Circle Project

For this project, we had the ability to choose any subject, as long as it had a circle or multiple circles in it. I chose to create a sunset. There are two rocky cliffs, and the sun and it's reflection on the water. For this project I used pencil to create the sketch of the scene, and then used acrylic paint. I chose to create this because I love the look of sunsets, and the whole scene was inspired by the things I saw when I went to Nova Scotia. I love to use many bold and bright colors, so I tried to effectively use color in this painting. I also tried to put emphasis on the sun by making it the brightest part of the painting, and making things like the ocean and rocks darker, so that it would be the focal point of the painting.

In this painting I had more of a high horizon line to create room for the ocean and the sun's reflection on the ocean. I used formal balance in this painting by creating symmetry with the rocks. I made both rocks look alike, but not exactly the same to create symmetry in the image. I also created some symmetry on the horizon line by making the sun reflect on the water. Additionally the painting had a sharp focus, as the whole picture was in focus and detailed. At first I was going to make just a half of a sun and also a beach in the foreground, but I decided to go with a full sun, and no beach to leave more space for water. I had to redo the reflection of the sun on the water too because it was too narrow at first and not blended with the water enough, and I ended up almost directly reflecting the sun onto the water.

What inspired me to make this artwork was my trip to Nova Scotia. In Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, there are a lot of big rocky cliffs which inspired me to create this painting. At one campsite we watched the sunset from the beach, which inspired me to paint the sunset. This relates to my life because I love sunsets and I've always loved going to the ocean. I also love mountainous regions with big cliffs. The most challenging part of this project was definitely finding a way to reflect the sun onto the ocean. I ended up finding a way to do this by using yellow, red, and orange to create the sun's reflection. I'm proud of how the overall sunset looked because I haven't really done a painting creating a sunset yet and I feel it turned out well. This shows my strengths and weaknesses as a learner because I was able to learn to use acrylics to create sunset for the first time.