Savannah

Savannah. 2011. Acrylic on particle board. 24" x 24".
 
This painting bugs me. More specifically, the dots do. Somehow, since I had done my last Lichtenstein painting, my metal dot screen had warped, making it impossible to make crisp and clean dots, leaving poor Savannah with what looked like a bad spray tan. This has been a gargantuan roadblock that has prevented me from completing more of these paintings. I have about five paintings that are complete, minus the dots and the black outlines. It is SO frustrating!!!

Self Portrait

Self Portrait. 2010. Acrylic on canvas board. 18" x 24".

This is the first my Roy Lichtenstein-inspired series. I absolutely loved painting this, especially the flowing hair and the zany eyelashes. So far, this has been my favorite painting in the series because of the intensity of the colors and the balance of the face within the frame. To make the dots, I placed a perforated screen over the painting and air brushed through the screen.

Yearbook Pages

 

MGMT. 2010. Adobe Indesign. 18" x 12".

This page was only made for practice and did not show up in the yearbook, but it was the first DPS (Double Page Spread) that I made.

 

Autographs. 2011. Adobe Indesign. 9" x 12".  

This was my last page I made for the 2010-2011 yearbook. I made other pages too, but since they had names and people on them, I can't show them. This page uses some of the elements of pop art (color blocking and benday dots) and went along with the theme of the yearbook, which was "time capsule."

Clothing Design

 

Mock Trial Shirt. 2011. Photoshop. 12" x 4".

This probably makes no sense...unless you were involved in Mock Trial in 2010-2011. I volunteered to design the T-shirts for mock trial this year, so I got inspiration from the goofy parts of the case to make the design.

 

Tie Dye Crewneck. 2010. Dye on cotton. Womens size small.

Who doesn't love tie dye? Well, probably lots of people, but I happen to LOVE tie dying with my friends. 

My EXTENSIVE Photography Collection

NOT!

Jackson and Mamba. 2010. Photograph. 5" x 7".

My mom found this little black kitty in the middle of the road this (very cold) December and rescued it! He is best friends with my dog, so I had to capture the buddies together :) I am actually a pretty bad photographer, so I am pretty proud of how this one turned out with the blurred background and the super-focused nose.  

Experimenting With Cubism

 

Guitar Still Life. 2011. Watercolor, graphite, and collage on paper. 8.5" x 11".

This is my first (and hopefully only ever) cubist work. All that shifting along lines made for a very confusing time! I really enjoyed doing all of the textures and shading; I am very detail oriented, as you can see.

Foreshadowing...

OK! 2010. Tempera on cardboard. 12" x 12".

Here's a teaser for the color scheme of my most recent projects...
This is a super zoomed in abstraction of a word in a magazine.

Photocopier Face!

Up Close and Personal. 2010. Charcoal on paper. 18" x 24".

To begin this drawing, I smooshed my face on a Xerox machine and copied it (strange, I know). I happened to be wearing dramatic makeup that day, which added cool contrasts. I then coated a piece of paper with a thick layer of charcoal and began erasing parts to shade in my face. This was a VERY messy project! I was stained with charcoal for days! Also, my lips and nose are really not that big: they are squished against the copier :)

Architecture

Abode. 2010. Ink on paper. 11" x 17".

I have always loved architecture. In my third grade yearbook, there was a section about what we wanted to be when we grew up. Everyone else said things like "firefighter" or "pop star," but I was an oddball and said "architect." This project was a fun way to explore perspective and let my mind wander while doodling a fictitious house.

3-D Design

 

Chickadee. 2009. Wire and wood. 5" x 3" x 4".

My art teacher's challenge to my class was to create an animal using a single strand of wire without wrapping or overlapping the wire. I attempted this about seven times, making turtles, giraffes, pigs, and horses, until  I finally got his seal of approval. It is difficult to tell from the picture, but this work is essentially a 3-D contour drawing that must be admired from all angles to fully understand the concept. 

 

Flying Biker Pigs, Oh My! 2009. Ceramic and paint. 6" x 4" x 5".

This comical teapot always makes me smile! The only thing that I am really fond of in this work is the shocked expression that the pig wears...it is so cartoon-y and silly! Because this was an art assignment for a class, the teacher required at least 20 textural add-ons (I had to add the random spikes on the back and the awkwardly scaly texture of the body) which did not fit my original plan for this work.

 

Detail

 

Mountain Dew Mantis. 2009. Aluminum cans, wire, superglue. 8" x 5" x 5".

This little guy was a real challenge to make! Most of the skin on my fingertips fell victim to the clutches of superglue and I endured numerous can cuts. However, it was worth it. His head bobbles whenever he is moves and he just has a "fun" look to him.

Cover Art #3: Owl City

Drift. 2010. Oil pastel on paper. 5" x 7".

Drifters was inspired by the cover photograph on Owl City's single, "Hot Air Balloon." There really is not much deep meaning behind this picture; I just wanted to try working with oil pastels, and this bright picture was the perfect place to test my mew media. As a consequence of this work, I am not a big fan of oil pastels. I find them gummy and difficult to make precise lines with. However, they produce rich and vivid colors and are easy to blend. I can definitely see a work like this being hung in a baby's bedroom since it is kind of silly and fluffy looking.

Graphite

Boy. 2009. Graphite on paper. 5" x 7".

