Dry Media

Dry Media & Wet Media 

(Both Medias are on my other post)

In this blog I'll be explaining about my wet and dry pieces. Both of them are already on my other blog post with full explanations but in this I will give more detail int them and a story behind them.

 In the first picture there are two sketches of two Tridents, one being Poseidon and the other being Hades. These were rough sketches I started off with in the beginning. Over time I wanted to add in other things to the background or to make the picture more whole which I did later on (You'll see further down this blog post). For Poseidon Trident I wanted to make it look similar to his normal but add in my Motif throughout which is the snake pattern. In this you can see the snake pattern going down the Trident and at the top of it. Later on I decided that I didn't really like this idea. For Hades Trident I only did a light rough sketch in this to give me an idea on how I was going to design the Trident itself.

The second picture is a few rough ideas I wanted to add through my board which I did.

This is how Poseidon Trident looked when I put it on m,y board. As you can see I fully got rid of the snake pattern and decided to add a snake wrapping around the Trident instead as I felt like it gave it more character relating back to Hades. The Snake Motif to me means a representation of Hades as snakes are very sly. I also made the Trident break through water to show that it was Poseidon Trident, so the water was used as another representation. I showed the different tones I used throughout Trident, hand and water. I did this to make theme each look more realistic and give them all some slight detailing.

This was the second piece I did. I didn't do any recent sketches before this because I knew I had to get another piece finished before the Term was over. For this piece I looked at one of my artists and looked at how he draws his Greeks Gods and the tones and textures he uses. The artist was Auguste Rodin. I made Zeus look like statue and tried to add tones that made him look sculpted like Auguste does to his art pieces. I started with the outline and doing the finer lines then went onto adding different tones on his body to create muscles. I also did tones throughout his facial hair and face to add more texture and add 'cheekbones'. 

This dry piece is for Hades. As you can see I used the trident from my previous sketch in the beginning, but made a lot of changes to it. Compared to the first I created more tones and patterns throughout the trident and also added some more things to it. While drawing it I made changes throughout it. In the background I added stairs to create it as if you walk up to the trident with the Cerberus trident. These made the art picture look more interesting and showed different tones and shading through different background or center pieces.

 In the first picture is a sketch of a art piece I did further down my board. I needed to sketch out ideas for two side pieces and include other things around my board to show it gradually coming through. In this you see vines wrapping around the pole with a cloudy background. I added this sketch to give me an idea of what I was going to paint later on.

The second picture shows Persephone and a sketch I was going to use of her coming out of the water. On the side of the paper is some more ideas of what my next sketches were going to be. I didn't use this picture of Persephone as I felt like it was too time consuming. 

In the right picture of this is another rough 1 minute sketch of a side pieces for my board 2. I did like three outlines of what I was going to use-Fire,Skull and a wooden stick. I was able to tell of this sketch what the piece was roughly going to look like just without detail. It helped me know the placing of things and the sizing I had to figure out.

This piece is the new idea of what Persephone coming out of the water was meant to be. I changed it to a Mermaids tail coming out of the water as I wanted to show my motif through it and I thought this was a good way. The shading was mostly used in the water to show different waves and the way the water is coming from. I did this by doing fine lines into the water and then using the end of finger to rub it in the areas I wanted it go, if I needed it to be darker I would just add more lines of pencil.

This was the same idea of making this piece also look sculpted. I drew the outline of her face and facial expressions. After this I started smudging my finger and a pencil into the paper to create clouds as a background. Finally I created shadowing around the neck and parts on the faces by grabbing another black pieces of paper and drawing on it dark with a pencil. I rubbed my finger against the black pencil and put it on the areas I wanted to. By doing it this way I was able to control how dark I wanted it to be and how light as well.

