Maddie's Art Portfolio

Maddie Thiel "Consumed"

16x20, Acrylic on Canvas, 2022

I got my idea for this still-life painting because of my phone. I am on my phone most of the time, especially when I’m bored and don’t know what else to do. At first, I was planning on just painting my phone and doing quite a bit of shading and just making it super detailed. After some thought though, I started thinking about making it “come to life.” Then I got the idea to paint it so that different apps were popping out of it. I sketched all that out and I liked it so much better than my original idea. It took me a while to try and sketch out the phone because I couldn’t quite get it how I wanted it. Same with sketching all the apps. I tried my best to line them up and make them all almost the same size but it was pretty hard. Trying to decide what colors I wanted to make all the apps was a little difficult too because I didn’t want them to look too similar in color. I wanted this artwork to somehow resemble the fact that social media and electronics have sort of taken over our lives. A majority of people live on their phones and spend a good amount of their day on their phones. There isn’t really a huge meaning behind this painting so I think that people can create their own meaning for this painting. Although it’s not abstract, I think people should be able to create their own meaning. I think the most difficult part for me out of this whole process was trying to decide what colors to use and also trying to draw and paint everything evenly. I have really shaky hands so trying to paint straight lines and making things look the same is a little bit of a struggle. The whole background is black, so once I put some colors over top of the black, they wouldn’t be the exact color I wanted and some of them would look too close to the same color. At one point, I started to just take random colors and mix them together, changing the shade of them so that I could get colors I didn’t already have as the apps. The only thing I would change if I started over is I would paint the background of the actual phone before I painted the apps because I made the mistake of drawing and painting all the apps before I painted the background. Then I struggled trying not to paint over the apps and not cover any of the lines. It also might’ve not altered the color of the apps as much as the black did if I painted over the light gray. I’d say that the style of this art is pretty realistic because I didn’t use super crazy colors and I didn’t make it so you can interpret the piece and have it be whatever you wanted to be. I don’t love painting super abstract paintings because I struggle to do them. I like having a vision in my head that looks exactly like something instead of having to come up with an idea that can have people see whatever they want. Same with painting and art, I don’t love dressing in “abstract” clothing. I don’t love wearing super crazy clothing and super crazy colors together. I would rather stick with my basics than wear something insane. I love wearing some pops of color, but I could never wear an outfit that had no basic colors and only had crazy colors. I love my painting because I’ve worked really hard on it and I plan on working hard while finishing it. I’m not the greatest at drawing or painting, but I really enjoy it.

Maddie Thiel "Lit Up"

9x12, Acrylic on Canvas, 2022

My original idea was to paint a beach scene with a sunset but I decided not to do that because I draw those and sometimes paint them a lot so I wanted to try something new. I still did the whole sunset idea but I used different colors than I normally do. I wanted to do something with lights so I decided on painting string lights because I like the look of them and I could create shadows somewhere because they’re hanging up in the air. My inspiration was mainly because I saw a sunset the other night while I was driving and I thought it was the prettiest sunset I had ever seen. It wasn’t the normal colors I see in sunsets and it was so beautiful. I knew I wasn’t going to be able to copy the sunset completely but I thought that using the same colors I saw would be okay too.

It took me a while to get the colors that I wanted, but after I got them, I put the colors I wanted on my canvas and then mixed the colors that touched together by making sure the paint was wet and then just painting them together. Sometimes I would take the two colors and mix them together on my palette, but I only did that when the paint was not wet enough to mix together. For the lights, I used paint markers because that was the easiest way to do it, but I used actual acrylic paint for the color of the light. For the clouds, I used a certain brush and basically just dabbed it onto my canvas because I wanted the clouds to be faint and fluffy. I think the sky is very beautiful and I like to believe that everyone else in the world believes so too. I want people to look at my painting and see more than the sky. I want people to see that there is some meaning behind the sky. There are so many people who have had friends or family members pass away and I believe that the ones who have passed paint the sky for the people they left behind. To me, the sky has so much meaning and I am so thankful that it can look so pretty. I think the most difficult part for me was trying to get the colors of the sky to blend together. I’d get the canvas painted and then when I would try and mix the colors sometimes, one of them would be too dry, so I would end up just painting over the color that was dry on accident. Then I would mix the two colors on my palette and it would look fine, but I feel like it would’ve looked more natural if I could’ve mixed the colors on the canvas. I might change the colors or possibly use more colors if I could start over. I would also try and get exactly the colors I wanted instead of getting super close and not wanting to mess them up. I would also make sure that I could mix the colors on my canvas and not waiting for them to dry.This piece of art is pretty realistic. Some people might perceive the background differently than I meant it, but that most likely won’t happen. I love that it is a sunset. I have always loved looking at the sky and taking pictures of the sky when the sun is rising or setting because it always looks so pretty.