My Painting
Projects

This painting of mine represents a time in my personal life where I felt like I had been stuck in the past and was constantly in a state of reminiscing, so much so that I would forget to live in the present. Here, you can see someone in a serene yet dark landscape, looking at the water and the cityscape across the lake. I used three media, which include watercolor, acrylic paint, and colored pencil.

The water and the night sky were colored with watercolor paint, and the grass and trees were designed with colored pencil. The moon, clouds, and the mountain, into a skyline silhouette, were created using acrylic paint. To add a sort of murk to the clouds and a glow to the moon, I used a technique where I had lightly watered down plain white acrylic paint and damped it down with my finger. To add an overall gloom or dark filter to the paper, I had gone over the bright parts that I had colored with pencil, with a dark, watered-down watercolor.

As an artist, I mainly want to find a way to express more personal aspects of my life in a way that not only looks pretty to my tastes, but also has that personal connection. Through this project, I was able to express a personal struggle of mine and find some sort of value in the part of me that loves my memories and lives in the past. I believe that in the future, I'll be able to better represent these personal ideas of mine, and translate these ideas to be more direct on paper instead of so hidden as it was in this painting.

Overall, I am proud of how my piece came out and now know what I can improve on again, should I make another similarly themed painting! I was able to sharpen some techniques and figured out ways to overcome the struggles I found, especially dealing with media that can cause more permanent markings.

This painting of mine was inspired by my love for my job and the Halloween season. I was able to achieve this look through using acrylic paint and both brush and finger painting techniques. Since it is a painting that was meant to invoke the spook of Halloween, I used darker and gloomier colors than what you would see in real life. Normally, when most people think of In-N-Out, they associate bright colors of white and red with feelings of joy and happiness, as the establishment is well known for. I took a twist on that idea and decided to emphasize the gloom of the night with a darker, more wine-red than the normal bright red. I had also dumbed down the bright neon lights with a more muted yellow in order to emphasize the center ghost.

For this artwork, I mainly wanted to work on my skills with perspective and fabric detailing. Shading with the In-N-Out building was able to help me learn a little bit more about how shadows work with point of view and light sources. Overall, I was mainly focusing on learning shadows. 

This can be seen through the ghost as well, as fabric and the movement of fabric is, for most, a challenge in shading. In the end, I think I could've put more attention on those fabric details and the sky details, but I'm happy with the color choices and base shape!​​​

With this painting, I was able to develop skills that made me look closer at trying to replicate realistic details. I had to look at a real-life photo and look at the details, and see how I could copy that with paint.

Details such as seeds and the edges were the main challenge of this painting, but I was able to overcome that through layering. I had layered multiple layers of different contrasting paints for the seed effect. For the edges, I had the first layer before I had filled in the cucumber then I went over them again after the cucumbers were filled in.​​​

For anything but a canvas, I decided on a Double LP Vinyl as I wanted to have a gift one, keep one style of painting. I had made both with the same/similar pattern of flowers, stems, and clouds. I had painted straight on the vinyl, as I wanted to keep the bold blue as the background. The vinyl I painted on was the Bewitched: Goddess Edition by Laufey, which contains songs covering many themes, mostly romance. 

I wanted to paint things that actually coincided with the music I was painting on, so I took a look at the lyrics and found some imagery that I figured would fit the idea of a vinyl. Two of the major inspirations were from two songs on the album, "Misty" - Covered by Laufey, and "While You Were Sleeping" - Laufey Original. From Misty, I thought of the cloudy and hazy atmosphere From While You Were Sleeping, the lyric, "A light pink bouquet, a promise you'll stay, then I start to believe", inspired me to paint the pink flowers you can see hanging and growing along the vinyl. I definitely faced challenges when it came to the roses, as I didn't know how to add the layers. Eventually, I figured out how to add different layers of colors with certain crescent shapes. The stems were simple, and the clouds were done after the stem base was done.​​​​

Overall, I'm glad with the simplicity of the design and with figuring out new techniques.