Mirrored - Nana Ashford

Nana Ashford -

This year I wanted to continue an ongoing theme I had with my pieces but also explore new mediums. So at the start of this art year I decided to continue with my theme to make a majority of pieces have balance through being mostly the same medium. Though I did like using new mediums I decided to keep my goal of having a few mediums.

For my work I decided to have a theme of bright colors and album cover concepts. I was influenced by this theme because doing digital art was my favorite form of art. I also felt that my greatest pieces in this class came from my digital pieces. Then throughout the year I found that I also like doing acrylic on canvas. That then became another of my favorite forms of art. For all my pieces I was mostly influenced by love of anime, Japanese culture and music. To gain inspiration for my pieces I would listen to music and look at the cover art for the songs that played. I would also just rewatch some anime episodes I’ve seen in the past and watch a lot of anime openings and endings. Pretty much all of my pieces have a reference or extract from one of these three topics. I also saw a lot of concept album covers and anime edits on social media and just around the internet. I always wanted to be able to make a piece like that by myself. I specifically used digital art as my medium/tool because I felt it was the most efficient way to create the art that I was going to make. The apps I used for digital art were PicsArt and Eraser. I used these two applications for all of my digital pieces. For summer break, the piece I created, Sho, I feel that this piece was very important in my use of techniques. Although it is simplistic, I did explore different techniques, specifically the different features in PicsArt. Then I also used acrylic because I felt it was a more natural perspective of creating pieces I would also like. When doing acrylic I didn’t really use technique simply because I just started and had no idea what techniques to use. So I did medium study on acrylic paint and learned some techniques that proved helpful in other pieces I would be making. For example in resolved artwork ⅞, my piece , Shinji’s Evangelion, I practiced some of the techniques. A specific technique was adding more layers. Another was adding different tones of the same color through the amount of pressure I apply on the brush.

Now I have kind of moved on from digital art and I have picked a new medium. Now I am doing acrylic paint on canvas and I like it. I find it very relaxing and peaceful. By doing acrylic I am looking in a whole new direction with my choice of mediums. I am now exploring acrylic and its techniques. Though I have made a few acrylic paintings, I feel like I need to keep practicing especially with technique which I feel underlines most of my difficulties. Though I like my digital dpieces I am still deciding to use a few of my acrylic pieces for my exhibition instead of only my digital pieces. I feel that the pieces I chose have true value and create a theme that the viewer can see when looking at all of my pieces. Overall these pieces really underline my aims in art and what I am appealed to. I also just an outward appearance of me achieving my goals in what i wanted to make in this class.

カラフル (Colorful), digital art (PicsArt & Eraser), 1170x1165px

This week I decided to do some digital art and I made a few pictures. I did digital art because that is what my theme is for my art this year so I wanted to start it for our first resolved artwork this year. The first piece I made in this series was the green picture then after I finished it I didn't know what to do so Ms. Hawley gave me the idea of making a series. So then I made a little series. For all of the pictures except for the the blue one I used character from the retro anime Yu Yu Hakusho and as the base background I used just a red screen which was from concept cover art for the album Whole Lotta Red by Playboi carti. After that I changed up the colors then kept doing my thing. In all the pieces there are allusions to other album cover art and also other things. I decide to name this series カラフル which means colorful in Japanese. I decided to name it that because of all of the colors I used and it seemed fitting.

Sho, digital art (PicsArt & Eraser), 1170x1170px

For this piece I just decided to make another original digital piece. I kept in the same realm and made a piece of an anime character like I usually do. I was reading the manga fire force and I decided to edit a character I like from the manga. So I was reading the manga and saw a panel that I liked of him and screenshotted it then I went to work. In this piece I did a little mirroring effect which I had never tried before and I liked it. Therefore I kept with it in this piece and I like the outcome.

A$AP, digital art (PicsArt & Eraser), 578x1170px

For this piece I wanted to keep going on with doing digital arts so I decided to step out of my comfort zone with digital art. I stepped out of my comfort zone with this piece in that I've never done digital for a person. Therefore instead of doing an anime character like I always do I decided to do a person and I picked a music artist I like, A$ap Rocky. After that I just did my thing though it was different for me.

T.L.O.N, acrylic, 22.5cm x 30.5cm

In this piece I continued on doing acrylic. Like most pieces I watched anime to gain inspiration. I gained inspiration from One Piece and I decided to paint a building and landscape from the anime. I painted Enies Lobby from it and just added my own twist in differing the colors then adding another aspect from an album cover. The album cover is The Life of Pierre by Pierre Bourne and I added the little lightbulb and put T.L.O.N with a black heart on instead of T.L.O.P. In which T.L.O.N means The Life of Nana.

Shinji’s Evangelion, acrylic, 20x25.5cm

So for this piece I wanted to stay on the theme of anime and use of acrylic paint. So I decided to paint the train scene with Shinji from the anime Neon Genesis Evangelion. I chose this scene in just looking for inspiration for my next piece by looking at animes. So I picked Neon Genesis Evangelion because it’s an emotional anime that deals with big themes for people. i wanted to portray that by painting a scene from the anime so I picked the train scene in where it seemed like the main character Shinji was at the peak of his depression.Then I added my own touch to the piece in adding a little landscape at the top of the piece.

All Blue, acrylic and paper, 30x30cm

For this piece I decided to try painting on canvas for the first time. I decided to use acrylic paints then paper to add an aspect of the piece I wanted to do during my sketch. Throughout this piece I found many different techniques in painting on canvas and just specific parts in my piece. In my piece i have a lot of allusions to the animes one piece and samurai champloo which is where I gained influence for this piece. I really liked using paint on canvas and will most definitely do it again.

Zangetsu, acrylic, 27.5cm x 35.5cm

In this piece I also did acrylic. I found inspiration from the anime/manga bleach and decided to draw a landscape piece from it. I also decided to use a bigger canvas to make the picture I’m using bigger and have more detail.