Makaela Shaw's Art Portfolio

Makaela Shaw “Flowers”

9x12, acrylic paint, 2020

I got the idea by just scrolling through google and looking at flower images and I came across these really pretty Hawaiin flowers and I thought that would make a pretty cool painting.

My process was, painting the background a solid black color, and then sketching the flowers, and then I was going to put bushes in the background behind the flowers, but It just didn’t look right and I wanted to change the painting and make it more of something I created so I put white and grey dots on the background to add more detail and color to the painting. My artwork shows the Hawaiin flower and how it’s the most popular flower if you go somewhere tropical, it’s what you will see a lot of. The most difficult part of this painting was figuring out what I wanted to go on the background like if I wanted to leave it just black or to add more detail to it to make the flowers and background to pop. This is realistic becaused this is something that you will most definitely see if you go somewhere tropical. The thing I love most about this painting is the flowers because they turned out so good and I didn’t expect them to actually turn out that good, so that’s definitely something I most love about this painting.

Makaela Shaw “Trees”

12x36, Acrylic paint, 2021

I got the idea by thinking about christmas and trees and I put the idea together to paint Christmas trees, Also I wanted more of a rusk looking one so I decided to paint the trees on a shingle. I originally painted green trees with snow on them and had snow flakes around the back for the background, but I just felt like it was too much especially on the shingle and the people looking at my painting wouldn’t know where to look because there’s so much going on. So I decided to change up what I was doing, So I painted the background black and painted the outline of the trees in a baby pink color and then I put white overtop of the trees for that snowy tree look. Then, I took white paint on a paint brush and started to splatter the paint on the background to add more detail to the background. The most difficult part of this painting was definitely figuring out what exactly I wanted to do, I kept changing my mind over and over because I had so many ideas and just didn’t know what to do, Until I had the thought of the painting matching my room so that it could go with everything else in my room, so that’s why I changed the trees to like a baby pink color with white snow on them. This is realistic because I painted it on a shingle which gave off that rusk texture to it, making it look even more realistic.