Stars and Stripes

For this project, we were assigned to use the principles of design in the American flag and incorporate those into our own piece. The criteria for this project was that it had to have the colors red, white, and blue, it had to have stars and stripes and it had to have contrasting colors. I pictured doing something as a silhouette so that the black would contrast the red, white, and blue. I decided to do trees because it was something simple that could represent nature. It would also be easy to tell that they were trees because of their shape. I started by doing a sketch of the trees on canvas with graphite to make sure I had good spacing between the trees. As I was sketching the trees, I decided that I wanted to make them overlap to give the piece more dimension. When I was finished with my rough sketch, I drew the stripes with graphite and made them in slightly different places on all the trees to make them all seem different. When I was completely finished with my sketch, I painted the entire background with acrylic black paint. I continued the painting process by painting the stripes with the red and white acrylic paints. I made sure to paint the white stripes and not just leave them how they already were because I was able to achieve a more bold, solid white that didn't have any pencil marks left on it. The last thing for me to do was the blue square with the stars inside. I knew this was going to be a challenge because I wasn't sure how I was going to make the stars all look the same. I started by just painting this area blue, then I made a star stencil out of paper and used that to make the stars all look the same. I made a grid on the blue area so that they were the same spaces apart from each other. Finally, I went the edges of everything and cleaned up any crooked lines and random spots of paint. I think this is one of my strongest pieces so far this year because it has a clear theme that is easy to identify. I also really like how well I was able to bring my idea to life. I would eventually like to go back and make everything a little more solid and bold by adding more coats of paint, but overall I am very proud of this piece.