out when she wants me to pick where to go but I don't really want to pick.

1. When I was trying to come up with the ideas for sticky situation, I was thinking in a really literal way. I've always like spider webs, drawing a spider for an art project in 8th grade. I decided on the spiderweb minus the spider incorporating the trees and water in the picture to make it more complex.
2. I did think outside the box for the spiderweb putting in the yarn to add the 3D presence of dangling web. I also tried to add in waves to make the blue background look more like water but I was not able to remake the blue background color again and the blues did not blend as well as I wanted.
3. I included repetition with the web, the pattern of the web going around and around the center. I continued going with this idea like a real web would do for the majority of the center of the canvas.
4. I chose acrylic paint over water color because I'm not that experienced with water colors and I liked the way the acrylic blended over the way the water color did. However, that also produced the problem of when I did not make enough of the color, when I blended my own, I could not reproduce the color again which led to my problem with the waves. It did help though, when trying to add value to the trees, making different colors of brown.
5. The mini lessons were fun though I'm not sure they were extremely helpful to the main project except to teach how to blend the colors, adding darks into lights instead of the other way around. Other than that, I think that they were really fun and let us get used to the paint before we used them in the real project.

1. I chose the ideas for this project by thinking to myself what I thought would be cool up close. The personal part of the prompt came in to play because I've always thought fire was cool as well as having the figurative and literal meaning of lighting the way. Thinking of that, I drew a match as it's the basic tool to starting a fire.
2. I tried to put as much emphasis on the flame as possible, making it the center point of the picture. Everything seems to be emanating from the flame; the smoke, the light, and maybe even the matchstick a bit. 
3. I used oil pastel as my medium. I didn't use pencil because I did not see my pencil drawings as very good. I chose oil over chalk because I thought that the oil blended and showed value better than the chalk did. I really liked the way it came out, as the oil blended so well, making the flame look really good as well as a sort of highlight on the tip of the matchstick. The wood of the matchstick also looks very nice with it's texture, the way the pastel is going down the stick.
4. I did take a risk, with the light emanating from the flame. I did want to make it look as if the light was slowly dying into the black background but the pastel did not turn dark enough and I did not want to make the light too big. Though it did come out better than I expected and I have no problem with that part of the work.
5. I used technique in my drawing, trying to make each part of the drawing to stand out in its own way. I used a swirl on the tip of the match to try and give it a bit of a highlight. I made a lighter inside of the flame to make it look a bit realistic. I went in one direction on the wood of the matchstick to try and give it a real sort of look. I tried to shade the little bit of light being produced by the flame to make it look as if it were disappearing into the darkness. And lastly I tried to make the smoke look a bit wispy, using soft lines of darker blue within the light blue, giving it a sort of layered look

1. My solutions for what's the point included laughter, smiling, sleepy, alone, peaceful, silent.
2.The solution I chose was alone, because even though I liked peaceful, which was my other choice, peaceful is seen too much. You don't really seem to see many things emphasizing loneliness that often.
3. I showed contrast in the stippling of the shadows on the guard rails and in the darkness of the tunnel. I used a different method in the shading of both; stippling for one, crosshatching for the other.
4. The medium I chose to use was ink and pen, though I did outline in pencil beforehand. I chose pen over the others because it made the different structures of the picture stand out more than the pencil, which also smudged a bit when I drew my final sketch.
5 I used crosshatching in the shading within the tunnel and I used stippling on the left side barriers and for the barrier's shadow on the road.
6. Yes, I took risks during the production of this project. One, I think turned out good, the other, maybe could have been executed better. The grass on the side of the road was the risk I think turned out good, as it filled up the empty white space in the bottom right hand corner. The other, the extension of the shadow within the tunnel, did not go to well. I started the extension at the top and realized that I curved the crosshatching too much resulting in a sloppy top of the shadow.
7. The message that I am trying to convey through my picture is that loneliness is a tunnel we all go through at one point in our life. We may have to go through a short tunnel or a long one, but it is not a journey you walk in the light, which is why the inside of the tunnel is in darkness. A tunnel is dark and scary to some, and is not a place you want to spend your time in, each their own reason why. Whatever the cause, whatever the reason, you will always find your way to the light that's just on the other side of the tunnel.