serious drawing skills.

a summer diy project

Final Book

Here is my final book, I am pretty pleased with how it turned out!  Adios BDS!!

Picture of Title and Contents

Table of Contents and Title Pages

My computer keeps deleting my files, but I have them saved on flash drive.  For my table of contents and title pages, I went with a very simplistic look... This is because I do not want to compete with any of the designers work in the book.  As soon as I find them Ill put them on!!!

Summer Plan

Some Pretty Watercolor Paintings

Creating A Book; My Chosen Photographer

James Nachtwey is the photographer I chose for this project. Check out his portfolio!

http://www.jamesnachtwey.com/

Summary of Vessel Project

This project was such a great experience.  I have learned so much; from different types of wood, how to use saws, rowders, and sanders.  There were so many techniques that I would have never thought of without the help of the wood shop teachers.  I thought that this project was going to be much more difficult than it ended up being, but in the end I thought it was very enjoyable.  In fact, I plan to make more boxes this summer for family and friends.  My strengths of this project were the gluing and carving.  I thought that the overall glued wood structure was very successful.  I also thought that the carving that I did on the top of my box was pretty good for never had doing it before.  My weaknesses for this project was the cutting.  Cutting was something that made me pretty nervous actually.  I was worried about cutting my fingers off, and I was also always thinking that I was making the right cut at the right time.  One wrong cut can call for a whole new box.  If I were to do anything differently I would maybe experiment more with the overall shape of the box.  But because of the my chosen object, I think the shape I chose was appropriate.  However, in my next box, I would like to make some funky boxes that are visually interesting.

Final Box

Water Color Painting

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g857UNIKQsM

Some Cool Photos

Wall Art

Summary of Designing and Constructing in 3-D

This project was focused around thinking, problem solving, and constructing in the third dimension.   Exploring new ideas, and building prototypes was necessary.  Failure, was also a large part of this project.  I would assume there were hundreds of prototypes build for this project, and I would also assume that a large percentage of them ended up not working for some reason or another.  The project started by constructing a chair out of a 4x4 sheet of corrugated cardboard and not cutting away any of the material or using any fasteners.  And then creating another chair with unlimited amount of cardboard, and still no fasteners, this project had a lot of different facets that required problem solving skills, and a large amount of patience.  Once all chairs were constructed, perspective drawing came into play.  Perspective drawings opens the eyes of all artists.  It brings sense to a simple sketch, and allows for the mind to understand what is going on in the foreground and to show distance.  These sketches were a great addition to this project.  Another option, instead of drawing in perspective was to use the Google SketchUp program.  This is a three dimensional program that allows users to building rooms, and their chairs on the computer.  I thought this program was a great experience.  There was so much to learn, and it was something new that I had never used, so the program was very captivating to an artist.

There were many difficulties in this project as well.  At first, formulating a plan for a 4x4 sheet of cardboard was very challenging.  I had no idea where to start, and I thought I would never come up with a chair that could hold a person.  With a lot of sketching, mini models, and wrongly cut cardboard, a cardboard chair emerged from that plain sheet of cardboard.  It was a truly enlightening experience once that first chair was done, it felt so good to have created something from just a simple sheet of cardboard.  Another difficulty I faced personally, was the freedom of the second portion of the project.  With an open rule book on the second part, I was almost overwhelmed, and was even more lost than the first project.  I grew very frustrated when I was not able to put to cardboard every idea I had floating around in my mind.  Which I feel is a problem I face often when I am under pressure of creating a quality project. 

In the end, there are quite a few things I would do differently.  Especially with my final chair.  I know in my head I have much better ideas than the one I ended up constructing.  It was just very challenging to make it happen in real life.  I think if  I could change anything it would be just the final chair.  If I had more time, money, and patience, I would create a whole new chair that I would be more satisfied with, however I do not really have any of those things.  But overall, I am very pleased with this project and everything that we all went through.  I have learned a lot from the process, and the guest speakers at lectures we had regarding the project.

Duality Essay

A relationship that I truly treasure is that of myself and my mom.  I remember the day I was in a fight with my mom, and my grandpa told me, “You should just forget about this fight, your mom is going to be your best friend forever, no matter what.”  I thought he was crazy when he told me that.  I had always taken my mom for granted, or at least it seems that way now that I look back.  Now that I am away hundreds of miles away at school, it seems as though I am closer to her than ever.  She truly is my best friend, and I can go to her with whatever problems I have.  She supports me when I am doing something great, and when I am not succeeding.  She is the one person in this world that knows everything about me, and loves everything about me.  She is a whirl wind of adjectives; fun, loving, stern, supportive, and beautiful.  She is my mother, but more importantly my best friend.

            I think this best friendship connection we have going, really started my senior year in high school.  It was probably a coming of age thing, where I was finally mature enough to just be friends, and not be a person in which she just has to “babysit.”  Our relationship has significant factors that make it great, such as our honesty and respect for each other.  I have never lied to her, and I know she returns the same courtesy.  I am respectful to her and all of her belongings, as she is to me.  We share a lot of things, and that gives us a strong bond.  We have similar tastes in most things, and therefore it makes us one in the same. 

            We also have physical characteristics that make us similar.  We are both tall and kind of lanky.  I have been told that I am the “spitting image” of my mom; I take that as a compliment.  My mom is everything to me.  She is the person I can just be myself around.  She accepts me for everything I am, and want to be.

I Paint

This video is awesome!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ozc6t4KwEko&feature=player_embedded

Martin Puryear

This was a great reading, I thought that Puryear's passion for art and traveling was very inspiring.  His love of learning to cultures and immersing himself in foreign areas of the world is something that I can relate to. I have always wanted to travel, and now that I am coming to that age where I am able to do so, it is very interesting reading about people who do this for a living.  I thought his work was exceptional, he is a very talented sculptor.

Kendall Buster

After reading this article, it is clear that Kendall Buster is a very talented artist.  Her resume seems to be never ending with her work.  Recognized all over the world, Buster truly has some great accomplishments. After looking at all of her work, I have even more of an appreciation for artists.  All of her projects were so detailed, and looked as though they took a massive amount of time.  I thought her work was great, and I enjoyed reading her bio.

Errol Morris on Photography

This video summarized the idea that photography is not always realism.  People assume that because a photograph is taken of real objects, there is so much that can be left out, or cropped out to skew the realistic parts of a photograph.  Morris makes a point that there is so much that you can do to a photograph to make it different than the human eye actually sees.  An example made in the video was the pathway where the elephant was cropped out.  Had the elephant been in the picture, the image would be completely different.  The main point of this video is that photography is not as real as most think, it can be skewed to how the photographer wants it to be, therefore not showing all of the reality.

Ways of Seeing

This video was very interesting, in part because it was an old film, but also because it mentioned things I really had not heard of before.  With the invention of the camera, everything we knew about seeing changed.  This video made a point about the fact that after a camera was invented, the whole world of imagery changed.  The camera changed not only what we see, but how we see everything.  Even paintings from pre camera era, were viewed differently after the invention of a camera.  Because before a camera, we could view the painting in generally one location, after the invention of the camera, the paintings came to you.  Often times these paintings defined the buildings they were located in, however now this was no longer, paintings were on the move.

Masters of Illusion

This video was very insightful as an artist and photographer.  With the video being primarily about depth and vanishing points, the information was very useful.  Vanishing points are one of the key parts of any piece of art.  For example, a vanishing point can give a painting depth, and have it make sense to a viewer. Another example, for a simple photograph, depth can add so much to a single image.  This video was very helpful and I am sure I will reference this video again for future projects.