3BrianaP

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For my figure drawing, I chose Bloodstone by Lauren Cannon. This piece is very original and has some mysterious and dark elements. I chose it because it was interesting and unique; I looked for this kind of picture for a while, just so that I was doing something a bit more complex than what everyone else was doing. Before I started working on the picture I worried about what tools I would use; not many mediums had the texture or colors I needed. In the end I translated the picture from color to black and white so I could work with pencil only, which really worked for this project. I didn’t have any other problems besides choosing the picture and the medium. In fact, this project was pretty simple, it just took a lot of time. The gridding was an excellent process for copying the image, and the pencil was an awesome tool for shading. In the end, I am proud of my work. I see it as above average in all critique areas, except for color. It was not done in the original colors, but as for shading and texture, it is very good. I am confident that my version of Bloodstone will get a high score.  = =  = =   For my digital project I used Keaton's picture. I used FotoFlexer.com for all of the editing, though I did check out the other photo-manipulation sites. I found FotoFlexer to be much easier and less complicated, yet it was just as annoying to use as the others because the site was always freezing up and deleting my work. It would also add spots of color randomly, which caused a lot of extra work. FotoFlexer is pretty much the same as the Paint, just with extra features. If Paint was on the laptops it wouldve made this project a lot less frustrating. The original picture was a bit lumpy and had some extra shapes that didn't belong, so the first thing I did (besides lightening the picture) was take the eraser and fix him up; I did leave one of the shapes behind and later turned it into a key, just for decoration. Starting with the head, I re-did the outline (except for the face) and warped the ears so they were pointed. During this process (which took forever) I added the key, belt and hat, and I also added some extra lines to make the outfit. Next I started coloring everything in, using the 'pour' icon mostly. The process took twice as long as it should have because of the random color spots, which usually erased some of the outline. Lastly, I created the background and filled it in with color. I was originally going to turn the kid's drawing into a monster because it reminded me of Frankenstein, but after experimenting with the websites I realized that would be way too complicated if I wanted to make it look good. I never did figure out how to combine the photo with a different background, so I just made my own. I hope Keaton will like my editing, especially with Christmas so close.  

For the environmental project I created my own image. I spent forever deciding what I wanted to do but in the end I stuck with my cowboy idea. Before I started anything on the final piece, I tried for awhile to get ahold of some cheap oil paint and a rougher canvas-type material to make this with, but due to price and availability I just used crayon pastels and a thicker poster-board. After acquiring my materials I took my rough sketch and re-drew it in pencil on the poster-board. I drew the fire first (because its the center of everything), followed by the human, then the horse, and then the sun. I drew the horse second to last so that it would be in proportion to the person and the sun last because its part of the background. For drawing the person, I had my mother assume a kneeling position and I used my pencil to gauge the proportions. I had to edit the torso and legs a bit to make them more male. With everything drawn, the last thing to do was color it all in. I started with the border (which I think adds a formality to the picture), then the grass, then the fire and figures, and finally, the beautiful sky. Though I colored it carefully, the pastels made it easy to mess up the outline on the two figures. I shaded the faces of the horse and man to reflect the firelight, but on the horse I think it just made it look like I colored the sun in first. The human has less details than I wanted it to, though I am very happy the grass turned out as realistic-looking as it did. All in all, this project was not too hard. It was a bit more challenging to draw a person out of real life than to just draw from your mind, but I have done something like this before so I knew how to do the proportions correctly using something other than a grid. There are a few things with my final piece that I would fix if I could (such as taking out the black smears and adding a purple outline BEFORE coloring in red), but overall I believe I did a good job. I am happy with the end result and am relieved that I got it done with no major problems, though it would've been really cool if I had completed the old-fashioned look with the paint and canvas.

