i'm making surrealism :3

its based off a picture I found of a evening cloudy sky. In the photo there are birds but these strokes arent horizontal like clouds so I'm calling this impressionistic. Actually looking at it this could be the inside of a flower couldn't it. huh.... ya so I'm tired but I'll work on another thing to be finished tommorrow see ya

To My Surprise...

-this actually came out pretty good. when I first unwrapped the clayboards back in Christmas I was excited but did not have very high expectations out of this. I'd never worked with this type of material and hadn't a clue what I should do for it. my first trial was sort of a bust but good practice. then I decided to give this crinoid subject a chance and this time I decided to try a mix media experiment with watercolor and colored pencils.
    It started out rusty, the smooth surface wouldn't hold more than one layer of watercolor, and the colored pencils would only hold to the paint. My teacher noticed this and suggested that I use a Matte acrylic coating from a airsoft and that worked really well. (even thought I know it's really bad for the ozonlayer. Sorry mother earth XC )
   one other thing you have to know is that this is a crinoid, maybe an ancient ancestor of the horseshoe crab. Its a prehistoric crustacean that was fossilized and dug up, loosing pieces of his eyes in the process. (which is not the geologist's fault. It takes a lot of skill to unearth these in one piece and he did a fine job, using a tremendous amount of care getting out of the ground without many scratches on it and picking the sediments out of every one of it's little creases) So anyway my point is yes those tube things sticking out of the front which is the head are probably eyes or antennas and yes one is shorter than the other because it broke during the excavating.

(photo which I took and edited on Picnick :3)

this should be the final, minorly edited picture. I worked on it with photoshop to even out the papper and darked the backround and worked out the opaque hue to make it pop out a little more

Ok I found out the better way

Note to self: when even lighting is required just take the photograph outside :P

yyyeeeeeeessssss XD

alright so editing this photo was more painful than the anal observational lines I made so viewer, appreciate it. Haha... huu but seriously though it was kind of rediculous for others who want to make a digital copy of a drawing they did on black papper: scanners get easily confuzed by it. If your thinking of taking a picture of it with a camera, I suggest you find very even lighting (that was my main problem)
also, this replica is the best that I could do but even then it's a little inacurate. the colors match but some little things were made more prominant than others, which it is in the picture but not as... bright cyan/blue-ish? well anyway I'm working it out if I can get a better photo replica at school tommorrow I'll upload that one

A Little Birdie Told Me...

Alright so I'm in between two projects right now. I think in my last post I mentioned the first one (?) but in case I didn't  it's the middle crinoid from my previous colored pencil work that I promised to finish on black paper and it will be drawn with pastel colored pencils. (light colors) The sketches above are for my other project, which is inspired by the mountains and galleries of Park city, Utah. ( my dad and I went on a ski trip there over the President's day weekend) The mountains where HUGE! and extensive, they seemed to go on forever. Driving between them made my dad and I feet so small. ( imagine what it must've been like for the pioneers) so anyway, the photos of the mountains by themselves were boring, I did a couple sketches for picture ideas and shot some photos of a bird i saw at lunch while we were skiing at Deer ski mountain. Then dad and I went to Park city to see the galleries and I was really inspired by this one artists style with mixed media. she used this cool patterned fabric which would show through these super colorful landscapes so I thought I'd try it and enforce some of the techniques I read about on how to make artwork based off photographs. that last colored picture is made with acrylic. I used yellow and red/ littleblue first then applied solid blue as my layer sequence. (they're mostly diluted)

Now or Never

ya I know I had somewhere around 6 posts about finishing this :P I don't completely understand why, maybe I sat in front of it for too long, but I lost interest/ love for this picture. One thing I understand now though is that sometimes a piece your working on can be like you looking at the sun. After a while it's not pretty anymore, it hurts your eyes and you have to look away. In my case, i had too look away from that super cool fossil and supertaunting picture for a couple weeks. Then last wed we had a snowday and it was raining and there was this weird progression from "wow the sound of falling ice and branches can be really relaxing sometimes" to "isn't it funny how now that the pressure of me finishing that crinoid is off me I suddenly want to finish it?" and then I woke up and turned on the T.V. and it all went down hill from there
on the upside though I did a pretty good sketch of an old guy named Albert who isn't eating a tortilla

it's a picture of his dead wife Peggy

oh and i also drew this with pastelle, I lost the better digital copy and this looks alot browner and yellowier but the scanner picked up too much of the dark hues I used to make the shadows