Spartan Helmet

Giovanni 11 February, 2019

This project is called "Spartan Helmet" as it is based off a photo of a Spartan helmet that had turned green from age. This work of art was a new style of art for me and just as exciting as all of the other projects that I have done. I created this piece of art by downloading a photo of a spartan helmet online and then printing it up. After I had printed the photo I gridded the paper into 1 by 1 cm squares. I gridded another piece of paper the same way so that the grid for the photo and the paper was the same. This work of art was a color study. which meant that I had to copy the colors of one square into the opposite square on my paper. Each square was made up of pure color, different colors blended to create the average of each square.

I used oil pastel for this project. Since I had worked with oil pastel before, I did not find the overall creation of the work overly difficult. Since the picture that I used as a reference featured a Spartan helmet that was green with age, the colors that I worked with were mainly greens and some yellows. In some areas I used red to create a sort of brownish rust-like color that was sen in some places. Each square took about a minute to create, due to the studying of the square and the averaging of the colors that I worked with. Because of this, the only hard thing about this project had been the time that was put into it. All the colors in each square was blended in my mind to create the average of the square, which was the color that the entire box turns out to be, after I blended it. The time that was spent on the project was particularly longer than some of my other projects. There was a total of 580 squares in my work which meant that I had at least spent 580 minutes working on this particular project.

There were few things that I could have done better on this project. One is that I wish that I had more time to fill in some of the gaps between the squares and make the picture look more put together. Another thing that I wish I could have done better is more a matter of resources. I wish that I had my own oil pastels including some of different shades which would have made blending easier. However, this was a great and useful experience that I learned much from. I hope that I will do more with color in my next projects and can't wait for my next new one.