Concentration #4

For this concentration I decided to use glass. I chose glass because I didn't have enough time to do something like clay that would take a while to finish. Also I wanted to try another new material like I did with the embroidery. None of my designs that I had really worked with glass so I started by sketching some simple bee designs. I ended up choosing one that had side view of a bumble bee and one flower with leaves going along two of the sides. I hadn't really used glass before so I had to learn how to cut it by scoring it and then breaking it to get the shapes that I wanted. I chose a clear glass background because I wanted the colors to stand out. I started with a red flower in the corner and then added the leaves going up the sides. I could't add stems because there wasn't and green glass that was thin enough. Then I started the bee with a big piece of yellow glass and the put the head together with small pieces of black glass. I didn't have a lot of the black glass so I had to find how the pieces that I had fit together in the best way to make the shape of the head. I didn't have enough black and yellow glass for the bee so I took larger squares of the colors that I needed and cut them up into smaller pieces. There were some thin rods of glass that I wanted to use for the antenna but there was no black ones. I ended up using dark purple ones because I needed the antenna to show that the head was sort of tilted down. I finished the bee with some wings using white glass and then I added legs because I found pieces that were the right shape. The design it sort of abstract because I couldn't get exact shapes to add detail but I think it looks cool and simple.

The elements of art that I included in this piece are shape, color, and form. There is shape in the different shaped pieces of glass and how the whole thing is just basic shapes. There is color in the colorful glass I used for the flower, leaves, and bee. There is form because the glass pops out from the flat background.

The principles of design that I included are balance, contrast, pattern, and unity. There is balance because the main parts of it (the flower and the bee) are in corners diagonal from each other so they each take up space on either half of the glass. There is contrast in the black and yellow on the bee and pattern in the leaves. There is unity because the yellow of the bee matches the yellow in the center of the flower.