For this project, I had an idea of wanting the colors I put within each building to match with each other because I knew due to the amount of buildings that I was doing, (with the exception of 1) I would have to do 2 colors in each. There was also an idea/attempt to make the different shapes within each building fit smoothly. I believe I accomplished both of these, and that the colors match and the shapes within each building do flow smoothly. I knew I wanted to do something city-inspired for this project because I had the idea of separating the colors into the different buildings. At first I was going to do something inspired by New York City, however, I wasn’t sure how I would accomplish that and went along with an idea I had in my head rather than basing my project off of New York City. I was happy with this decision because although I am not 100% satisfied with the final project, I still do like the outline of the buildings that I had created. I liked each of the shapes I chose for the buildings, and believe that they got my idea across quite well. I chose to make what I made simply because of the idea that I had in mind, at first I was going to do something simpler like just using different shapes for the whole piece, but then somehow began to think of New York City which lead me to make my own more abstract city for this piece.

The paper used for this project was canvas due to the fact that it is MADE for acrylic paint. I used pencil to sketch out what I wanted to do and sketch out each shape, and the acrylic paint to fill in those shapes as well as for the background. In general, I don’t really enjoy using acrylic paint and found that out through this project. I might enjoy acrylic paint if it was something more realistic, however for this specific project, how long everything took sort of began to test my patience and I began to get frustrated. Acrylic paint is definitely not my favorite thing to work with, but could be fun if I was more passionate about whatever project I would be using it for, and more fun if it was more realistic and not just geometric. However, since I had never used acrylic before, sticking with a geometric project was a better choice because I didn’t know how to paint realistically with acrylic, so would most likely not be satisfied with the results.

The first step of this project was the sketch. I began to sketch out the buildings on a horizon line I had drawn, trying to make sure I could split each of them into fourteen different parts for the two colors I planned to fit in each building (excluding one, where there would be only one color). After that I began to sketch out what I wanted to do for the water which was a bit harder because since I was doing it freehand I wasn’t sure how I would make sure that each of the shades/tints for blue would fit evenly or just fit at all. In the end I was able to make all of those shades/tints fit. At first I was going to do a moon in the sky and put my yellow shades/tints in that moon, however, decided not to after the buildings had already taken up a good amount of space in the sky. My project evolved as I kept deciding how to divide up the buildings as well as what colors I would match up for each of them. The color brought life to my piece and life to the specific buildings. It evolved from just a sketch on paper to a full painting. My next steps could be to continue practicing with acrylic, even if I don’t enjoy it, in order to get used to it.