Famous Landmark Stencil Critique

                 

     For my landmark stencil, I picked a picture of an arch that I took on a trip to Rome, Italy. On the computer, I inserted the image into Photoshop and made it black and white, to outline the parts I would need to cut out for my stencil.To go along with my picture of an ancient Roman landmark, I decided to make the theme of my collage background "ancient civilizations." At first, I was just going to do an Ancient Rome theme, but I quickly found there wasn't going to be enough pictures and book pages, so I expanded it to an ancient civilizations theme. You probably can't tell from the picture above, but I included pictures and pages from books about the ancient Greeks and Egyptians as well. I included everything from pictures of the gods and the emperors, to famous landmarks (like the Coliseum). I even found a menu of a typical Roman diet in one of the books. After I finished gluing down all the pictures and pages, I decided to add a light shade of orange watercolor on top, for no good reason other than the fact that orange is my favorite color. After, I unwisely decided to add some blue spray-paint on top. I didn't like the way it turned out. I intended for it to be a light mist of blue to contrast with the orange, but it turned out too dark and I think it looked better without the blue spray paint.

     When I was drawing my stencil, I cut out the areas that would separate the different shapes. For example, I cut out the area around the columns and the windows so that their shape would show up on the collage once I spray painted. The negative space contrasts against the positive space to create the image of the arch and the building behind the arch. Cutting out my stencil was a tricky and somewhat frustrating process. I had an idea of what I wanted my cutout to look like, but it proved difficult once I actually started cutting. Using the xacto knife wasn't the frustrating part. When cutting out your stencil, you always have to remember to keep everything connected, which was the difficult part. There were a lot of areas that I didn't know how to connect and I ended up with a lot of very thin lines.When I had to go spray paint, I also ended up having to use tape to make up for all the skinny lines, and to tape down areas that came up and otherwise would not have shown up on the collage. I chose to spray paint my stencil black because I thought that would show up best on my orange/blue collage. First, I went over it with white spray paint, and then with the black. I also chose to spray-paint the stencil in the center of the collage because as much I loved my collage, I wanted the stencil to be the focus of attention. If I placed it anywhere else, it might have been overshadowed by the collage. At the end, I added in a mist of black spray paint around the stencil to dilute the collage and bring more attention to the stencil.

Game Drawing in Perspective

 

      I was really happy with how my Clue game drawing turned out. Luckily, the vanishing point on the photograph wasn't difficult to spot. But when I first started out, I was having a hard time keeping everything in line with the vanishing point and drawing them in perspective, and I wasn't sure if I would be able to make the objects look three-dimensional. But in the end, the final result was fairly successful. There were things that I really liked and some things that I would change if I could, but the overall effect is good. For example, I am happy with how the dice and the blue pawn turned out. I also liked the front of the drawing. The dining room, the chair, and the game board turned out neat considering the hard time I had with the watercolors (They spread everywhere! It was hard to keep the color within the thin lines). I was able to make all the lines lead back to the vanishing point, and the final product looks close to the actual game board. Going over the watercolor in colored pencil added a nice effect and allowed me to add perspective, value and shadows in order to make the drawing look more realistic.
     However, if could go back and do it over, I would try to make the Clue envelope more three-dimensional and make it a darker color. It looks flat and blends in with the game board. I tried to make the objects as close to their original color as possible, but some of the colors of the objects are so similar that they all blend in together. I would also try to do a better job of blending the colors in the back of the game board. I added in some brown in the back to make it darker and thus give the impression that it is further back, but the shading is uneven and there is an evident contrast in color between the back and the front of the game board. Overall, I don't think I was successful in making it look like the back was darker because it was farther away.
     This piece was a challenge because I do not have the patience for perspective. I found it tedious to have to use the vanishing point to draw all of my lines and objects. However, the painting and coloring part was fun, and the final project turned out better than I expected it too, which was a nice surprise.

Anamorphosis Drawing

1. First, I Googled a picture of a long, heeled boot and copied the image into Photoshop. Then, I transformed the image by stretching it  out vertically and changed the scale to widen it. I printed out the image and then proceeded to split the page up into 1" squares to create a grid. Afterwards, I made a grid in my sketchbook and drew the boot as it appeared in the printed picture. I colored in the boot, trying to add value to the drawing by mixing the brown and black, and added in a shadow.

2. Distorting and stretching the object allowed me to present my colored pencil anamorphosis to the viewer in a different perspective. If I had printed out the original picture of the boot and drawn it that way on my sketchbook, my drawing would have been smaller and flatter. By distorting and stretching the image, I was able to create a more lifelike and life-size drawing.

3. The most important concepts in this project were distorting the object and adding value to the drawing. Distorting the object allow for it to be seen in a different perspective, and adding value brings the image to life and makes it jump off the page.