Studio Saturday on a Monday: Photography Final and First Week of Drawing

I have no idea where my weekend went. I had plans to do many things and didn't get to most of them. That includes this post (which was going to be split, but now is all in one). This post is going to be photo heavy so I will try not to ramble on as well.

First up is my final project for photography. We were to create five pieces using the techniques learned during the semester. They were to show who we are right now and did not have to be related. I decided I'm only going to share two of them here because I really don't like the other three.

This one is about my renewed love of where I live. I finally realized why I always hated living here and since those circumstances have changed, I do like this area. Not to say that I want to live in town for much longer as there are too many people and not enough space for me. Here's my piece dedicated to my love for the Red River Valley.

There was a lot that went into making this. I started by painting the canvas yellow and adding blue along the edges to make a green. Then I transferred maps of Minnesota and North Dakota to the canvas. I whitewashed those to fade them a little and then added the gel lift of the satelitte view. (If you look really closely, you can see my house! Ha!)

I painted the stereotypical heart before tranferring an image of an anatomical heart. Then I embroidered the river, connecting it to the heart. Finally, I added the texture around the edges and painted the sides black. Oh, and I stamped around the piece to add more texture.

The second piece I am showing you is my pocket full of dreams. My inspiration for this piece came from the book Personal Geographies by Jill K Berry. In the book, she made this to show items on a bucket list. Mine is more lifestyle based.

I gathered images that I have taken over my lifetime. Most are more recent (the past couple years), but there are two that I took as a child while visiting the Badlands in North and South Dakota (a must see if you ever get the chance). To pull them together visually, I exposed them as cyanotypes. I forgot how much fun I had with that in the beginning of the semester and am glad I picked that route here.

That wraps up the semester finally!

Now onto my first week of drawing class. I'm in level two, so I got to submit a proposal of what I want to work on during this four week class. I had already decided that this summer was going to be about play, so this is carrying over into class. I proposed to work with mixed media, as well as my sewing machine, and to explore how the mediums interact with each other. My inspiration is going to come from my day-to-day life and environment.

To start off, we had to create out best drawing. This instructor always does this and it is nice to have a benchmark to work from. It's been awhile since I have drawn anything other than sketches. I warmed up and did a few drawings before deciding on the one I was going to show in class. I just sat out on the deck and started drawing.

Here's part of one. I tried drawing Jameson and Angus, but they just wouldn't sit still.

Then I honed in on the danelions that are taking over our yard (and everyone else's). The one I brought to class is on the left. After our informal critique, he wanted us to draw the same thing again, taking into account the comments from critique.

I spent the rest of the first day playing around with a few things. First was this ink drawing, which I didn't finish before class ended. I also did another piece, but realize right now that I forgot to take a photo of it. If I remember on Saturday I will.

Our first project for the week was to draw the same object three times: one photo realistic, one abstract, and one non-objective. I played around with more of my materials working with my object: this beautiful, old dress form. You may remember that I painted one in painting class as well.

I worked with layering and textures here.

Then decided that I needed to get my go-to drawing style out of the way before digging into this further.

The next day, we spent working on these and also starting another project. This new one is to use the computer and projector to create a series of drawings. I had to wait on this one until the weekend when I could get transparencies made up.

So instead, I worked on my abstract and non-objective pieces. The non-objective is pretty straight forward. I picked out the basic shapes of the dress form and used a variety of materials to create this.

For my abstract piece, I started out by collaging a background of various cardstock and tissue paper. I covered this with a layer of vellum to dull down the colors of the papers. Then I painted the vellum a golden yellow, using a translucent paint. I put some pastel on the surface in the same color of the dress form and then added the charcoal outline. The final addition was the string. After seeing this photographed, I may go in and add more of the pastel.

Both of these projects are due for critique tomorrow. I did finish the projects today in class, but may make some tweeks before I go to class.

For the rest of this week, we have a few drawings to do as well as play around with making a kite. The kite will be a challenge and is basically a pass (it flies) or fail (it doesn't fly) project.

That's enough for today. I hope your weekend was a good one!