PAINTING 1

This was my first realism painting.  Something I love doing in my free time is looking at Nike shoes. When I was looking at shoes I found these Nike dunks and wanted to recreate them on a canvas.  I looked around on the Nike app and found many different colors of shoes. I thought that brown was unique and different.

Before I started painting this I grabbed all my materials. The materials I needed were paint, a blank canvas, paintbrushes, a marker, and transfer paper. The first thing I did was paint the canvas with a base color and I chose white. Then, I print off the shoe image. After, I printed the image I used transfer paper to trace the shoe onto the canvas. When I was done tracing I started to mix paints to make the shoe color. I had to do a lot of layering to get the shoe to a close replica. 

When people look at this painting I want them to see realism. I want them to see the time and hard work I spent on this artwork.  I spent almost 4-5 weeks on this painting.  The painting is very detailed to the point if you look at it it looks to be a real shoe with texture. 

Something I found difficult when making this, was the shading around the shoe. Another thing I found difficult was adding the lacing on the shoe. The lacing was hard to add detail on. It was hard to add detail because the shoe laces were white and light gray. the grey would blend into the white well so I had to add a dark gray and smear in some white. I overcame these struggles by asking the teacher and or my peers for help and opinions. If I had to do this over again I would start with the background color first then I would create the shoe.

The style of this art was realistic. I wanted the audience to see it and think it's popping out of the canvas. As someone who struggles to stick with something and to stay with it, I am very proud of how this painting turned out. I would love to inspire others to work hard and to overcome there obstacles. 

My idea was to paint a landscape. I used Google to help me find this landscape painting. I chose this landscape because it stood out to me. The bright colors and the water's reflection inspired me to do this. This work reminded me of when I went on a nature walk and saw a pond with the hill and clouds reflecting into it.

There were many steps to starting this painting. You had to print out the landscape image, then I painted a light blue base color on the canvas. after I painted the base color on the canvas I let it dry, and then I started to sketch the image out onto the canvas. When I was all done sketching it out I started to mix paint colors. Some techniques I used were brush strokes, dabbing, and blending.  

When making this artwork I wanted my peers to see the time I spent on it. I wanted them to feel the way the painting looks. I want the viewers to feel like it is a cloudy day, with no sun and it's about to rain. I did this by adding darker colors to the sky. 

Something that I struggled with was making the texture in the grass. I started with a thin brush and would make big strokes of lines of dark greens, light greens, and yellows. I figured out that the thin brush took forever so I switched to a thick brush and spread out the bristles on the brush.  It made it a lot easier to make the grass look realistic. If I had to start over I would start with painting the water before I add the grass because going in between the grass to add the water was very time-consuming. 

The style of art is realistic. I wanted my painting to look realistic and make it pop on the canvas. What I find unique in landscape art is how you have to use many different brushes to make it look realistic. Something I love about this painting is how all the colors pop and how it looks realistic.