I struggled with this this piece as I didn't know what I was going to sketch. I searched up a few things that related to this goddess and one of them was Cupid so I decided to take his bow and use that as a representation. I sketched the outline of the bow 'n' arrow and then smudged in a bit of pencil into the background. In the top right corner I added a bit of water to make it look more smoothly blended out. After this I added in the shading that I needed to into other areas.

I explained a lot of this detail into my Art Board post, but I wanted to try add any more detailing that I forgot into this. As I said in the beginning my wet ones was done through the first blog post.

Art Blog

Inspired Artists for my board

Artist 1: My first artist that helped create some of my pieces on my board is Michelangelo. I chose him to represent some of my pieces on my board because of how realistic his portraits are of people he’s drawn or of himself. I applied the techniques such as creating the right tones and adding realism to my god pieces- you’ll see later on during my blog. This helped make my art pieces look more realistic by adding little details like the way The greek god Zeus hair was blowing, or the little hairs on his face and where they are placed.

Artist 2: My second artist is Auguste Rodin. The reason I chose him was because he’s famous for sculpting things such as gods or ancient rulers. In my board I wanted to incorporate a few pieces that had looked like that had almost been sculpted. I looked and Auguste sculptures and grabbed my chosen god which was Hera and started to make her portrait look as if it was sculpted. I’ll explain more of how I did this throughout my blog.

Artist 3: My last artist was Camille Pissarro. I used this Artist to help me gather ideas from his paintings and the techniques he uses. In a few of my pieces I created texture in my backgrounds by thinning out the paint with water and lighting putting it over the base colour. I did this as I saw Camille in a fee of his Art pieces create tones and textures by using thinner and thicker paints.

Term One

During the first 2-3 weeks of Term One I focused on what my theme was going to be for my art board, my 3 artist models that would help inspire my pieces and also the layout of my board, which is how its going to look. For the Artist I had to come up with a ‘why’ explaining the reason on why I chose them and how they are incorporated into my art board or throughout my pieces. 

This here is the layout that I chose for my Art board and the ideas on what the pieces are going to be or based around. The 3 pieces with Snake, Dog and lighting got changed as I though more about how I wanted my board to look like. I changed them to be symbols or gods but the female version of the top 3. I chose Greek Gods/Greek Mythology for the theme of my board. The reason I chose this was because I enjoy finding out history but mainly greek history as I find the whole thing so interesting. I also wanted my bored to be creative and I felt like I could use the whole greek god as something awesome to put onto my board. The 12 smaller pieces that aren’t labelled are going to be Hercules 12 Heroic Labours. These were challenges he had to do if he wanted to lift the curse that was put on him.

These are a few rough sketches I done to just give me an idea on what a piece could be and also what one of my side pieces could be. In the first picture you can see persephone standing in a gown while flames rise from her feet up. My ideas on this was since Persephone is Hades wife I wanted to show you that through the flames representing the underworld. In the end I chose not to use this piece as I just thought I should do something that is symbolic like Hades is. In the second picture there is a skull on top of a stick representing somebody’s head that was once there. There is also flames riding as well in this one. This art piece was used as a side piece for one of my bigger pieces on board 2.

These 3 were my first completed pieces that really helped set my Art-board. I started with the first piece at the top which is a symbolic staff for Poseidon. It shows his hand breaking through the water, with a snake wrapped around. The reason I chose a snake was because throughout our board we need to show a motif which is something carried out through the bored, so in most of my pieces you’ll either see a snake pattern or lighting bolts as another motif. In my second sketch which is the god Zeus I decided to make him look more realistic and add in every detail to his face, I used pictures from Michelangelo to look back and fourth at mine and his. I wanted my to look life like, like his is. In the last sketch this represented Hades. The stairs are meant to be the stairway to the underworld where Hades 3 headed Cerberus are guarding his staff.

Art History:
After I finished these three pieces we got given another assessment we had to do which was called Art History. For this assessment we had to choose 2 Artist to write about. We need to explain in these the type of work they do and pick one of their pieces that interest us. Once we chose a piece we needed to describe the meaning behind the picture and different techniques and colour palettes they used. Heres an example of one of my Artist I chose.

