an explanation of the semester..

"I don't think people are born artists; I think it comes from a mixture of your surroundings, the people you meet, and luck." - Francis Bacon, an Anglo-Irish figurative painter known for his bold, graphic, and emotionally raw imagery.

For my first semester portfolio/exhibit I chose to incoporate, what I feel are my five best projects from this semester. I chose "Save Us", "Running through Time", "Open Hands, Open Heart", "Give Happiness", "Broken", ad "Regret". All of these pieces fit into the 2D design portfolio I am aiming for. Three of the five of these projects are free choice projects to likely fit in the Breadth secion of the portfolio with the rest of my semester one work. Viewing these three free choice projects in particular ("Running through Time", "Save Us", and "Regret"), one can determine my development as an artist quite easily. I feel like I have grasped the concept of 2D design and the different directions I could go gradually from the beginning of the semester up until now. My pieces start out with little direction and meaning behind them rather than just trying to make something "cool" and move toward symbolic pieces with concept and thought behind them that actually makes sense, while continuing to establish the appealing and eye catching factor.

To make my work unique, I wanted to display it from a literal point of view. When people hang their clothes out to dry on a clothesline, they are putting it out in the open for everyone to see. My innovative approach was to expose my work as though it were being hung out on a clothesline in the sky for all to see.

exposed

Regret

My concept for this free choice project was to portray how in life you can't change the past no matter how hard you try, or want to. I was inspired to do this piece because of a Michelle Branch song called "Breathe" with the line "life's like an hourglass glued to the table". My composition and craftsmanship for this piece were successful. I created it in Photoshop and created a rule of thirds composition with one hand grabbing the hourglass and trying to change the past, while the other is glueing it down in place. I added the words to the project last minute, to give it some more depth. Without the words, the piece looked plain and boring. The words are a quote about regret that say "I am who I am today because of the choices I made yesterday." I feel like this project was a complete success. The elements/principles I used in my piece were unity - in the colors and how everything is connected in the composition, and space -in the space created by the composition.

broken

For this project, we were supposed to portray

our vision of home. My concept of the assignment

was to make a distressed family photo because my

family isn't as close as we could be. I cut out photos

of each of my family members and pasted them

together in a "family photo" assembly. The elements

and principles I used are unity, with the different

colors and composition, space, and form. With the

space created with the empty spots in the piece.