Anika R's SAS Blog (2015-22)

Personal Feedback -- Our prompt for our final piece of this year was 'Greatest Fear, Greatest Joy', and we had to depict these two things interacting in one piece. Initially, I was thinking about drawing intangible fears, such as sensory loss or being forgotten, but this seemed too abstract and difficult to convey. So I decided to go with my tangible fear of whales. My joy stayed the same the whole brainstorming process: Comic books. I decided to use acrylics because they worked well for me during the Interim piece, I knew I'd be able to add layers quickly because of how fast the paint sets and I knew I could use this to my advantage. The thought process for my composition was very simple; As my fear of whales come from their size, I wanted to show a few whales looming over me as silhouettes, and I really love comic books, so I drew myself holding an old Batman comic close to myself. I decided to have a low angle perspective because it would add to the 'looming...

Final Piece Edited Finished Piece Personal Feedback - For the watercolor unit, we had a free topic so I decided to paint a photo of my grandfather I took on his 90th birthday earlier this year. We were given Lyra Aquarell watercolor pencils which I used for the sketch and majority of the base colors, and I used the class's watercolors for everything else. The concept of the drawing is simple, it's a portrait. I wanted to work on color contrast and drawing his face. I'm really happy with how his face came out. For the colors, I made him (the subject) very cool and blue based while the background was more warm colored. I used the masking fluid to outline the yellow balloons behind him and used salt to add texture to the party hat. I kept very much within the safe zone for this piece because of the permanence of watercolor, but I tried a few new methods like putting a water wash in one area and then putting the paint. The painting tuned out very dream-like, with bri...

Finished Piece Personal Feedback- The instruction was to paint our interpretation of our interim trip with acrylics. I went to New Zealand, where I tried many things I hadn't before, but one of those things were surfing. I decided to show the surfing we did on the second day. This is the first time I have worked with acrylics at this scale. It was interesting to work with, and I feel I used the medium to my advantage. For example, because of how quickly acrylics dried on the masonite, I was willing to try out some methods that I wouldn't otherwise. One such unusual method I used was for the surfboards, waves, and clouds. I dabbed a crumpled paper towel with the paint on the board. For the clouds, I did this but immediately followed with a dabbing of water to fade out the paint. For the waves, I followed this with a lighter blue to add a slight bight of depth.  It took me a while to figure out how to make the skin look like skin and not just lumps, although I think it l...

First of the Three Third of the Three Personal Feedback- The requirements for this section of the unit were to create 4 creative print to draw on, complete two timed figure drawings with pastel/Conte chalk and rapidograph, with the following two with a medium of choice. Since I modeled for the first day, I only got to do three figure drawings. My first and third were done with rapidograph, and my second done with pastel. I really like how my first (of Keona) and my third (and final, of Mrs. B) came out, especially the one of Keona. Although I tried to become more comfortable with using pastels, I felt the medium didn't allow me to get into the details as much as I usually like. Before starting on the lining, I sketched with pencil, which can be seen in the third piece. My main goal of this part of the unit was to get the proportions as close to the model's, which I knew would be challenging with our models shifting during the drawing sessions. With Keona's, I...

First Illustration Last Illustration Personal Feedback- The first piece I did was the eye, ear and the mouth using the rapidograph. Luckily, I have had previous experience using the rapidograph and am pretty comfortable using it. Although normally, I wouldn't have tried to shade using dots as I find it a bit precarious, still, I decided to attempt to shade it like that to push myself. It took longer than I expected and I ran out of class time, which is why the lips are shaded less than the other two blocks. I'm overall pretty happy with how this turned out, specifically with the depth in the eye.  After working with the rapidograph, we did a piece with Prismacolor markers. When I first tried drawing with the markers, I found them chunky and odd because of how streaky the marks looked when I colored with them. On the third lesson, we were to sketch with the rapidograph and color the lines in with the Prismacolor. I got a better feel of the markers then, alt...

Personal Feedback- This skeleton I made on the second day of our pastel/conté chalk unit is definitely my favorite piece of the two. I'd never used conté chalk before, so it took me a little bit before I adjusted to how compressed the chalks are. I chose a black, reddish-brown, and lighter brown colors on a light near-white matte board. In past projects, I rarely worked on lighter matte boards and I thought I could challenge myself to try something new. I wanted to use the color of the board to my advantage, using it as the highlights on the skeleton model. The conté chalk colors I chose were originally supposed to reflect the look of the wood of the model, but looking at it now, it almost looks like a charred skeleton... not what I intended, but good nonetheless.  Unlike previous live drawings, I sat directly in front of the model. This gave a huge advantage since I didn't need to look over/around other people to see properly. The skeleton was also standing on the...

Personal Feedback- I am very proud and surprised at how well this turned out! This was the third and most recent piece from the Figure Drawing unit, and the first time I have drawn a skeleton figure. We were working with pencils again, I used a 4B for this piece, and a bit of 6B to darken some lines. Since we've already used pencil in a project before, I knew to be careful with how light/dark I go, especially when starting this sketch.  The skeleton was propped on a table with us (the students) sitting around this table. I sat diagonally behind the figure, which gave me an interesting perspective and a chance to draw a skeleton in a way I haven't visualized before. Starting out in this unit, I had difficulties with not allowed to use an eraser, which made me think deeply and plan in advance about how I would go about drawing.  With the case of the two previous figure drawings (of Adam and Eve), I had trouble with conveying perspective with correct propor...