After I had completed my Art History which took about two days to complete. In the last week of the term 1 I planned out what my next pieces were going to be and made sure I had measured them up and cut the pieces I needed out for term 2.

Term Two

Throughout term 2 I focused on finishing as much of board 1 as I could and coming up with ideas for board two. I decided that after finishing my first pieces in Term one I wanted to do something that would link to them swell and just open my board up with the main Greek Gods. I chose to sketch symbols/ draw a picture of Zeus wife.
Three links to first pieces

 

The first piece is a symbolic symbol of Poseidon wife Amphitrite. In this I wanted to be able to show that it was rated to Poseidon piece. So I decided to incorporate the Mermaid tail coming up through the water like his staff is.
In the second one I wanted to do a facial portrait like her husband Zeus. Through creating Hera I wanted to show in this the sculpting form through looking at my chosen artist Auguste Rodin. In my last one I chose to use the arrow and bow as a symbol for Persephone, Hades wife. Since Persephone is all about love between relationships I decided to use Cupid to represent the love. I find this piece interest as I realised how Hades and his wife are opposite. Hades being all about hate and “not loving” and having a wife who is about love and happiness.

Seventh art piece
This piece was the bigger piece that was going at the top of board 2. I chose to start on this piece first for some reason. It took me ages to think about and sketch out thoroughly. I’ll show this Art piece in Term in Term 3 as it took me the first week of term 3 to finish it.

Term Three
In the first week of Term Three I finished off my piece that was going on board two

This is what the finished product looked like. After having the end of term three to design and sketch this out I grabbed the Acrylic colours I needed for the background and started to get to work. I started off eith black being my bass and adding in blues, purples etc to create a galaxy background I showed my motif through adding the lighting bolts as well. In this art piece I wanted to have the three gods almost on top of the world giving the idea that the two are looking down on earth to protect it and Hades is slowly trying to take over a part of world. This was my piece that brought all the gods together.

Eighth art piece

This piece is meant to be Zeus and Heras home Olympia. Olympia is known for the hone of the gods, in the top of the building I decided to write some words in Greek Language. It says ‘The Fall Of The Gods’. I wanted to put this in because I felt like it gave my board a name and tied my artwork together. For this piece I grabbed my acrylic paint, starting with blue and water that down a lot to create a more thiner blue. I started blending this id and creating a sky background. After that I added fine details like clouds and the ray of sunlight beaming down onto Olympia. Once the background was finished I worked on the structure of the building. I started by paint everything white and figuring out what colour I was going to do the bricks. As you can see ai went with gold. For the middle pilers I wanted to incorporate this into it because it shows my snake and lightening bolt, but I also wanted to make it different as I felt plain gold and white would’ve just been boring.

12 Heroic Labors
I finally got upto creating the 12 individual art pieces. I started by sketching out each design. I.e I sketched out a horse because one of Hercules labors was to ‘Capture the horse of Diomedes.’ I’ll explain more on this pieces in term four as that was when they were fully painted and finished.

Last week of Term three
In the last week of term three I was able to get one more art piece done. This piece was the larger piece at the bottom of board one. With this piece I wanted to keep it simple as my next piece was quite complex. For this one I decided to create a border of snake skin going around with the galaxy in the inside. I also had two side pieces that I done to fit in. This is what the larger piece looked like.

Two week Break
Over the break I worked on four side pieces that were going on board one at the bottom and on board two at the top. These were for the pieces I’ve already shown.

This was the side pieces I chose to put onto board one. I created two of these. For this piece I wanted to be able to incorporate some part of Olympia into it. So I painted the background of this a light blue and added in clouds for the sky. After that I thinned out a light yellow with water and created the sun shining down. I didn’t just want to leave this plain so I added in a grey pillar. I mixed blue and yellow together to create the perfect green I needed for my vines. Once I got the green right I started painting vines wrapped around the pillars. These two side pieces were the finished pieces for board one.

