Time Capsule

For the time capsule drawings we we were given 4 prompts and told to use them to create 4 different paintings. I decided before starting my pieces that I was going to use ink. The first one is of myself in the mirror. I drew out what I looked like while looking in a mirror and then started adding color with the ink. I only outlined my neck and face in oder to make them look sharper and left the rest with the ink. This makes me think of it as cartoonish with the different white spots and shades. The second is my feet at the beach. We were supposed to do our foot in an interesting position so I drew my first foot upright and added a second one in the back to make it more interesting. I drew out the foot before deciding to outline it with an ink pen. I drew some of veins and the toe nails. Then I needed a background so I decided to paint a beach because I thought that many people go barefoot at the beach. For the third we were tasked to draw something that we disliked. I thought of popcorn as my object that I dislike and decided to run with it. I drew the bowl and then started doing the individual popcorns. After drawing those outlines, I colored them in. The bowl I painted red and the popcorn was a combination of different yellows. These colors reminded me of a retro diner so I painted the background as a checker board pattern. For the last one we had to use perspective drawing to draw the side of a building. I started to sketch everything out and did a brick house that I thought would be cool. I drew the window and the bricks according to the perspective point I made. After everything looked right to me I decided to line it all with pen and then add color. For a background I added a tree with grass around it. I did a gray sky because I had no blue water color and for the rain I used small amounts of blue acrylic paint and added it to the window as well.

All of my pieces show good contrast between colors and between the background and foreground. Pattern can be seen in 3 out of 4 of my paintings as in the stripes on my shirt, the checker board in the background of the popcorn, and the bricks of the building. I wanted to make my pieces more interesting so I tried to activate as much space as I could, leaving little white space. In the first painting the leading are in the jacket because I made it a darker than the blue I colored it with. In the second one, the leading lines are in the veins and the outline of the feet. The third one uses more grouping than leading lines. The popcorn being so close together creates a group feeling. In the last one there is selective focus. The bricks of the building are very clear and focused, but the grass and the trees are more fuzzy and have no definite outline.

This project led me to enjoy the use of ink as a medium. I learned how to control it better than last year as well. Overall I find these pieces to be my best this far in the year. I'm happy with the way they turned out and want to use ink more.