Scratchboard

Artists Create Original Art
Instead of drawing a normal dragon, I tried to do a sand dragon.  Or just a dragon more suited to living in the desert.  The sail-like wings on its back are more suited to helping it zoom over the dunes than to fly.  The smooth scales all over its body help it slip through the sand.  Other pictures of dragons was my inspiration, though it was kind of hard to find a good sand dragon one without it being of Dungeons and Dragons or something.  This is my own stylized desert creature, though the design could be better.
 Artists Develop Art Making Skills
This is the first time I've ever used a scratchboard.  When I was first doing the wings, I messed them up and made them too scratchy.  Oops.  It looks pretty good for a first time.  I didn't gain any skill with familiar materials; I learned how to use a new material.
Artists Take Risks
First of all, I don't think any of us were sure about using the scratchboard.  Maybe a few were, but most of us had never done one before.  I'm one of the ones who hadn't scratched a scratchboard yet.  It was a bit like those lottery tickets where you scratch the material off.  The new material this time was the scraping tool.  It's pretty much a knife but in a better form for this sort of thing.
Artists Solve Problems
One of the big problems was the wings.  I had been too eager to give them a "leathery" look, and went overboard with the scratches.  There's no lighting or shading as a result, and it looks really messy.  I started doing the wings a different way about halfway through, and it looked super cool, so I tried to merge them together and make a smooth recovery. 

Full Body Sketch

Artists Create Original Art
I used my own ideas by telling my person (Hannah) to stand with her head facing right. Then she struck a pose that was different than all the other poses, and I drew her.  I didn't have any inspiration for this.
Artists Develop Art Making Skills
Working on this made me realize that I draw the heads too big - way too big - and that I need to work on clothing folds more.  I spent a while on the jeans; they were hard to do.  Personally, I love charcoal, and working on a full-body scale with it was an interesting change.  It's a very good material.  The charcoal was fun and easy to use to draw this.
Artists Take Risks
I don't usually draw the bodies of humans, let alone on a realistic scale.  This was a little out of my league, but it was fun.  Proportions are a point that need to be worked on.  I picked charcoal - I don't usually use it - and it was really good.
Artists Solve Problems
The first time I tried to draw Hannah, she turned out looking heavier than she is.  The drawing definitely looked nothing like her.  I had to start over again because that attempt was horrible.  This one, the second one, is infinitely better than the first.  I'm glad I started over.

Motion Sketches

In Drawing Art, we got some iPads and trekked to the Gym to draw some people.  It was very nice; trying to draw moving people is a good exercise.  Out of these, I like the drawing of someone throwing the ball.  It's the best out of the three and really captures the motion that he was going through.

Self Portrait

 Artists Develop Art Making Skills
With this project, controlling the pencil and shading became easier.  I'm learning how to shade a face.  The nose still needs some work, though.  I've been drawing them too big and without enough shading.
Artists Take Risks
I wasn't too sure about drawing a human.  They're hard to draw, and the essence of life is almost impossible to capture.  Each person looks different, which makes it all the harder.  The media I used was a drawing pencil, which wasn't really a risk.
Artists Collaborate
I asked Mrs. Rossi and some of the people at my table about my art as I worked.  If it was too creepy, if the nose was too big..  With their help, I fixed some of the uncertain aspects of the drawing.  I'm glad I asked them for help.  Mrs. Rossi is slowly helping me understand how to put the lighting on a nose.
Artists Reflect
I stepped back to analyze a few times.  First, when the sketch was just made.  Second, when the face had just been shaded.  Third, when the cat was shaded.  I considered putting more fur on the cat, but that wouldn't have looked very good, and he isn't that fluffy, anyway.

Self Portrait Practice

This was an attempt to draw myself.  Emphasis on attempt.  This looks almost nothing like me.  So; we took a diagram of a skeleton (the skeleton's figure matched none of ours..), tracing paper, and pencil - then drew ourselves.  Pretty interesting.

Chick

We drew Chick (Mr. Sands' girlfriend) in drawing.  So..  Yeah.  It was interesting, and I'm sure that my drawing skills have increased since freshman year.  (This was a project?)
 Artists Develop Art Making Skills
 By drawing Chick this time, I learned how to shade a bit better. The ribs are completely shaded (those took forever...)  and I've gotten a few tips on perspective.  My skill with a drawing pencil has improved.
Artists Collaborate
While all of us were drawing Chick, I stopped to look around at other people's drawings quite a few times.  To take a break and to see how others are doing the same thing in different ways.  I know that the ribcage perspective doesn't really match with some of the rest of the body, and seeing other works helps you see mistakes with your own.  No one really inspired me because this is a drawing of a skeleton...
Artists Reflect
I stepped back after drawing the head and thought "Well, what now?"  and then drew a quick sketch of the rest of the body.  It branched out from there.  Every time I shaded a part of the body I had to step back and think about it was good or not.  If one part isn't shaded correctly, you can just tell.  I thought about doing a super realistic spine, but then decided off of it.  I couldn't see the bones well enough.

