Perspective

For my perspective piece named "Frozen", I used two-point perspective, where there are two vanishing points, one on the left and one on the right. This gives an illusion of an edge in the center between the "O" and the "Z" where the two "letter walls" are coming together. To start my piece, I drew the center line in the middle of the paper, and drew four diagonal lines to the vanishing points using a ruler. Then, I measured off how much space each letter could take up, where the "O" and "Z" could take up the most space, and the "F" and "N" could take up the least space in order for it to have a two-point perspective effect. After drawing all of the letters with a pencil, I used chalk pastels to color the piece after erasing unneeded pencil marks. I obviously used blue pastels to represent snow and ice, but I also threw in a bit of purple on the border because purple and blue are analogous colors. Smearing and rubbing the pastels afterwards smoothed the colors out and made the letters pop out, the finishing touch to the piece.

Shadow Art

Shadow Art from Day 1

Shadow Art from Day 2

For our shadow art, we used numerous of objects to create shadows, including wine bottles, a skull, a phone, Popsicle sticks, string, diamond, and a PVC pipe with tape on it (see if you can find them in the shadows!). I thought the PVC pipe with tape was really neat and was a surprisingly good idea because when put against the projector with one end of it, the shadow on the board looked like a cross-hair. Hence why the first picture looks like we're duck hunting. Although not represented in the pictures, one image we created had a green background and water-like effect that was made by placing a sprite bottle that was cut open over the projector light, giving the skull a more evil look. The hardest and most difficult part about the project would probably be the idea part of it. It was hard to come up with initial idea of what to do, but once we had an idea, it was quite easy to piece together the necessary items to form the right shadows. Day 2 pictures were most definitely better than Day 1, we had a lot more variety of items to work with and the skull was fun to use as well.

Clay (3D Project)

This piece depicts a picture of the symbol for the Protoss race in the online PC game Starcraft II. I played as Protoss for almost a year and won over hundreds of games with it, so it forever holds a special place in my heart. The medium I used for this piece is clay and I based the 3D object off of a slab or tile. Clay is an earthy material that is made up of very small and fine particles of minerals (rocks, essentially). Clay is great for making tile pieces like mine. To create my tile piece, I cut out a piece of clay and wedged it. I wedged the clay by pounding it against a surface and kneading it with my hands in order to get all of the air bubbles out. Having no air bubbles is important for the process of firing or baking of the clay, where clays are slowly heated up to a very high temperature of about 1,700 degrees Fahrenheit. The high temperature gets rid of any water in the clay, making it stronger and harder, but still be able to be glazed. If there are air bubbles in the clay when it is fired, the air inside will expand tremendously and crack or explode the piece. The oven/furnace used for firing the clay is called a kiln. When I had to attach two separate pieces of clay together after two of the left corners of the piece broke off, I had to use a method called score and slip. I used a tool to "score" both pieces of clay, making marks in them and making their connecting surfaces rough. Then I took "slip", clay with high water content ("watery clay") and applied it to the surfaces. Slip acts as an adhesive when the two pieces of clay are joined together. I then used clay tool to carve out pieces of clay and raise certain parts of the piece. My piece was then fired, where afterwards I painted it the colors of the actual symbol of the Protoss race, yellow and blue with a black background. After the paint dried I applied a layer of glaze on it to protect it and give my piece a shiny look. The piece was then fired a second time to melt the glaze and turn into the amazing piece that I have now. I had a blast making this piece and was so proud of how it turned out!

Printmaking

This is a piece depicting the logos of modern and popular gaming systems and companies through the process of relief printmaking.