For this project, I cut out different pictures from magazines around my house to create and paint a collage of different things that I like and enjoy. Many of the things evident in this piece are things that I resonate with as well, for example, the red white and black circle blob on the left is actually an Italian plate. I am Italian so I thought I'd include that. I love chicken sandwiches, but the Wendy's variety in particular. I also, as a baby, would literally only eat avocado, so I put that in. I also like PB&J's if you couldn't guess. This project strongly relates to my life since it is made up of lots of things I like. And even gets some of my family origins in there as well.

To make this project I used a simple combination of materials. For the paper collage, I used glue sticks and magazine paper, and obviously, for the painting, I used acrylic paint. to get fine edges on the painting I also used painter's tape which I became pretty good at using in the end and it helped me out a lot.

This project was certainly challenging, I thought I did okay on the multiple myeloma painting, but this was a bit on a jump. Before that project, I had hardly painted in my life so that was nice since I didn't have to do anything crazy. but this project was harder since I had to paint realistically, which I had never even tried. All things considered, I think that I did pretty good on this project, the chicken sandwich aside. And the plate. I started my project by getting an idea of what I wanted to paint. Skimming through magazines and finding a few dozen pictures made that part pretty easy. Once I decided to paint things I like, I cut out the pictures and pasted them onto the designated paper for the collage. I found some random colors for the back as well, though the green and the avocado don't contrast very well. From there I started to sketch out my design onto the canvas, this went quickly and I began my background shortly after. The sketch helped out a lot as well, I taped the borders of the colors and began putting down some paint. Though there was one downside of the tape, well actually two. One, the tape would leave a bit of a bezel on the paint so when I went to put down a second or third layer, you could see where the paint was, but that wasn't really a big deal. The second way is that sometimes, particularly on the green paint for whatever reason, when I went to pull up the tape it would pull paint off of the canvas. And sometimes a significant amount. This was very annoying and the section of green in the bottom left I eventually decided just not to use tape since it pulled the paint off twice already. This is also the reason why I decided not to take the realistic route with the pit of the avocado, though I like the way it turned out. Once I had the background down it was time to start the main features of the painting. Using the tape technique I could paint multiple parts at the same time. I taped the edges around the avocado and started to mix my colors. Once I had done that I began. I started with the dark green on the border on the avocado, as well as put down some layers of red for the plate, and started the sandwich as well. The green on the avocado only took two layers so I pulled the tape and started the middle. While doing the middle of the avocado I also painted the plate and the sandwich in the places that the tape was covering it. And continued onto mixing the paint for the PB&J. Once I had filled in the middle I began the pit and the PB&J. I really like the way the PB&J came out in the end, I think that the cartoon-ish aspect of it looks nice. I continued to add another layer of red to the plate and start to paint the chicken sandwich. I literally have no clue how to paint realistically so in trying I failed completely and totally. From here I added white to the plate for the designs on it and continued the PB&J, I think that I got the colors pretty perfect for the PB&J I think it looks good. Next, I took the tape off of the pit of the avocado and added black to the plate. I then finalized the chicken sandwich and realized it wasn't...great. But that was okay and I finished the plate by adding a white border around it, it certainly isn't perfect either but that's fine. I started to work on the final details of the pit as well, I added tape back on and started to use white to make highlights. As I said, I tried to make the pit realistic but it didn't really work out because when I took the tape off it pull half of the pit off with it. So I decided just to paint it brown with a black shadow. From here I started to work on Benjamin's head, but realizing my lack of skill I decided to keep it to just a blank, gray silhouette. I also did the lemon wedge at this point but it didn't take long and it's not half bad either. Around this point I decided not to include the liberty torch either, again, realizing my lack of skill, so instead, I just continued the avocado where the torch would have been. I thought that I would also try and cover up some of my mistakes, literally, so I started to tape FDA over the chicken sandwich. I don't exactly know why I included this but I thought it would fit the piece. I also finalized the PB&J with the final layers at this point and added an 'Illuminati' type triangle with the dot in the middle to insinuate the reference to the Illuminati. I continued the FDA and when I was done I used white to fill in the gaps in the letters A and D. With this I was finally done. To be completely honest, I didn't really enjoy this project as much as others, mainly because I am not very good at painting, and also because I am certainly not as creative as I used to be, and maybe because it didn't turn out the way I wanted it to either. If I was to continue this project, I would probably try and learn how to paint (semi)realistically, then I would probably redo the entire thing. But small changes might be evening out the plate and making the chicken sandwich a bit better. Besides that, I don't think it's awful, just not what I imagined at the beginning of the project.