What Even is Sleep Anymore?

*Disclaimer: I'm just letting you know now that you can skip over this blog post because it's just me rambling about how stressed I am. Possible side effects for the reader may include confusion and boredom. 

I know this blog is supposed to be about my senior project, but I want to tell you all about my senior year in general because 1. So you'll know what I'm busy with when I'm not painting or drawing and 2. I find spilling out the stuff on my mind help reduce my stress in a way if that makes sense. Anyways classes consist of: Drama/theater for Extended class, African American History (1st sem), The History of Rochester (2nd sem), Pre-Calculus, AP Environmental Science, AP Literature, Sewing/Textiles (1st sem) another art class next semester that I'm currently forgetting the name of. I'm allowed to drop some of these classes that I already have credits for because I'm taking at least one AP course, but all the classes that did have an option to drop, I wanted. Like I love art, math and science so there was no way I was going to drop those. In return, I just have a bunch more work to do. That isn't even the problem though. The problem is that I don't have any time for myself anymore. I literally haven't had time to read a book for my pleasure since August and it's already almost December. I've only been to the gym ONCE since June and I used to go almost everyday. Like that really is so annoying but what is more annoying is that it only gets harder after high school. Senior year is to college what pre-k is to elementary school. Basically, it only starts after high school. Also I get home around 7 everyday on average because I do work at the Rush Rhees Library almost everyday. Currently on Thursday, I take my watercolor class. On Sunday I do community service at my local mosque from 10am-2:00pm where I co-teach Arabic with my sister. I just recently started taking Quran classes on Saturdays and Sundays. All these things are just additional to all my homework that I'm not even going to talk about. Since I work on a college campus, I'm familiar with the work load students have and it's like my work x100. I really hate complaining but it's the only way I'll keep my sanity lol. So on a positive note, I am proud to say that with all these things going on I'm meeting/Exceeding everything at school as of now. Thank God Honestly. He's blessed me with so many awesome supportive people in my life that I'm so thankful for!! If you made it to this point of this blog post, thanks for hearing me out. Have an awesome day/night. Whatever it is you're struggling with, trust me when I say, it'll be okay. It might be just a blessing in disguise as cliche as that sounds. It's all in God's plan. 

Watercolor Still Life

I completed my first still life painting in  my water color class. A still life is an arrangement of inanimate object which commonly include fruits and other household objects. I think I did a pretty good job because I usually draw inanimate objects anyways so it was definitely not out of my comfort zone. Also, we practiced drawing and shading areas based on where the light source is coming from in my drawing class as well, so I used some of those tips when working on this piece.

Practice Drawing

My drawing classes ended, but that doesn't mean drawing ended for me. So yesterday, I got "lost" in my drawing which is something I haven't with drawing in a very long time. I did use a reference photo to kind of get started because my skills aren't good enough to just draw on my own yet. I didn't make it as detailed as you probably saw in the reference photo because 1. I'm not that good lol and 2. I didn't want to spend more than one day on it.

Watercolor Clouds

Watercolor clouds, I think, might be one of the trickiest things with this form of art. Since the watercolor paper is the white of the painting the shadows that make up the clouds are what get painted. Today, we learned the blotting method. I started out by painting my background with a very pigmented mix of a couple Windsor Newton shades of blue. After it completely dried, I wet the area where I wanted my moon to be with a wet paintbrush and gently rubbed on the area to loosen the paint. I then used a paper towel to pick up the water now mixed with the paint. I pretty much did the same thing for the clouds except I only blotted out the areas where I wanted the highlights of the clouds to be. I also splattered on the stars with white gouache which is an opaque watercolor paint. My instructor said that it looked "lyrical" :) So sweet of her!

Last Drawing Class

I had my last drawing class and it was a lot of fun. When it comes to drawing, I usually avoid figure drawing because I'm not really good at it. That's what we practiced today and it turns out I'm not as horrible as I thought I'd be. Our drawing teacher, Joe, had us draw people in different poses in 30 seconds and after that 3 minutes. Our final piece was drawing our instructor in 10 minutes. 

We also did a 2 point perspective drawing of a city landscape.

And a 1 point perspective drawing of a house in the country side.

This is a perspective drawing I did in one of my previous classes as well. What I now realize about this drawing is the door at the top of the stairs should've gotten smaller at the top to give it a more realistic look and it annoys me how the two bottom steps are lighter than the rest but it was still fun to draw lol.

Drawing Techniques

Growing up, my sister and I have always loved art. We made dioramas, polymer clay charms, mixed media canvas' etc. But when it came to drawing and coloring, I was always the drawer and she was the colorer and it pretty much still's the same. So when I decided to learn how to watercolor for my senior project, my art teacher suggested I take drawing classes at the Memorial Art Gallery along with my water coloring classes to improve my skills. I always did drawing randomly just for fun. But since I've been taking my classes with Joe Tarantelli at the Creative Workshop, I've learned so many techniques. I signed up for the 5 week Monday classes from 6:30-9:30 pm and the classes are almost coming to an end but I need more! I didn't think drawing involved more than just the use of a basic pencil and paper. I didn't even know that lead pencils came in so many different hardness'.

    Our first drawing exercise was to to draw an image while looking at it upside down. This exercise allows the artist to focus on the relationship of the lines rather than the image as a whole. (lol excuse my messy work space)

We also did blind contour drawings. In this case we used our hands as the object to draw. Without looking at the paper, we drew an outline of our hands and then went in with the details afterwards. This exercise develops hand-eye communication. After that, we practiced while looking at both the paper and our hands.

This is just a page full of random observational drawings I did during one of the past classes. 

Watercolor Practices

Here are random watercolor pieces I've worked on so far prior to taking any classes.

I painted this one while I was still in Morocco during the summer. The learning experience I got from this piece is not to over paint. It's like that cliche saying, "Less is more". Well less is definitely more with water coloring. The thing with watercolor is that the paper is used as the white and light source. If you over paint the painting and leave little to no light source, It'll end up looking dull like you see in the rose painting below. Like for the glass jar, instead of painting white over the areas where white was supposed to be, not painting over the white paper would've made it a lot more realistic if that makes any sense.

I painted this piece in Morocco as well and you can see the similarity in dullness with the rose painting in the hummingbird specifically. I kept going over it with different colors which ended up making it look muddy almost. But as a beginners piece, it doesn't look bad overall.

These are some of the pieces I worked on when I was back in NY. In the piece with the mountains, I was practicing perspective and distance techniques. I realized this was a technique used in drawing as well. Especially when dealing with landscapes, in order to get a distance effect, you paint or draw lighter. As the object is closer to view, it becomes more detailed and/ or darker like you see with the trees in this piece. 

In the beach painting, I was more successful in allowing the white background paper to be the light source for the image.

Finally, one of my most recent pieces I painted of a still life. When I saw this piece on thefrugalcrafter's page, I knew I had to paint it. First, I love tea so much I think I'm addicted. Second, the design on the teacup was just so pretty I couldn't not at least try to paint it.