Painting 1

“Baseline Car”

Acrylic on Paper, 2023

I didn’t really have an idea when doing this painting, all I knew is that I didn’t want to do anything too challenging or too easy. When looking at all the objects we could use as references, the car really caught my eye, so I chose that. When doing this piece, I started by sketching the outline and all the small details. Once I started the actual painting process, I started by mixing all my colors that I would be using and then I went in by starting with the wheels. Then I moved onto the base of the car, adding all the small details, like the windows and door handles last. I’m not sure that this piece really has any meaning to it. I think the most difficult part was getting the wheels symmetrical. They definitely took the longest to sketch out, and even then they didn’t turn out right, but in the end I realized that it doesn’t need to be perfect, as no painting is one hundred percent perfect. If I could change anything, I would probably just spend a little more time working on the actual painting rather than the sketching, as that’s not what’s going to be seen. I’d say that this painting is a bit of a realistic style. I think what makes this painting most unique to my personal style of painting, is that you can see where some paint got smudged and where lines are straight, as my style is a little more abstract and messy. I think I just overall like the whole painting, even though it’s not my personal favorite painting of mine.

“Pink Sky”

12x12, Acrylic on Canvas, 2023

For this painting, I knew I wanted to do some type of sunset/sunrise, whether that would be over water or over land, I didn’t know that part yet. When starting this painting, I started by sketching it out on paper, and once I had a solid idea of what it would look like, I picked out a canvas and marked out where everything would be. After that, I set to mixing colors and started the painting process. When painting, I started with the water, and to begin with, I made it just completely one shade of blue, and then slowly started adding highlights and shades to it. After I finished the water, I moved onto the sun and did pretty much the same thing with that. When doing the sky, I wanted to make it a sort of orange/purple/red ombre type thing, but once I started putting some red in the sky area, I started mixing different shades of red to see how that would look and ended up just going with it. By the time I got most of the sky done, I started adding some lighter shades of pink and some white to represent clouds. There isn’t really any certain meaning to this painting. I think the most difficult part of this painting was definitely the sun. I definitely spent the most time on that. I was constantly layering different shades of yellow over top of it until it got to where it is in the end. If I were to start over, I would definitely spend more time focusing on the shape of thes sun and making it look less like an egg yolk and more like the sun. I think this painting is sort of realistic/abstract, depending on what part of the painting you look at. This painting is unique to my art style because of how I did the sky and the water and how they turned out. Overall, I really like this painting, but if I had to pick a favorite part of it, I would definitely pick the sky.

“The Girl”

12x12, Acrylic on Canvas, 2023

For this piece, I knew I wanted to do some sort of portrait, but I knew that I didn’t want to do a whole face, because of the fact that I can not do faces for the life of me. I wasn’t fully sure what I wanted to actually do for it, but still. When doing this piece, I started by sketching it out of paper, multiple times, before I somewhat got what I wanted to do for this work. After that, I found a canvas and then started painting the background. I knew I wanted to do something with blues and greens, so I figured the best way to incorporate both would be a sort of ombre, so that’s what I did. I then attempted to sketch out the actual face onto the canvas, but since it wasn’t working out too well for me, I just used a white paint pen and marked it all out. I then started mixing colors for the skin and painting that. I then moved on to the lips, mixing different shades of pink and then painting them on. After I finished the lips, I knew that I would have to do something for the eyes, so I ended up using the same pink shades for the lips, for the eyes. With the eyes, I knew I didn’t want to do regular eyes, so I ended up doing a sort of winged triangle type of thing, which sort of reminds me of that one type of sunglasses. For the hair, I ended up just using the same pinks again. There isn’t really any sort of meaning to this work that I can think of. I think the most difficult part of this piece was getting the skin to look right, with the different highlights and shades, and the different skin tones. When overcoming this, I really just spent a long time trying to mix the colors and placing them in the right spots and just really working on blending them. If I could start over, I would definitely just try and make more of each color the first time around, instead of making small amounts and trying to get those same colors again and again. In a way, this work sort of reminds me of surrealism because of the way that I did it, with all the pinks and how it doesn’t really look like a typical portrait. I think what makes it most unique to my own style is how it doesn’t look like a typical portrait and how I used the same color palette for the eyes, lips, and hair. I think what I like most about this piece is how the background is sort of dull compared to the bright pinks I used, I think it really just makes it pop and I really like the contrast of it.