AP Drawing and Painting - Pathway

Visual Journal - First Five Pieces 

I chose my theme, redrawing pictures of my friends as tarot cards because I wanted to show my friends as the well-known archetypes of tarot cards. I wanted to represent things that originally seemed powerful and serious - “the emperor, judgment, death” with photos showing kids having fun. I hope to show my viewers a variety of people - a variety of kids - in their lives, without the pressures of the world, in moments of pure emotions.

I have played with the element of color when picking color palettes for my pieces and picking background colors. I used repetition and shape in the background of “The Lovers”. I also used texture in the “Death” drawing - I enjoyed playing with the brush I picked to create a straggly texture. 

My first four pieces were digital, and my fifth was done on canvas paper with acrylic paint. I hope to use more materials in the future, specifically watercolors or charcoal.

My original piece, the lovers, was a photo two friends of mine volunteered to pose for. I really like this one because I feel like it shows the pureness of young love. this piece influenced the rest of my pieces because it made me want to focus more on the emotion and experiences of youth in my series. 

Since my series is about tarot cards every photo has to be a symbol in itself. symbolic of power, symbolic of love, symbolic of stupidity. The photo for “The Lovers”' has people embracing with a background of hearts, a classic symbol of love. the death card features ghosts, which is also a symbol of the fact that the friends in the photo weren’t my friends for much longer.

piece two, the death card, is four ghosts floating on a playground. the original photo was of three friends and me with sheets on - a Halloween trend from 2021. I thought this photo was the best one out of our photo shoot to draw both because of the larger amount of ghosts and because of the playfulness the subjects showed. I liked this because the Death tarot card is not all doom and gloom, it’s mainly about transformations and endings, which don’t always have to be bad. I also thought this photo symbolized that because it was one of the last times I spent with that friend group - we drifted apart not long after that photo was taken. 

when I first picked “The Emperor” as a card I would draw, I expected it to be easy to find a photo like I quickly found several options for the empress. but soon I remembered that photos I have of my guy friends are rarely serious and powerful; they’re rarely even posed. so this was one of the few where I had to take the photo instead of finding a preexisting one. I asked one of the guys in my art class to pose for me, and this pose is what he decided on. I like the pose he chose because his posture seems to give casual confidence, so I drew him in a similar light - a simple style with dramatic line shading. 

My fourth piece, “Judgment” shows a friend of mine reacting to a bad joke. I had this photo on my phone for a long time, not thinking much of it besides that his expression of exasperation made me laugh. When I was picking cards I wanted to draw, I thought of this picture when I thought of judgment. I kept the background of this piece simple to focus more on the subject's expression. “Judgement” is a term that makes several people nervous and seems like a serious thing, so I thought it would be fun to contrast that with a more playful form of judgment.  

My fifth piece was “The Fool” and as a teenager, I had several options for this card - kids have no lack of stupid photos. I chose this piece in particular because the “Fool” card is not symbolic of being particularly stupid or ignorant, so I didn’t want to pick a photo where a friend was being stupidly dangerous. However, the fool does highlight the joy and freedom of being young and inexperienced. This made me like this photo in particular because it was just kids having dumb fun. I painted it as close to the photo as possible to keep the photo's context and humor intact. 

My AP Art Final

For AP Art classes, the final project is 15 pieces that follow a theme you pick. I chose to redraw pictures of my friends as tarot cards