Marble Drop

My theme is...  Cats.  I came up with the theme because cats are my favorite animals.  The ideas were things that cats do, like sleep, fight, eat, play, and just sit there.   I think cutting out all the pieces and painting each and every one was the hardest part of making it.  Then glueing all of it together.  The marble travels downwards.  I don't really know how to explain it otherwise.  Yeah, I made the path.  Cut each piece out of cardboard.  If I could change anything (im not finished yet ill edit this later).  I'm most proud of all the stuff I had to do and how it wasn't just three slopes back and forth.

Repetition

I undertook the word repitition as a repeating object, which is why I made a few whistles.  Only half of them work.  So I had been making a pinchpot, and thought about making it into a whistle.  I spent the longest on the turtle whistle (which doesn't work)  and then about one day on all the others.  After looking up a few videos and experimenting, I made whistles.  They're fairly simple to make.  I think I was successful in the fact that at least some of them work.

Pressure

The word "pressure" made me think of the pressure of metamorphosis.  I had planned to make a caterpillar, too, but it didn't work.  I used a photo of a moth as a reference.   The front legs (yes, those are legs) have texture.  (Also, the end of the body has the wings folded over it.)  The one thing I feel like I did successfully was making the front legs, because those are cool and have texture.  If I could change something about this piece, it would be to make more of them... And to make it look less like a piece of poop.

Mixed Media

My mediums for this project were watercolor pencils, tissue paper, photo transfer(tape) and pen.  The theme was Amusement.  I came up with this idea because I find cats playing with toys amusing.  Originally I had planned to put a piece of fabric looking like a cat toy in it's mouth, but that proved too hard to do.  A friend suggested polka dots when I was at a loss for the bacground- "Dots are amusing, right?"  I think the spotted background was the hardest to make.  I had to cut out little circles of tissue paper and then wet them down.  I'm proud of the cat, though it's way unproportional.  Front leg too low, neck too long- that kind of stuff.  I think if I could change something, it would be the cat.  However, I do like the markings.

Non-Traditional Portrait

       I chose to do a portrait of my cat, Juneau.  My medium was pine needles (and glue?).  I've had pets all my life, and most of them were cats.  So why not do one of my cats?  They're important to me.  I wanted to do footprints at first, but that would take too long and be too big of a scale.  The idea was rejected.  So I was thinking of materials that were easy to get and that are abundant.  My backyard has a forest.  There are tons of pine needles, and I decided that's what I was gonna do.  No shortage of pine needles here.  It was a good decision to use pine needles for my cat because it emphasizes the fur.  Animals are furry.  Well, some of them.  It was a little hard to break up every pine needle cluster and then glue every little piece down.  Looks like it was worth it, though.  One of the risks was the challenge of time.  Sticking every little piece down one-by-one is time consuming.  I've never made a cat with non-traditional materials before, either.  I think I like my choices.  Pine needles made a good medium, and shows the fur well.  I guess I can connect the materials to my cat.  I want to take him outside eventually, but he's a little eager to go outside and we might not be able to trust him.  Anyways, this project was pretty fun and I liked it.

Nature Art

Land art is a time-limited piece of art.  Made out of the land.  It will dissapear over time.  Not designed to be long-lasting, they are supposed to dissapear eventually.  After all, that's usually what theyre made to do.  Unless you use glue .  I didn't use glue.  Just leaves.  And also a spider.  My medium was leaves, and I used a picture of a moth on my hand as a reference.  I chose this piece because it sounded like a good idea.  Also because I love moths.  Expected it to come out a little different, but this is fine too.  I'm proud of it.  Next time I'd probably have more time and more leaves.  Then it might be better.  I was inspired by the fluffy moths I found while I was at the mountain on vacation during the summer.  And red is my favorite color.  So those are the reasons and stuff.  This was rather easy to make. 

Sticky Situation

  My ideas for Sticky Situation began with thinking of various situations without a good ending one could get into.  For example, having a pencil with no erasor during a test, stepping on a tack, animals stuck in honey- anything like that.  Yes, I was able to think outside the immediate box.  When you hear "sticky", most people think a fluid or something that is adhesive, but this project was trying to get you to focus on a more wide range of options.  Or so I thought.  Who knows.  I put repetition and pattern in the picture by having a striped wallpaper in the background, stairs, and railings.  Repeating, sort of.  It was a little annoying to shade the railings.  I kept messing up on them, and it'll still never be perfect, but I tried.  Using tape to reinforce the lines was a good idea.  I chose paint.  Acrylic paint?  Yeah, I'm just going to call it paint.  I preferred using it as well because I could layer things without the previous layer being too visible- unlike watercolor.  Haha.  I layered a lot and the amount of paint caked onto my canvas is probably an inch wide.  Bet you could crack it off and get a panel of just paint.  (not really).  Mini lessons?  We had those?  Well, my dad told me that holding the paintbrush near the bottom gave you the most control, but I already knew that.  I don't really remember doing any mini lessons.  This project was pretty interesting and fun to do.