All the Things You Can See Through

Artists Reflect
Every time I stopped and looked at this drawing, I saw mistakes.  There are still mistakes.  While working on the fish himself, the scales and the fins were hard to draw.  The pebbles proved to be a challenge as well.  I thought about doing clear pebbles, but that would've been horrible to draw and would've taken forever.  In the end, Keith's actual pebbles were drawn.
Artists Solve Problems
At one point, all the scales on Keith had been drawn.  They weren't drawn well, so I had to erase more than half of them and start over.  That cycle repeated a few times.  I didn't expect the scales to turn out so well, so that was definitely a surprise. 
Artists Take Risks
I'm not good with drawing fish.  Never really tried to draw them before, so this was hard.  Drawing a fish was certainly a risk - the whole piece is focused on him, after all.  If Keith wasn't drawn correctly, the drawing would be ruined.  While drawing this I tried to go slow and color thoroughly.  My lines always end up sketchy.  That's just the way it is.  I did my best to color it in full.

Candies

(Sorry, it turned sideways) I'm really bad at drawing see-through stuff.   This is a candy drawn in Prismacolor pencils;  it looks better than the pastel one(in my opinion).  Started with the candy, then drew the basic outline and the highlights from brightest to dull.  Some of the highlighting actually looks alright.  I need to work on drawing see-through things and the lighting on them.

This is the same candy drawn in pastels.  There's not much shading/highlights.  It's super hard to draw in pastels, and see-through stuff is even harder.  The transition from green to blue is choppy and not fluent, and the candy looks super flat.  Not at all like a candy.  I don't like pastels. 

Candy

Not too sure what you want us to write about a candy.  Drawing candy in wrappers is pretty interesting.  The people around me with peppermints were not drawing the standard twelve red lines, most of them went way above twelve.  I need to spend more time on the wrapper and highlighting it.  The medium was colored pencils.  I layered the prismas over and over on the candy, making a round tone and figure.  I've had experience drawing candies before, but I'm not sure if this one is the best. 

Look at that View

Artists Create Original Art
    I used my own ideas by; taking some reference pictures of snakes but ultimately drawing this from a different angle than most of the pictures and coming up with the idea for this drawing by myself.  My source of inspiration was a drawing of a house from an ant's view that I saw once.  It was really cool, and I thought about drawing a snake from a mouse's view. 
Artists Create Original Art
   The only new technique I learned while making this is how to incorporate color into a pencil drawing.  I might be getting better at shading smoothly.  I'm horrible at drawing smooth lines.
Artists Solve Problems
    I made a lot of mistakes so there was a lot of stopping and backtracking.  Did my best to finish it and correct all the mistakes.  It was really irritating to keep messing up.  Something unexpected was my almost complete inability to draw the scales - they were changing shape, getting out of line, scales would be misplaced, etc.  The grass in the front was unplanned, but it would look better with some grass in the front.

Contour Lines

A contour of a marching baritone.  Started at the place where the mouthpiece goes and went with it.  My contour is still a little bit sketchy..  That's the way I draw.  It's fun to contour things like this.

 

 A contour drawing of the school hallway...  And some of the people in it.   The ones I drew of the hallway weren't very good, but hey..  It was a nice attempt.  Sorry that it's sideways, blogger is automatically turning them that way, and I'm not sure what else to say.

All of these are sideways, which is kind of weird.  This is a contour of the still life drawing put in the center of the room.  I just couldn't get the whole still life; I always drew too big.  Very sketchy.

A contour drawing of the room.  Well, the room behind my seat.  There were too many humans and objects in front of me.  I wasn't about to step up to that challenge.  Pretty fun to draw. 

Colored Bottle

Honestly, drawing a bottle that has curves is much easier to me(Thanks to the group that said they couldn't draw the bottle because it was a little blurry).  The highlights are all over the place and you can just guess where they are.  It was fun drawing and highlighting the bottles.  Not too sure about the coloring, though.  Had it been on that black piece of paper to the left with only a red top, the contrast probably would have looked nice.  Originally I tried to draw some colored pencils distorted by the bottle, but that didn't go so well.  Great activity.