Final Reflection silk screen

Well, I cant believe that the school year is almost over and that means that Mixed Media is over, which sucks even though sometimes this class would be really stressful, it was still fun and it was one of my favorite classes.  The last project that we worked on was the social issue silk screen t-shirt. First we had to think of a social issue that we felt passionately about  so I chose human trafficking because it can be happening right in your neighborhood and you won't even know what's going on, also it affects little children which makes it even worse. So after I chose my social issue I had to find a picture to use for the t-shirt and I found a picture of a girl with her hands bound reaching towards the sky. I thought that was a really strong and meaningful picture so I asked Lexi if I could tie her hands and photograph it, and she said it was fine. After I got the picture I turned it into a black and white stencil looking picture. After that I made the picture as a transparency. Then I went back and printed out the words "slavery still exist" because human trafficking is another form of slavery that's going on in the present day. I also put that into a transparency so that I could overlap it onto the hands reaching out. I think that would be very cool and the words would be red while the rest of the picture would be black and white. I think that makes a really powerful point in a simple way. I didn't know what to do after I got those done and everything was just chaotic so I asked Lisa what I was supposed to do next and we came up with an agreement that I just wasn't going to finish on time and that I should just do my blog. So i came to terms with that but in the end of class I decided to go to class after school and finish the project. I can't wait to see how it turns out. This semester we have had some really cool projects like the 5 Square Composition where we made a book out of two of those squares, the Crayon Concept Piece where we melted crayons with "hot" or  "cold" colors onto a water color paper, the Animal Head Mask which was really cool but stressful, the Vinyl Record Stencils where we had to do a stencil of our favorite singer or band and spray paint the stencil onto the record, and finally the Social Issue Silk Screen t-shirt. These projects were all cool but my favorite were the Crayon Concept Piece and the Vinyl Record Stencils. I liked the Crayon Concept Piece because I thought that it was really awesome seeing the crayons melt into amazingly cool rivers of color and I really liked how creative I got to be with coming up with the words that fit how my melted crayons turned out, and in the end I was really proud of how it turned out. I also like doing the Vinyl Record Stencils because it was just a great learning experience. Even though doing the stencil was really frustrating trying to get the picture to come out right, it was still really cool spray painting and I just liked the whole process, even if it was time consuming :) The projects that I necessarily didn't like where the 5 Square Composition Book and the Animal Head Masks.  I didn't like the 5 square composition because it was hard to come up with how to arrange the pictures and on top of that, making the books was cool but it was still hard and frustrating and I just don't think that it was something that fit me artistically. I also didn't the animal head masks project because it was just so long and frustrating! There was so many things to do and it was just overwhelming. I wasn't proud of how my piece turned out, I didn't even finish it which makes me even more mad. I think that this project would've been better if we had more time, or less things to do. Other than that this semester of Mixed Media Art has been amazing and I'm so lucky to have gotten the last spot in the class, that was so awesome, so i guess it means that I was supposed to be in this class. I am really going to miss Lisa because she helped me so much and I don't know how she could help everyone in the class all the time without going insane, but she did it and I'm so glad that I got to be in her class. I hope that sometime in my high school career I can be in an art class with Lisa again. For now I'm just happy that school is over and that it's finally SUMMER BREAK!!! :D

Vinyl (Record) Stencils

For this project we had to make a stencil of a favorite singer/musician/band and put it onto a record. First we had to find a picture of the artist that we wanted, and at first I chose a picture of Leeland, but then i changed it to Beyonce because I really love her music. After I got a picture of Beyonce, I went to Photo shop and changed into a stencil. This part was the easiest. Then came the hard parts. I had to first cut out an outline of Beyonce's head shot and that was my black stencil. Then I used an Exacto Blade to cut out the white parts of the picture and that was my second stencil. This may seem fairly easy but it wasn't because I had to do that process 3 times in order for the stencil to come out right. I sprayed my record red because I thought that red really fit Beyonce because she is on fire! :D Then I put the outline on to my 2nd record and sprayed it black. I picked it up and it was good. Then I put on the 2nd stencil and sprayed it white, and voila it actually turned out good. This was a really good learning experience to do the stencils, but it was really frustrating trying to get the stencil to come out right and in the end I think it came out OK but I wish it came out a little better. Other than that I'm glad that I finished the record stencil, now onto the social issue stencil!

Animal Head Masks-African Beauty

      We are working on a project where we had to make a tape head and a human mask and animal mask to convey something. First we got a Styrofoam head and wrapped it in saran wrap and then wrapped it in tape to make a shell of the head. Then we took the tape off the head and we had to come up with something to fill our tape-heads with. I chose colorful tissue paper and this tanish long papery thing that looks like the grass in Africa. The animal I chose was a Zebra because when I think of Africa, I think of zebras. I used the clay to form a zebra nose, then I painted it a base color of white and then painted on the stripes with black. For my face mask I painted it zebra stripes to go with my whole theme. In the end I put gloss on the mask to make it shine and then I put the zebra nose on the mask by gluing it onto it. This part was really frustrating because the clay nose wouldn't stay on the head and the mask makes my head heavy, so everything was not stabilized and the tape head's neck is very weak. In order to fix it, Lisa helped me stabilize it a little by putting this foam that hardens into the head so that it could stay in one place and could be stable. So the title of my project is 'African Beauty' because I wanted to convey how beautiful Africa truly is and for me, I think that zebras are a good way of showing the beauty of Africa but also the wild heart that Africa has too. Even though this project had its ups and downs (mostly downs :p) I still learned  how to make a clay animal mask and have a concept and theme that all goes together. I enjoyed this project and I think it made me a better artist in a way, by making me think hard about how to fix problems or come up with creative ideas, but I'm glad that this project is FINALLY over. (:

Crayon Concept Piece

We are working crayon pieces where we melt the crayon and then put them on a cool or warm background. After we finish that then we have to find a word that best fits that piece and then we print out the word onto clear transparencies and and finally sew them onto the crayon papers. I think that this is a very creative project to do because it lets people see how creative you can be. I chose the words 'run and hide' for my warm crayon piece because it just fit with the way that the crayons melted on the page as if they were running away from something. I printed out the word "run and hide" onto tissue paper, then I cut the words to pit into the holes on my page and last of all put acrylic clear glue over it to keep it down. In the end the whole thing looked amazing and I have Lisa to thank for that because she came up with the idea for me. :)   For my cool crayon piece I chose the word 'caged' because the melted crayon looks like a jail cell and I thought it would be really awesome if I added a transperecy of jail cars to add a whole effect of being "caged". I cut out the transparencys to make them fit my page and i glued it on with wax. I also glued onthe word with wax. This created a kind of rugged look to the piece. I really like this one. :)

5 square composition

 In this assignment we were required to do collages on the 5 elements of composition which are positive and negative space, variety of size,variety of shape,overlap,and a definate focal point. This was a challenging project because I had to think of a story for each one then have a specific element on each card but still have all of the elements on one card. As Lisa, our teacher, talked about this project I was fretting over how in the heck I was going to finish this and still have time to do the other projects. It took me forever to try to figure out themes or stories for the cards and still have all the elements together. This is what frustrated me the most. I asked Lisa for help many times and even though she would give me some pointers or a few suggestions I still had a lot of trouble. Then right when I was on the peak of getting really stressed out everything seemed to just click and I got all my cards done. This is just another example of when everything seems to be going down in the dumps, something happens and everything just...falls into place.