Painting 2

"Baseline Tree"

Acrylic on Paper, 2023

For this painting we were supposed to make something to show where we were at and to kind of get an idea of what we liked painting. I decided to do a tree, because it is something I like to paint, and since i typically use watercolors, I wanted to try painting one with acrylics, as I knew that is what I would mostly be using for my projects this year. I started by sketching out the basic size of the tree and then I mixed the different reds and browns that I would be using. After I had painting the tree, I felt like something was missing, that's when I decided to add a sky. I knew it was a bad idea since the tree was already painted, but I think that it still turned out okay. This piece doesn't really have any sort of meaning. The most difficult part was definitely getting all the different shades of red and brown to blend and look like leaves without just creating giant blobs. I overcame this challenge by doing certain colors or spots of the tree and then waiting for it to dry before continuing to another spot. If I could change anything I would definitely do the background first and then the tree second. I would say that this is kind of realistic. I think what makes this unique to me in the way that not everything is fully blended and it's kind of messy. 

"Music"

Acrylic on Canvas, 2023

For this painting we were instructed to do an expressive painting about ourselves, so I chose to do something with music. My original plan was to just do a painting of earbuds.. I started by painting the green "tie-dye" background, since green is one of my favorite colors. Then I started doing the earbuds, and once those were painting I added the music notes. I felt like something was missing, and that when I decided to add the vines and flowers, plus the stars. There was a big awkward space in the corner, so that when I decided to add the Florence + The Machine picture, as I felt it matched the overall vibe of the painting (plus it's one of my all-time favorite albums). This piece doesn't really have any sort of meaning other than to be yourself. The most difficult part was making everything look good together and not it just being one big mess of "oh I should add this too". If I started over and could change something, I would honestly just change the planning out part and making sure I had an actual solid plan before starting. I would say this is abstract, I think it's unique to my style because it wasn't really planned and kind of just thrown together, but it ended up looking pretty decent.

“In the trees”

Acrylic on Canvas, 2023

For this painting we were instructed to create a painting that tells a story. I decided to create something kinda Taylor Swift related but also not super Taylor Swift related. I chose to use trees to represent each album with trees, so each tree at the bottom of the painting is a different album. There is also a song called “invisible string”, so I decided to use a gold “string” to tie all the trees together, which doesn’t really make much sense unless you listen to the song but yeah. I also decided to add a black background behind the trees and a tie-dye background at the top and blended them into each other to represent lover and reputation (two of her albums). I also added flowers going into snakes to show this as well. The most difficult part of doing this painting was probably getting the colors right for each album, and I overcame this by spending at least a couple times going over each one really trying to get them as accurate as possible. If I were to change anything it would probably be to make the trees bigger as I feel they are too small for the size of the canvas, and it looks a little off. 

“Scream”

Acrylic on Canvas, 2023

For this painting, I decided to do a painting of Ghostface from Scream as it was around Halloween when I started it and Scream is one of my favorite movies. I decided to make it pink themed because I felt that it would make the painting ‘better’ in a way, instead of it just being plain black and white. So I started by painting the background pink, and then I sketched out the relative size that the face and phone would be. Then I painted the face black and white and started fixing up different shades of pink for the phone. After the phone was painted, I noticed that there was a large space at the bottom of the painting so I decided to use letters from magazines to write “No you hang up first”. I thought that the painting looked kind of plain still, so then I decided to add only a small amount of glitter to the phone, then I decided to add glitter to the main white part of the face. The most difficult part was probably getting the size of the phone right and making it look as realistic as possible, as I free-handed the whole thing. If I were to change anything it would probably be to make the numbers on the phone easier to read as you can’t really see them because of the glitter. I think what makes this unique to my own style is the fact that it is pink and glittery. Overall I love how this painting turned out and I don’t think I could pick just one part of it that I like the most.