Mini Projects

Negative Space Mini Project

Artist Statement

For this project we were tasked with finding negative space in our lives. We took images of negative and positive spaces and picked one of the images to recreate in our piece. From there we sketched the image’s negative space. After sketching the base of our work we customized it with color. My reference image was a close up of dried roses in a vase. In my positive space I chose to add a black and red ombre using oil pastels.

The title of my piece is “Dark Red” like the song by Steve Lacy. I think this title suits the piece because not only is the main color of the piece dark red but it's a very simple title and I was trying to experiment with simplicity with this piece. This piece incorporates the elements of art including space, color and texture. The principles of design I incorporated are contrast and emphasis. The primary element I focused on including space, I utilized contrast in my piece between the plain what background and the sharp black outline of the roses to accentuate the positive and negative space in my work. Within the color itself I created an inwards facing gradient within the positive space to create a certain amount of dimension within the 2d space.

My process consisted of first sketching my project. From there I decided on a color palette and a style I wanted to implement. I picked my media (oil pastels) and began making a mock up of my project in my sketch book by tracing my original image. After I had a tracing I used tape to make a stencil for my oil pastel shading and then I removed the tape. Once I felt confident in my idea I repeated the process I did in my sketchbook on the large scale drawing. When I got to the point of removing the tape on the real piece I kept encountering the issue of the paper ripping. Since there wasn't much I could do about this I continued to carefully remove the tape. I chose to not paint over the rips in hopes of not accentuating them so instead I opted for photographing and touching up the image in photoshop.

I wanted to challenge myself with something I don't typically try, making my work clean and simple. I think this was a good challenge for me and I hope to make more attempts in the future. Personally I would have liked the piece to look cleaner than how it turned out but I'm glad I made the effort. If I was to do this project again I would find a paper that doesn't stick to tape very well or make a different kind of stencil to keep my background clean. Another thing I would try differently is trying watercolor instead of oil pastels to get a smoother gradient.

Papercut Ghost Portraits

Artist Statement

This project was inspired by artist Samantha Wall and her "Ghost" portraits. We started by following a tutorial on proportions with a reference photo we each took of ourselves. This produced the drawing as seen on the left. from this stage we came up with out own ideas on how to execute our work based of Wall's style. I chose to, unlike Wall add colored line details of other features on my face. Once I had my idea I took my original drawing, removed it from my sketchbook and erased all features except my eyes. Then I watercolored black and while values on top, added the line features and went over the drawings on the eyes in pen.

Since we called these Ghost portraits in the spirit of Halloween, a week prior to the holiday we took these pieces, cut them out, mounted then on foam boards and hung then in windows around campus.