Sands of Time II

This is my 3rd independent piece, the 2nd attempt at "making time", building on the first Sands of Time. Is not crooked, this is a perspective distortion from the camera (I did my best). India ink and watercolor, with an art nouveau twist. The border does carry the theme of time using clock hands along with 9 and 3 positioned where they would be on a clock. The colors are a tad more vivid in person.... Overall, I am pleased with the outcome yet willing to hear any suggestions for improvement.

Piece #7. I redid the "making time" prompt and tied it into the mythical sands of time, which Zeus collected from the blood of his slain father, Kronos. The majority of the peice is in soft pastel, which I had never used before. The bottom half or so of the "blood" is actually sand. IT IS NOT CROOKED. It just looks like it because of the way it was cropped. It's not a complete failure, considering I have never used pastels or sand before. Still, I note there is room for a lot of improvement.

Mahamayuri

Art 4 Piece 6. I chose to develop my altered book entry for "Glory". Originally in the altered book I tried to do a gold wire outline of a peacock, with the crown enlarged and stylized. It did not work, and turned out very dissappointing. So, I ix-nayed the wire altogether and did my outline with gold acrylic instead. It worked much better. I also filled in the body with a peacock feather pattern and used black acrylic for the kanji in the back- it just says "peacock" (or at least I hope that's what it says).

Why kanji? My inspiration for this piece (to tie it into my concentration) is the Hindu/Buddhist diety Mahamayuri vidyarajni- the peacock diety of wisdom. You can read about it here: http://fudosama.blogspot.com/2006/04/kujaku-myo-o.html

Fountain

This is for the "woven painting" project. My subject/theme is the mythical fountain of youth. For the first watercolor I used predominately yellow with some green, the second was predominately red with some purple. Weaving the two straightforwardly did not work out well for me, so I cut out unequal strips of various length and wove those. I think the end result is passable but not spectacular (which is fine by me. I did not like this project very much).

Shiva

This is my final peice for project 4, the experimental portrait. Overall, I think it's okay. Not outstanding, but okay. I do like how the actual portait came out, I haven't tried doing a face in such unnatural colors before and I'm pleased with it. The Indian goddess of destruction and creation, Shiva, was my theme for this project. The "flame" repeating pattern and the color choices were derived from Indian culture.
As far as what I don't like, I had originally tried to do this in watercolor. It was a flop, but that is why the background is more pastel. I also could not recreate the blue exactly, hence the dark splotch ( I thought it was the right color right up until I photographed it.).

Diana in the Woods

I think everyone has those pieces they'd rather nobody saw. Ever. I happen to have a lot of those, and this is one of them.
It started out great. I somehow scrounged up a moderately cool mixed paper background (mostly on luck). I was using India Ink, one of my favorite mediums and for the first time in my drawing experience trees looked like trees. Life was good. I even had an idea of how to satisfy the criteria for the project while tying it into my mythology theme. There's a story about the goddess Diana bathing in the woods, and when she sees a peeping tom she splashes her water on him, cursing him to change into a deer, who is then hunted by his hunter friends. In my head it looked good.

Not so much on paper. So, here it is. Please don't poke too much fun at it.

Unknown Student

We did these pieces with hand-fashioned twig "pens" dipped in ink, and then added color.

I chose to use watercolor to add in the color, and because watercolor and india ink are two of my favorite mediums, I really enjoyed this assignment and feel good about the finished product. If I were going to do this again I think that next time I would color the shirt the same way I did everything else, only on the shadows and creases, and see how it comes out then.

Thumbelina

This is my submission for the erasure drawing project. I chose a flower and "animated" it using this technique to bloom, with a tiny Thumbelina inside, tying it to my theme here.

My favorite parts are the flower itself, which I think came out nicely, and the grassy background. I was worried the way I did it would look trashy but I'm glad it came out alright. If I had to do it again, I did make a mistake in adding poor 'Lina last, and you can see the outline of the lower behind her since it is in charcoal and hard to erase.

Other stuff- NOT RELATED TO CLASS

These are mainly other projects I have done over the past year I am proud of-or at least not ashamed of- and I wanted to post them here. Please don't feel obligated to go through it. :)