AP Studio Art
Completed Works
Isaac Blandin "Shifting Colors of Society"
9x12", Alcohol Marker, Ink, Water Color, and Colored Pencil on Paper, 2020
For this artwork, I got my idea from seeing the class Chameleon in the science teacher's classroom but wanted to do something other than just an attempt to recreate it visually which led to the stylistic change.
For this artwork, I used a combination of alcohol marker and colored pencils for the more realistic portions of the work. For the abstracted/cartoon parts of the work, I used alcohol marker for coloring and blending the inside portions, and I used ink for the line work. The background is filled in with a light layer of green water color.
Symbolically, this artwork is both showing a combination of nature and a more abstracted almost graffiti-like art style which is much less natural. These all represent small things that I notice about society as I know it. The inclusion of the usage of a chameleon as the primary subject just generally represents change, but to me, it represents the wildly changing state of the world at the time of its creation.
In the creation of this artwork, the most difficult part for me was the sections which were in colored pencil since this is a media which I beforehand had little experience with especially in conjunction with the marker. I worked through this by doing a lot of pre-drawing and sketches. If I were to do this again, I would have done more work to gradient the colors to get more depth and lighting.
This art was done in my "doodle" art style which is a surreal art style where I flatten and simplify figures into a cartoon style and layer them into shapes. This is something which I got inspiration from graffiti and cartoon artists and then merged it often with more realistic subjects within a work. This has gotten more personal for me as I have used it over a long period of time and seen it evolve. I love that it creates a lot of detail and texture while not being too traditional.
Isaac Blandin "The Sea of Sins"
11x14", Alcohol Marker, Gel Pen, Ink, and Water Color on Paper, 2020
This artwork was inspired by the artwork usually referred to as "The Great Wave" by Hokusai. The changes to the work are influenced by my views on society as a whole and the ugly image that is often attempted to be hidden away.
To create this artwork, the entirety of it was created in layers or sections. After sketching lines, the whole wave was filled in with alcohol marker and then the lines were covered with white gel pen. The background was was created by using very watered down black watercolor and using more pigment for sections like the smoke. Very dark sections, such as the demon were done with ink pens.
As referenced before, this artwork shows the flaws I see in society and the ugly truth. As seen in the title of the work, "The Sea of Sins", I feel like people and society as a whole are inherently evil as opposed to the belief that man is naturally innocent but changed by experience. With this, the artwork is showing the ugly picture that society paints that many will cloud via optimism to the point of ignorance.
One of the challenges that I met with this artwork was trying to balance the artwork visually and having a dominant focal point. To overcome this, I had to balance the contrast and size difference between the demon and the wave. If I were to do this again, I might shrink the demon but add red eyes for texture.
This artwork is a very abstract to surreal artwork. Despite keeping the flat and simple shapes of the original work, I worked in my doodle artwork and changes up the colors to feel more like a work of mine.
Isaac Blandin "Nature Carrying Our Burden"
9x12", Alcohol Marker, Ink, and Colored Pencil on Paper
This artwork was inspired by the issues of pollution along with the viral story of a turtle with a straw stuck in its nose.
To create this artwork, I had to work with multiple different laters of media including the initial graphite linework that is needed for this style. Following that, I needed to lay down marker both for the doodles along with to be layered over later with colored pencil. The final layers were done with colored pencils in order to add more fine detail or texture.
As referenced before, this artwork is meant to call out the issue of pollution in our oceans and in general. This is detrimental to the life that is supported my our marine environments that are getting polluted and destroyed by our greed. By combining the natual element of the turtle with the unnatural of the pollution doodles, I hoped to get this message across.
One of the challenges I met when working on this artwork was using colors that I felt went together. I found that I had to do a lot of preparation of color choice beforehand to overcome this.
This artwork is a surreal artwork in my doodle style in which it is made up of all things that exist in real life, but they are all placed in a way that would never naturally occur and in different styles which allows some contrast for conveying the message.
In Progress Works
Sketches and Digital Works
