Stars and Stripes

For this project I drew three marbles with symbols and colors inside them alluding to the stars and stripes on the American Flag. Each marble is supposed to be a different color— red, white, and blue— but the second and third ended up being a mix of all three. I chose marbles because I wanted to challenge myself to make them appear spherical and as though the colors and designs were inside of them rather on the surface. I took inspiration from small playing marbles I used to love when I was younger. Only the first red marble ended up looking close to what I had in mind.

For my materials, I used a ruler to evenly space out and border the three 3x3 squares. I then sketched out my designs with graphite, then went in with colored pencil to add color and depth. I finished by going in with an eraser to add highlights.

For this project, I originally created a collage of a starry blue sky backdropping red and white striped mountains. I chose to use construction paper because it was the most readily accessible colored paper, but I soon realized this was a mistake because of the lack of interest and depth it gave the work. Because of this, I decided to scratch that project and started brainstorming how I could incorporate stars and stripes in a unique and interesting way. My mind went straight to the eye of an eagle with an american flag reflected in it, but I wanted to do something less basic. I thought: what's spherical like an eyeball? —Marbles! I began by creating my border and creating three 3x3 squares for each marble. I sketched out the circles, then used colored pencil to add color, design, and depth to create the spherical effect. I used a white eraser to add highlights and finished by shading in shadows to make it appear more three-dimensional. My next steps for this project could be to add a more interesting background to the middle square.