This was my first (and only, so far) figure drawing that I intended to have look realistic. I did it late one night when I couldn't sleep, and I ended up staying awake for hours just to finish it. Looking back at it now, I notice the little mistakes, like how his back is a little too square (as is his butt), that the shoes look like male Bratz doll shoes, and that the hands are awkwardly small, but overall, the proportions are fairly well done for a non-figure drawer.

Summer Love. 2010. Graphite on paper. 5" x 7".

This just makes me say awwww every time I see it :) This was inspired by two first dates that I have been on...both involved walking on railroad tracks! I wanted to do a perspective drawing as well as a sunset/sunrise drawing, so I combined those ideas. However, it looked bland and boring, so I added the miniscule silhouettes which resulted in this awwww-inspiring picture. My favorite part was doing the fading sky and fluffy clouds, and of course, the big AWWWW after I realized how darn cute it was!   

Line Shading Extravaganza!

Owl. 2009. Ink on paper. 14" x 18".

 Detail.

Detail.

I will just start off saying that I love my owl. A lot.

Alright. To do this piece, I started by spending about an hour with an art instructor. I then spent what felt like a thousand hours on my own shading and hatching and crosshatching and scribbling and dotting and on and on and on. In the end, though, I came away with a piece that I am very satisfied with because of the wide variety of textures and values.

Shelf Portrait. 2010. Ink on paper. 18" x 24".

Detail.

Detail.

This one nearly killed me. All of those little lines were done individually with a ruler over the course of about two months. It is still hard not to get a headache when I look closely at it. Thankfully, my obsessiveness paid off and landed me with a depth-filled portrait of myself (or myshelf?) using symbols of the meaningful things in my life.

That's Amore...

Amore Est Defacile. 2009. Nail polish on paper. 5" x 7".

Amore Est Defacile (Love Is Difficult) is one of the only abstract works that I have ever done. Back when I knew some French, I liked to have my language skills play a cameo in my art...most were phrases of broken and jumbled French with little or no meaning. However, this reminds me of a Matisse work, titled right on the painting "Les Betes de la Mer" and I love the assemblage of busy, metallic colors and the way that they seem to move across the page and then melt.

Cover Art #2: Mae

Happily Ever After?. 2009. Colored pencil and ink on paper. 5" x 7".

This drawing was inspired by Mae's album cover for The Everglow, but I added a more somber theme to it. It symbolizes the immense disappointment of being let down by a person or by a promise that fell through. I recognize that it is a very naive and cartoonish work, but it was a symbol for the emotion I felt during the late nights I stayed up making it.

The Phase to Trump All Phases

Untitled. 2009 Ink on vinyl. 11" x 11.5". 

Goodbye Juliet. 2009. Ink on paper. 24" x 36".

British Studies Notebook Cover. 2009. Ink and colored pencil on paper. 7" x 9".

In the Winter and Spring of 2009, I went through a phase...an intense phase. This somewhat creepy design was all over everything, from binders (top), school projects (middle), and journal pages (bottom). I can't really explain it; I guess it just appealed to me at the time? All I can say is that those swirls are probably the reason that I have less-than perfect eyesight...

Cover Art: My Chemical Romance

MCR. 2008. Watercolor on paper. 12" x 12".

Back in the day...I loved My Chemical Romance. But more so, I LOVED the album cover for Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge. The original cover was done by the frontman of the band, Gerard Way, and I recreated and enlarged it for a class I was taking. The visible emotion and use of red paint to convey the emotion fascinated me. The heart on the guy's forehead--could he be thinking and not feeling? And the use of red on the faces--why was there more red on him? Could he be casting his problems on her? This album began my interest in cover art and the meanings behind it.  

Inspired by Japan

Sumo. 2008. Watercolor on paper. 11" x 18".

My mom always had Japanese kitsch decorating our house when I was growing up, so the art of Japan interested me. This is a re-creation of a painting that I saw in an art textbook that reminded me of a fan my mom had.

 

Double Happiness. 2010. Ceramic box. 9" x 5" x 5".

Inspired by the blue and white Japanese pottery that my mom loves, this box's lid is decorated with a repeating double-happiness symbol and the entire box is scattered with fan designs. This was my first, and as of now, the only slab box that I have made, probably because of the frustration that I encountered while glazing the box. At one point, I ended up scrubbing off and completely re-glazing the lid! 

The First Rose

Rose. 2008. Chalk on paper. 11" x 18".

There's a first for everything, and this was my first rose of many to come. Done under the guidance of an art instructor, my rose was my pride and joy for months. I loved how the subject filled the paper and had vivid, fiery colors. The practice of letting some of my subject slip outside the frame for an in-your-face look would become more common as my art progressed.

Early Seascapes

Lighthouse. 2007. Charcoal on paper. 11" x 8.5".

When I sketched this, I was very proud of myself for achieving the shadows on the water and the correct proportions for the lighthouse. Looking back, though, I see how naive and unfinished it looks. However, it provided a good starting point for other landscapes.  

Second Beach. 2009. Watercolor and ink on paper. 20" x 8".

While this painting still lacks much depth and has very amature-ish foliage, I had improved on changing values and blending colors. It was inspired by Chinese scrolls and was supposed to show humans' insignificance compared to nature.

Beginnings

 

New Gate. 2008. Pen and colored pencil on paper. 18" x 11".

 This was an art assignment in seventh grade. It was the first very structured and design-oriented work i had ever done and its clean simplicity and blocked colors served as a gateway for future projects.