Benson Blanchard "Mountain Scape"

11,14', 2023

For my Inspiration, I used an old photo of a mountain I took a while back when I was in Colorado. Mountains fascinate me, so deciding to paint one wasn't a hard decision. I started with the road and guardrail because It was closest to me when I was taking the photo. I used black on dark grey on the road because there were some shadows in the photo. I then went into the guard rail making sure I had the shadows on it. I then went over to the mountain part of the painting. It was tough for me because It was highly detailed and above my skill level. The trees were the hardest for me because there were so many of them and they were really small. I then went onto the sky, which was easy for me. I want the audience to understand how beautiful this earth is. Most people living in Iowa will never get to see how beautiful Colorado is. The most difficult thing for me was getting all the details of the photo. The mountain had a lot of details, and painting them was hard for me because it was above my skill level. I tried to make mine a realistic style painting but It was hard for me, so it didn't end up working well.

Space

11,14', 2023 

I've always loved space, so painting a picture of space was not a hard decision for me. I started by painting the background black. Obviously, in a space painting, the background will always be black. I decided that I needed to do 2 coats of black so that there weren't any white spots on my painting. I then went to the galaxies of the painting. You are supposed to use a Sponge to blend the colors in, and it makes it look more realistic, but I didn’t have one, so I used a paper towel. I decided I wanted my first color to be a dark magenta almost. I dotted the magenta and some white on the painting and used a paper towel to blend it. At first, it was challenging for me because I thought it looked bad and unrealistic so I kept trying to blend to overcome this challenge. The magenta galaxy was kind of a straight line to the top of the painting but for my next galaxy, I wanted it to be more spaced out. I decided to use a dark blue almost for my next one. I did the same thing, blending the dark blue and white and blotting it with a paper towel. I want the audience to realize how beautiful space is. It was difficult for me to blend the colors to make realistic-looking galaxies. I had to use many different techniques to try and make it look good.