Its been a while... Title of piece: Light at the end of the Tunnel

I started this piece during the winter break earlier this year. I didn't finish it at that time, but I recently just finished it last week. Before this piece, I pretty much haven't painted since my senior year in high school and now I'm a rising junior in college. I know, I know... Buuut now that I'm back at it, I'm like what the Moroccans say, "met-hawsha" lol. I stay up all night painting. I work at the circulation desk 9-3 most of the week and right after that, I'm at the confocal lab at RIT.  So most of my days consist of me being out of the house pretty much from 8am-8pm on avg. So that leaves me with pretty much no time to do anything. But it's reasons like these that caused me to be away from painting, so I chose to sacrifice sleep over painting haha..maybe not the best idea in the long run, but it's fine for now...with coffee haha.

So the piece below is the one I started during the winter break. Its called, "Light at the end of the Tunnel". I got inspiration from a mosque in my local area called Masjid Ar-Rahman. Although I know what the different parts of the painting represent/ mean to me, I'll leave the interpretation up to the viewer.

 The interesting thing about this mosque is that the building was originally built as a church. So although a lot of changes have been made since the building officially became a mosque about 10 years ago, a lot of it's original structural design remains. This includes the "rose window" at the center of the building which was the main inspiration for this painting.

Rose window at Masjid Ar-Rahman

Exterior of Masjid Ar-Rahman

Title: Light at the end of the Tunnel 

Watercolor Salmon Star Lilies

I finally finished my lilies! I looked them up and found that they are the Salmon star oriental lilies.

https://www.google.com/search?q=asiatic+lily&rlz=1CAACAY_enUS713US713&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj_ub2_nZbUAhWKzIMKHUsQBcIQ_AUICigB&biw=1366&bih=654#tbm=isch&q=oriental+salmon+star

If I was to pick out the most thing I don't like about this piece, I'd say the dots. Especially the ones on the bottom right corner... so annoying, but whatever. Overall though, I really like it. My first botanical piece, not bad. I just have to get the right frame now!! Shout out to Jeanne for all the great feedback!

On the Cover of the Summer Catalogue

A photo taken during one of Larry's evening classes. 

Asian Brush Painting Flowers

In this class, we pretty much worked on flowers.I forgot what its called to outline a or draw your painting first, but that's the technique I used for this piece.

Please ignore the puffy bird haha. I took this photo before it completely dried and that bird is the result of a brush carrying too much water. The rice paper is so thin that it just absorbs the water if there's too much and that can get soo annoying sometimes.

Asian Brush Painting Blossom

In Alice's class last night, we practiced painting blossoms. The bottom left one is Alice's demo on my paper. The ones surrounding it are my practices after maaany other practices. haha so the "good" ones out of the bunch. Really hard stuff to do. Also, I need to invest in a smaller brush but the supplies are so expensive and I'm kind of broke right now. 

Watercolor Lilies

I've been working on my lilies for some time now. I've just been sooo busy with so many other things that I haven't been able to spend as much time as I would like on this piece, but here it is.

The original photo is actually Jeanne's from several years back.

I WON!! The Congressional Art Competition for the 25th District

The title says it all. Thank the Lord! Words can't express how happy I am to be representing the 25th District of New York for the 2017 Congressional Art Competition. I will be meeting congresswoman Louise Slaughter tomorrow after school. Huge shout out to Mrs. Elisa for going out of her way to have my piece matted in time so that I would be able to have it with me when I meet with the congresswomen tomorrow. Also, I want to thank Rachael Baldanza (Curriculum Director at the MAG) for encouraging me to submit a piece into this competition.  

I want to talk a little about the inspiration I had for this piece. When I've visited Morocco in the past several years, I'm overwhelmed each time with the tile work design in buildings and homes. These are just examples I found online.

 

So I became inspired to create some type of tile design that when duplicated it would form a design similar to the Moroccan zellige walls.This one is from my grandma's house.

 

So I created one that if duplicated, would end up looking something like this:

 And this is just a blurry quick version I got by putting my original piece in an iPhone template just so you can have an idea of what I'm taking about. Exiting!