Matthew "Splatty" DiGregorio
Freshman year I was a bit messy, pastels especially I got all over me. 3 years later some color is still visible on the shirts
Before we started this year we had to make mugs. I ended up adding a spout, and someone said it looked like a watering can. So of course I went all in on a plant theme, adding flowers to the main part and making the handle into a vine. I really liked adding the flowers, and thought it would be nice to do them on a real piece later in the year.
My first "real" piece of the year was a phoenix. This one took quite a while to get back used to art. After about 2 months of work, I am mostly happy with how it turned out.
Next up was this window. I was thinking of silhouettes through windows, then I was shown the vellum that could be used to add a faded effect built into the window. The piece has a slight 3D element to it, but is still pretty flat. It now sits over an actual window in my kitchen.
<I took the idea of wanting to do a piece with flowers and thought of Rapunzel's hair from Tangled. I have always been a big DIsney fan, and Tangled was not only a good movie but also the beginning of a new era of Disney animation, so it is a very memorable movie. Rapunzel lived the first 16 years of her life trapped in a tower with only her "mother" around (scarily relevant at the moment), then was able to go into the main kingdom. Her long hair made it hard to travel, so girls in the kingdom braided it for her. They also added flowers, and the braided hair with flowers is very recognizable from the movie. With a chance to combine my early idea to do flowers at some point, and the chance to do a Disney based piece, I couldn't pass it up.
^As far as the process of making a piece, this is one of my favorites I have done so far ever. On the Saturday before the art show, I was at my grandfather's birthday party. There was a carousel there, which my sister, cousins and I rode on quite a bit. My one cousin particularly liked one horse, so I made sure to get a picture. Flash forward to Thursday morning, the day of the art show. I needed to complete one more piece before the show. With 10 hours until it started, and a full school day ahead of me, I set out to do the impossible and complete a full piece in one day. Was this a good idea? No. Was it fun to do? Absolutely. Using class time, community time, an open period, and over an hour after school, I managed to finish it and hang it up in time for the art show. Even though it was the least amount of time I spent from start to finish on any major piece, it was among my favorites to do.
