In this project, I focused a lot on trying to capture the best perspective on a landscape, so that the viewer could really imagine what it would be like to stand where I was and view the scene with their own eyes. When I was drawing the landscape pictures with black ink, I focused on trying to use line and form to convey the feeling of the setting on paper. I found it to be harder than I thought it would be to get everything necessary into the image, but eventually I got the hang of it and I found that I actually really enjoyed it. I did have some trouble sometimes with remembering to draw the foreground first and then the background, so I sometimes ended up with an out-of-place line going through a tree which was supposed to be a part of the hill behind it. However, I usually found a way to incorporate it into the drawing and make it look intentional, which was a skill that I learned and was able to develop through this project. For the photographs, I liked the idea of a definitive foreground and background in an image, so I took pictures where the foreground and backgrounds contrasted nicely with each other. In the first photo of the book, the foreground is the plant growing out of the rock. I liked this because the plant is very slim and slender, but it still stands out because it is in front of everything else in the picture. In the second photo, I tried to contrast the two ends of a trail visible through the lens, although I don't think that this one was as successful as the first one. Overall, I really enjoyed this project and I learned a lot about the value of line and form in a landscape.  

Sculpture Assessment

I think that I did a good job capturing the gesture that I was intending to convey through my sculpture. I didn't include a lot of details in the form of the human figure, which was intentional so that the main focus of the sculpture would be the head and the arm, and the action of sort of hiding inside the arm of the figure. I only used plaster for this sculpture, so I didn't really stretch and explore to use other mediums; however, I did use many different ways of refining the plaster to get the look that I wanted--I chiseled chunks off of it, I sanded it down, and I used a tiny chisel to etch out very minute parts of it, like the crack between the arm and the body. I spent a lot of time refining the form of my sculpture so that it properly conveyed the gesture that I was intending. I am really happy with the final finish of my form, and I think that it is pretty much exactly what I wanted it to be in terms of my intentions for the gesture and form. I think that I have definitely grown in my technical understanding of how to carve and manipulate plaster, and have developed my skills of how to etch out the things that I want to, or create negative space effectively. I think that I was very involved in reflective/evaluative discussions, and I gave my perspective on how others' forms come across to a viewer. When the people in my group examined my sculpture, they were for the most part able to see my intentions, and read into the emotions and feelings that I had wanted to come across.

Sculpture: intentions

My intentions with this project are to accurately capture the gestures of the human figure, while silultaneously communicating a sense of hiding and a feeling of shame or sadness. The figure that I am sculpting has his head buried in his arm, and is sort of hunched over, implying that he might be sad or crying. I liked the idea of doing something with this feeling because I think it's one of the strongest emotions, and when a viewer looks at it I think it's easy for them to understand how the figure is feeling.

Value Project Final Post

In this project, I learned that in order to find a resolution for any problem that I was having, I needed to stretch and explore different ways of solving the problem. This meant that I had to experiment with different methods of manipulating the resources that I had in order to find a solution. This will be very helpful in the future, because now I know that even when a problem seems impossible to solve, there are always many different ways of solving or getting around it. Also, this applies to adding shadow and light to represent 3-D form because if I couldn't figure out how to correctly and accurately represent a 3-D object, I could try different way of adding different amounts of light or shadow until it looked the way I wanted it to.

For me, the drawing part of this project felt more comfortable. However, I think that this was only because I am more used to drawing, and have more experience with this. At first, it was hard for me to accurately capture the objects in the image, and transfer them to the paper with a pencil, but after looking at it for a while, I think that I was able to manage it. I also think that drawing allowed me more room for expression, because I could experiment with different pencil strokes to convey an emotion or feeling. To improve the results of the photo, I think that I could have been more careful to really focus my photo when I first took it, because it's difficult to focus it really clearly on the enlarger. With the drawing, I think that the results would have improved if I had focused a little more on making the blacks in my drawing darker, because there weren't many places in my drawing that were completely black, whereas in the actual composition there were several places where the shadows were so dark that you couldn't tell where one object ended and an adjacent one began.

Value Project: Drawing & Photo

In this assignment, I learned that I had to really concentrate on the proportions of the different objects in the frame. I had trouble figuring out the proportions of the sandal, but I think I figured it out by looking at the bar of soap and the golf ball next to it. I also focused on making sure that the shading was realistic and accurate, so that there were shadows coming off of each of the objects. When I had a problem with how to draw something, I would try looking at it a different way or from a different perspective, which usually helped me a lot.

In this assignment, I had to decide how to crop the image so that it fit within the frame of the photo paper, but that it was also interesting and not really centered around one thing or object. At first, it was hard for me to establish an accurate balance of the blacks and whites in the photo, because they usually turned out to be too dark, and the white of the tissue didn't contrast enough against the darkest shadows in the image. In the end, I tried different ways of manipulating the apertures and the amount of time it was exposed, and I am really happy with the way it turned out, because it's not too dark or too light. To develop this project, I focused on making sure that it wasn't too boring and had enough going on in the photo, but that it had enough going on in the image to make it interesting.

Texture Sculpture

      I spent a lot of time moving around the parts in my sculpture, in order to find an arrangement that conveyed movement, but at the same time was organized and clean. I realized after a lot of moving things around how hard it really is to actually find a way of placing objects to convey a certain message. I think that my final sculpture shows a lot of improvement in my exploration of texture, because in my other texture collages the collage appears to be focusing on the shapes and objects, rather than the textures themselves. In my final project, I think that I did a pretty good job of eliminating a viewer's focus on the actual objects, and instead drawing the focus to the textures of the collage. I think that my final work is pretty much free of technical flaws; I spent a lot of time trying to figure out the best way to secure the materials to the wood without drawing unwanted attention to certain things (nails, wood glue, etc). I tried to be as involved as possible in reflections and evaluations of my work, and I took into account any criticisms that I received. I really like the end product of this project: my original goal was to convey some kind of movement or pattern in the collage, and I think that I achieved this on some level by putting rocks at both the top and bottom of the piece, which communicates some level of pattern and repetition.

Texture Collages

1. The most interesting thing about part one of this project was rubbing different textures and seeing how different roughness or smoothness would come across in different ways when they were transferred to the paper. I also thought it was interesting to see how the textures would appear digitally, and I realized that it is actually pretty hard to convey the real feeling of a texture on a screen.

2. Of the 10 photographs that I took, the image that I think best communicates the essence of a texture is the picture that I took of a tree's bark. It's really close-up and you can see all of the details in the wood. I think that it was successful because you can see all of the things that make the texture what it is––you can see the bumps and splinters that make it rough and the shadows that show the 3-dimensionality of it.

3. Of the collages that I created, I think that the most successful one was the one with all of the rubbings on it. I think this one was successful because it shows not only different shapes and objects, but also the textures within them––one of my favorite parts is the leaves on either side of the word in the middle, because they are clearly outlined, and you can easily see where the different parts of the leaves were based on the textures inside of them.

4. My most successful collage is also my favorite one. I really like the collage that I created with rubbings, because I like the mixture of both objects/actual things and the textures that they are made up of. I also like the way that it highlights the word "electric" by centering it in the middle of everything else, but it is not so highlighted that the viewer doesn't notice anything else in the collage.

5. In a 3-d representation of my 2-d collage, I think that it will be important to use objects that have clear textures, so that the end result will be interesting to look at and see a variety of different textures. I also think it might be interesting to blend the textures more than I did in the collages, because that will create even more textures than I began with.