Memory Drawing

"Home #5," 21x24". Gouache, wood glue, colored pencils, nail polish, pencil

   For this assignment, we had to close our eyes and draw a visualization of our childhood home. I moved a lot as a child, so I randomly picked the first house that popped into my head and drew the floor plan. We then worked into the drawings using nontraditional mediums, and I used colors and materials that I associated with that home. Yellow is the predominant color because the carpet was a sort of warm yellow brown, the outside of the apartments were yellowish in hue, and I got my yellow-orange cat while at this house. I used nail polish and colored pencils because I would use those things on an almost daily basis there.

Drawing Collection

"Unseen," Varying sizes from 3x3" to 16x4". Pen, watercolor.

    For these pieces, I decided to draw animals that I personally find really interesting in form and color. Among these are juvenile jellyfish, basket starfish, sea slugs, and planarians. I wanted to try to emulate scientific illustrations and diagrams stylistically while also looking at the formal qualities that each creature has.

Multiple Panel Drawing

 

"Fragmented," Approximately 40x10". Printer paper, rembrandt black pastel, eraser

    For this project, I drew several blind contour drawings on plain white printer paper. I then cut each drawing into several pieces, and rearranged the pieces to make new drawings. I went in afterward with black pastel, spread it around, and erased back into it. It's a rather chaotic and messy piece, and it contrasts nicely with the drawing collection I did.

Transformation Drawings

"Layers," approximately 42x36", Mixed Media (Will specify under each image)

Layer 1; Rembrandt black pastel, willow charcoal, sepia ArtGraf

    For this layer, I used my hands and water to spread medium all over the paper. This entire project was a very hands-on and experimentally cathartic experience.

Layer 2; Gesso

    For the second layer, I again used my hands as a brush and smeared gesso over the surface of the drawing. I enjoyed the way the underlying mediums interacted with the white gesso.

Layer 3; Rembrandt black pastel, joint compound

    For this layer, I decided to take a few steps backward into a more familiar area. In personal work and previous pieces, I have often used stippling and small repetitive clusters of marks. I also had joint compound on me at the time and decided to create thick peaks of it on the paper.

Layer 4; Black acrylic paint

    For my fourth layer, I decided to cover most of the paper in black paint. As I painted, the peaks of joint compound started to break off, so I went ahead and ripped most of the rest off as well. I like the juxtaposition of the clusters of white dots next to the still visible clusters of black circles, and I really enjoyed the fact that it stayed shiny and slick-looking even after it dried.

Layer 5; Gesso, water, glue, pink metallic paint

   I started off with just adding a repeating scale-pattern in gesso over the whole paper, but it felt too similar to the black circular layer. To remedy this, I dumped glue and water onto the paper and mixed it around with my hands before spreading pink paint over the slick surface. This was a rather fun layer.

Layer 6: Wood glue, water, blue metallic paint

   For my final layer, I decided to experiment more with how glue, water, and paint all react and interact with each other. Similarly to the previous layer, I spread water and wood glue around, then mixed blue paint in. With this layer though, I really dug my fingers into the paper to get those blue stripes and trails of paint. I then poured even more wood glue over the top and let it sit, and the blue paint naturally mixed with the edges and looked interesting. I got overzealous with the water in this one, though, and the paper warped quite a bit when it dried.

Ephemeral Drawings

"Radiating," approximately 13x13", sticks, moss, vegetation

   For my first ephemeral piece, I was a little too careful in what I made. I wanted to make a circle of items that radiated outward, but ended up making a sort of nest. I do like the colors that occurred, the greens that contrast with the cool grey sticks and warm brown dead leaves and mulch, but I wish I had experimented with this one more.

"Regret," approximately 12x12", aquarium rocks, pinned insects

   For my second ephemeral piece, I decided to use items around my desk in my room, which included three different colored aquarium rocks and a shadowbox with pinned insects. I dumped the rocks out of the aquarium and used them to piece together a drawing of a giant swallowtail butterfly. After that, I took out and organized the pinned insects, and finally surrounded everything with white aquarium rocks. This piece earned it's title because that is the only emotion I felt after the first thirty minutes or so of placing small rocks in the shape of a butterfly. Only after finishing this piece did I realize that, like the first one, it was also radial in shape and was a sort of "nest," although more figuratively this time. It's in my room, so it's like the nest that I come back to, but it also contains aspects from two of my pastimes; fish/aquarium keeping and (found dead) insect collecting.

Eraser Drawings

 "Turning" 21x12", willow charcoal, white plastic eraser, hands/fingers

   For the Eraser Drawing assignment, I started with just the willow charcoal. I started by covering the entire paper with charcoal, smudging it around with my hands, erasing some curved organic lines, and repeating this process. I was particularly interested in the way dragging my fingers over lines that had been erased would lighten dark areas and darken the erased areas. You can see this happening the most on the right hand side of the page, near the center.

"Swimming Solo" 21x12", Rembrandt black pastel, white plastic eraser

  For my second drawing in this assignment, I decided to go with something more representational. Fish are one of my favorite subjects to draw and paint, so I went with a goldfish. I covered the entire paper in the pastel, erased some large portions of the background, filled them back in, then erased the general shape of a fish. I then erased in the fish's details, adding a few lines of pastel at the end.

 "Sinking Landscape" 21x12", willow charcoal, Rembrandt black pastel, hands, white plastic eraser

   For my third drawing, I started out by coating the paper in willow charcoal and rubbing it into the paper with my hands. I erased horizontal lines into the charcoal using my eraser, rubbed in more charcoal, and repeated. I then randomly applied a few large patches of the black pastel and rubbed it into the paper with my hands. I started to erase those diagonal lines in, and I would go back and forth between erasing the lines and rubbing in more pastel. It began to look like an abstracted landscape, so I added some vertical black lines to represent foliage. I later decided that it looked better upside-down to how I had drawn it, so I rotated it.

 "Vortex" 21x12", willow charcoal, Rembrandt black pastel, and gesso all mixed with water; eraser

   For my final piece, I mixed all of the previous materials with gesso and water. I painted the liquid onto the paper, leaving one white shape. I then erased into the wet liquid in a rotational motion, unintentionally ripping the paper. I repeated this a few times, and occasionally instead of ripping, the eraser would just push the liquid, creating a sort of texture almost resembling impasto in a painting.

White Paper Drawings

"White Diagonals" 8x10", gesso and paper

   For the White Paper drawing assignment, we took 21x24" sheets of paper and had to make them fit into an 8x10" space. I started by ripping long strips of the paper and fitting them into the general shape and size of an 8x10" rectangle using gesso as a binder. Once I had the desired size, I cut the piece into four equal pieces and rearranged them so that the edges of the piece were cleaner.

"Grey Space" 8x10", gesso, water, paper, and Rembrandt black pastel

   The second piece for the White Paper drawing assignment. In this drawing, we were allowed to incorporate black pastel into the drawing. I wanted to experiment with the values I could get from the pastel when mixed with water and gesso, but I also wanted to leave the piece more abstract and geometric. This assignment ended up being largely experimental for me.