This art piece was to go on the left side of where the gods are looking down onto earth. I put it on that side because it was next to Hades. For this piece I wanted to show death and fire. So by doing this I sketched out a skull onto of a poll that had flames rising to it. After the sketching I took acrylic paint and started painting the sketch. Once this was done I added crack down the skull to give more detail and also added light tint of red to the check bones.

This was the right side piece. In this piece I drew the Olympian torch. I wanted to keep this simple as I didn’t want to draw the attention away from the bigger piece. After I sketched it out I decided I wanted to do the torch gold and white like the Olympia colours. So I painted the torch and then took the same red and yellow from the other side piece and painted the flames the same.

After those pieces were done I was happy because I knew I had gotten quite a bit finished but then I was stressed because my 12 Heroic labors weren’t even painted.

Term Four

Term four was really a stressful time for working on your Art board. This was because our board was due the Friday of the first week back at 4pm. So this meant we had that week to finish it or if we needed extra time we could stay till 
4pm after school.

The first day back which was Monday I decided to work on my side pieces for Olympia so I could get that out of the way and have the rest of my time on Hercules Labors.

These two side pieces took me about two hours to complete. I spent one hour in Art class sketching them and then an hour at home painting them. I needed to incorporate my motifs down this area so I though I’d do it by using the pillars again. I wanted the head pieces to be gold so I started to carefully paint them. Once they were dry I painted the base green on each of the pieces and then while that was drying I did the sky background on the spaces. Finally the background both dry and started to create the snake texture on the green using a ink pen. I wanted to use a ink pen as I was able to be more precise and clean with my lines. Once I finished them I took a yellow and created lightening bolts through the sky. After all of that these side pieces were complete and my only focus now was Hercules Labors.

These 12 pieces were really the hardest and challenged me when it came to the amount of time I had to work on them. I had four days to paint them and figure out a background. If I was allowed I could leave some of my other classes to come in and do Art, which I chose to do for those days in some of my classes. I also took the extra time to stay in till 4pm.

I spent Tuesday & Wednesday painting these and then also coming up with the idea of making them into cards. This was challenging as I had to be careful with every detail and think thoroughly about which colours I was using and where I was putting them. These still weren’t the finishing product of my cards. I knee myself and my teacher knew that these cards were to plain and I needed to add a background.

I searched the net looking through other card backgrounds and how they add colour into the card instead of it being plain black and white. I thought having the title of these card at the top and bottom would give viewers the idea of what its about and then also adding the name of each piece into so they knew what the challenge was or what it was based around. To create the background I took a thin fine paint brushed and dipped it into my mixed blue. I started to paint around each piece and of the numbers and I knew I could just fix that up later. I took a darker blue and created a circle around the background of each piece. I did this so the challenge would stand out and pop more. On Friday for school hours I worked on the writing around the outside of the card and writing the names of the challenges. I did this all by using a ruler and a thing ink pen. It took a lot of time as the ink pen was hard to use on top of acrylic paint. I realised I was happy with the finished product and that my Art folio was complete. All there was left to do now was stick it all down. From 3pm till 4pm after school I peeled the blue tack off the back and used double sided tape to finalise each piece into place.

Finished Folio

In the end I finally got there and this is what my completed Folio looked liked. I spent so many hours on it and I’ m so happy with the finished outcome. I overcame barriers and hard challenges. At times I felt like giving up and my got tired but I knee I couldn’t give up when I already had most of my board done. I’m so happy I didn’t give up and I got it finished. I’ll admit the reason I was so rushed on time to work on my Folio was because times during term 1-3 I would slack of and take breaks as I felt my my was going to explode haha. I wouldn’t of completed this without the help of my teacher along the way and Im thankful I could get it done.