Izzy VanDerGinst's Art Portfolio

ARTIST STATEMENT

Izzy VanDerGinst 

10 x 8 in., Paint, 2024

  My Idea for this painting was to paint me and my friend Hannah. This picture is of us from our end of the year dance banquet. I would have to say that this is one of my favorite pictures of us. It took me a while to figure out what picture I actually wanted to use, but after scrolling through my camera roll for a while I stumbled across this picture. I saw some other girls in my class using pictures of them and their friends so I also wanted to. 

I started by picking out the size of the canvas I wanted to use. I decided to just stick with a smaller one so that it wouldn't take me as long. I then started to paint. The first color I uses was the green or also known as the grass. The next step was to paint the sky. I tried to blend two of the blues together to make it look like a gradient. After that I started to paint the dirt, concrete and trees. The trees took me so much time because I wasn't really sure how to make them look realistic. Eventually I traced out Hannah and I and started to paint us. 

For me this artwork symbolizes me and Hannah's friendship. We've been friends since they put us in dances together about 6 years ago. Ever since then we've continued to get closer. When someone looks at my painting I want them to think about their best friend. I hope it reminds them of some of their friendships. 

This year was my first year taking a painting class. I had no experience so I was honestly a little scared going into it. One of the most difficult things for me was blending. Whether it was the sky or the trees, I struggled with both. I like how the trees came out but the sky could definitely have been better. To help overcome my struggles I just continued to practice and eventually I got to the point where I liked how it looked.  If I could change something it would be the size of the painting. I wish it was slightly bigger because I feel like the size of the people throw off the painting slightly. 

I decided to do a realistic painting. I think it's unique since it is me in the photo. The trees look pretty realistic and so does the clouds. I'm really impressed that I was able to paint something with so much detail. 

Baseline

For my baseline, I looked up some easy watercolor flowers for some inspiration. Once I found the flowers that I wanted to do I decided it would be good to paint it. They didn't really turn out exactly like the reference photo but they still turned out pretty good. Since I am not an experienced painter, I think this is a pretty good starting point for me to be at. 

  The first thing I did was look up some inspiration. I wanted to do some sort of flower I just didn't know exactly what kind. Once I found the photo I wanted I tried to recreate it to the best of my abilities.  I basically just used pink watercolor and made two circles. I then sort of made petals and added the stems to add a little more detail. 

I wouldn't really say this artwork means anything to me but I do really like it and how it turned out for being one of the first things I had painted. I hope when people see this it just makes them think of pretty flowers. 

The most difficult part of this was just figuring out what I wanted to paint. I tried many different things before finally settling on the roses. Once I found my reference it wasn't too hard for me to keep the painting process going.  I wish I would've made it not so messy looking but I still like how it turned out. 

This is made with water color so its not really realistic or anything of that sort.  I like how I used inspiration to make this and not just free hand because I think it would have looked so much worse. I love the water color effect to it. It isn't realistic and looks more animated or cartoonish and thats what I like so much about it.

Roses

10 x 8 in., Paint, 2024

My idea for this painting was to paint a vase of roses. This is a picture I took myself of roses that I had received. After my last painting, I knew I wanted to do something a little easier so I went with flowers. I love flowers and I like how easy it is to paint them. I also got some of my inspiration from my baseline. I had seen it on my shelf and remembered I had a picture of roses that would be perfect for me to paint. 

My process for this painting wasn't too difficult. I first picked out what size of painting I wanted to do. I decided a smaller canvas would probably be better and more efficient. Next, I painted my canvas kind of a cream or off-white color since that's what the color of the background was in the original photo. I then outlined the entire picture and started to paint. I started with the roses which turned out very well and then moved on to all the leaves and stems. 

The artwork doesn't really mean much. The flowers were given to me during my homecoming proposal and they were very pretty. Unfortunately, they did die pretty fast but they were nice while they lasted.  Whenever I look at this painting it just reminds me of my love for flowers. 

The most difficult thing for me was mixing the paint colors to look close to the original picture. Also tracing the picture onto the canvas was a bit hard for me since this picture had lots of detail. I took my time tracing it out which was helpful when I was trying to blend and fill everything in. I struggled most with the vase and stem part. I filled in the roses first which surprisingly was the easy part.  

I tried to make this painting as realistic looking as I could. This is unique to me since these were the flowers that I received as a gift and I took the photo of it. I'm very happy with how well this painting turned out since I've never really painted before taking this class.