Ink Project

Another piece I did this year that I really like. For this project we were introduced to using ink and though I've never used it before, I really think i did a good job with it. It was fun playing around with it and seeing that it sort of works just like watercolor, as adding water would lighten the ink. I used a separate paper to test out the values of the ink before i got started, going from pitch blacks to feather light grays and just seeing how the ink worked. I would like to re-do this piece one day and make it better, but for now, i'm satisfied with this. 

Still Life

I think this was one of my best pieces of the whole year. I used objects given to me by my teacher and took my time sketching them out and shading and adding highlights using a white pastel. I used watercolor to bring focus to the flowers. It was hard to work with the perspective but it was a good challenge.

Album Cover

Last project of the school year and another one of my favorites. We had to design an album cover for one of our favorite artists and mine is the Weeknd! He's such a talented singer and I immediately knew that I wanted to do an album with him on it. I used the name of his most current song for the title, and then chose a picture of him and got started. I used a tutorial to turn the picture of him into a watercolor like painting, then I erased half his face and used a water color brush to make it look like he was fading away. I then added crows because in the video for the song there was crows.

Close Up Photography

For this project we had to take up close pictures of whatever we chose to. This was really enjoyable to do, and i think upclose might be my favorite form of photography. I took a picture of a red berry in a cluster of green ones, a dew drop from a honeysuckle, a dandelion, a purple flower, and a baseball from the baseball field.

Junk and Death

An extension of our still life project, we had to create a still life scene from scratch using Photoshop. I of course used food because I love to eat, but I actually decided to put a message behind this. I put all the typical junk food that my generation eats, and then a bowl with a skull next to it to show that in the end we all die, so just eat what you want because you only live one life. I also put a garnish on top of the skull to symbolize that being vegan or vegetarian or whatever won't stop people from dying either. It's a path we're all going down, so let's just let people enjoy whatever food they please

Food Portrait

For this project we had to take a picture of someone or ourselves and use food to recreate the subject of the picture. This project was inspired by a Renaissance painter. This is a photo of my friend Veronica, I used tortillas to make her skin, a churro for her nose, crow feathers for her hair because that's her favorite animal, cherries to make her shirts, and chili peppers for her arms.

Mood and Message

Another fun project, we had to find a picture and edit it in 4 different ways in order to convey a particular mood. I took a picture of the side of my school and then edited it in Photoshop. I created one where it looked like a watercolor painting, then one where it was at night and I added a mysterious fog and little sparkles to represent fairies because I wanted the scene to magical. Then for the last two I created a scene that looked like a storm was coming and then a beautiful sunset.

Bee PSA

I loved doing this project! I think it's one of my best! We had to create a poster, sort of like an ad, promoting the welfare of bees because they are rapidly disappearing. And if they all die, we're not far behind. It had to be eye-catching and I think I accomplished that, this would make me stop and read it if I saw this poster on a building or billboard or something. I really don't even remember how I constructed this, I started with the meadow as my background and just went with what came to my head after that. The honeycomb came from a downloaded brush, and I'm pretty sure I used the "Bevel and Emboss" option to make it look like it was carved into the poster. I also added bee's floating around because what's a bee poster without any bees.

Still Life

Honestly this was the only project I disliked. I found it kind of boring and had zero inspiration to do anything creative. I kind of threw something together, some of these don't even really count as still lifes. Putting it together wasn't hard either, all I did was put the pictures in Photoshop and add a stoke around them.

4 Seasons

This too was one of my favorite projects, we had to find a picture of a regular tree and then split it up into four quadrants, each section representing a different season. This assignment really gave me room to be creative but it was also kind of difficult. I had trouble coloring the leaves and working with perspective kind of stumped me as well. But overall this was fun to create.

Color Pass

For this project we had to take a picture and select one part of the picture to color, in order to bring focus to it. I deviated from the original instructions because after simply coloring my friend's shirt, I thought the picture looked entirely too boring. So I decided to add some markings to her face using different blues, and then I created a chart made of gradient blues and filled them with words that describe her.

Paint Bucket Project

For this project I used an old picture I had of my friend Ron, as we would frequently have our own little  photoshoots when we had the time. I used the paint bucket tool to go over areas of her skin, hair and shirt to create a sort of cartoony effect and I really like how it came out. For the background, I used a blue of my choosing and then a lighter blue for the clouds. Then I used the smudge tool to elongate the clouds and make them more stylistic, and finally I went over them with luminosity to make them glow.

Recreations Project

Another one of my favorite projects and honestly one of my best, we had to choose some pictures from the same photographer and recreate them ourselves. I used myself (top) my friend Jessica (middle) and a classmate in order to do this project.  At first I wanted to seriously recreate these, using real flowers but I never got the time to go and get any so I just had my classmates get into the same positions as the models, and then I took the picture. Then I edited my life away in photoshop, trying to get it as close to the original as possible. For mine, I used the brush tool to add eyeshadow and then I copied the flowers and positioned them to match. For the second one, I added hair to Jessica using the brush tool as well as the smudge tool, then I copied and added the flowers sporadically. Lastly, I made the background for the last one and copied and added the flowers where needed, and added makeup to her as well, omitting the blue lipstick. 

Sequential Photography

One of my favorite projects, this assignment combined the use of shutter speed and photoshop skills in order to create motion within a picture. I had my 3 friends each do a different action, Jessica (top) skipping, Veronica (middle) running. and Bree (bottom) spinning around, and I would have to up to shut speed to capture their actions in multiple frames. I then went to photoshop and opened up the files I liked best from each photo shoot, and would copy & paste individual frames into a main photoshop document. After I got all my frames in I would lower the parity of certain layers to make them look like they were disappearing, just an artistic touch.

Text Portrait

This project was no doubt one of the most difficult. Though my teacher provided us with a tutorial, it still took multiple tries to get it right as I would sometimes accidentally move ahead or forget a step. The words I used for this project are all words that make up who I am, a majority being art terms because I'm an artist. Some of the text spilled outside of the picture unfortunately, but I think it adds a kind of cool effect. But ultimately I like how it came out, I sorta wish you could see more of my facial features but at least you can see my eye.

Character Development PSA

For this project we had to choose a positive word and create a poster based on it. My word was "Welcoming" but I shortened it to "Welcome". I decided to use the front of my high school since high school really is the very first doors opening towards your future, it's where things get stressful and serious. But I opted for a more relaxed poster and asked my friends to be in it, to create a more friendly feel. This was also one of the first times I really played around with photoshop, as I had to figure out how to gray out the other two doorways and only leave color in the middle one, the focal point. 

Shutter Speed

This was our first ever project in Photography. I had a hard time with this because I was new to the class and had absolutely no idea how to work with a camera. But thanks to the help of my friends and my teacher, I figured out how to properly do the project and complete it.