Art 2016 Reflection
SYMBOLIC SELF PORTRAIT
~Description of project
This was the first project that I worked on this year. This symbolic self-portrait had to to contain certain elements: a hand, a pattern and color. I used these three elements to create a portrait that showed more about who I am versus what I look like.
~Artist statement
My symbolic self-portrait is fold out art piece with a portrait resembling my physical self on the outside and symbols resembling my personality and family on the inside. I decided to use the fold out format because it helped to convey the idea that I am more than meets the eye. The outside of the portrait is semi realistic front view portrait of myself. The inside contains a scene of an estuary with a heron under the sun. These are symbolic ...My name is Sol which means sun. My last name is Garza which means heron. The water of the estuary is being held by two hands and the water is dripping through the fingers onto a skull. At the base, it had the words, "forward for those behind me".
~Pictures
~Reflection
I enjoyed creating this art piece. I was happy with the idea that I developed. It was a unique way of incorporating the various required elements and at the same time expressing my identity. Many of my peers traced their hands and drew patterns along with things that were meaningful to them on the page. While I found some of my peer's work interesting, I wanted to do it in a different way. I was trying to create an art piece that I would be satisfied with given the time frame and tools that I was given. This art piece has sparked some ideas that I would like to pursue in the future.
INSTALLATION ART PIECE
~Description of project
In this project I was in a group of eight people working on designing, creating and installing an art piece in the school. My group was composed of Ryan, Ashley, Tristen, Gracyn, Sam, Brandon, Jacob and myself. This was the same group that was working on the team building project with Robin (Team Hufflepuff). We were tasked with creating an art piece that could be displayed somewhere in the HTHNC building.
~Artist statements
We created a large painting of a tree meant to symbolize the development that HTHNC students go through from Freshman to Seniors. We came up with this idea because of the interesting fact that HTHNC Freshman start on the first floor of the building, then move up to the second floor in their Sophomore and Junior years, only to return to the first floor in their Senior year. I thought that it was interesting that the least developed(Freshman) and most developed students(Seniors) were on the same floor. I thought that it would be interesting to try and represent this phenomena through a tree. We tried to create an art piece that conveyed the feeling of a journey where you start and end in the same physical place but have significantly developed mentally and emotionally. We tried to make half of the tree convey upward movement. This half of the art piece was the "spring tree", growing up as Freshman move upstairs to become Sophomores. The other half of the art piece was "fall tree", losing it's leaves and going down as the Juniors move downstairs once again to become Seniors.
The "spring tree" side of the art piece had a blue and green color scheme to symbolize spring while the "fall tree" side of the art piece had a red and yellow color scheme to symbolize fall.
~Pictures
~Reflection
This was a very challenging project. The first challenge was the large number of group members and conflicting ideas about what our project should be. We went through many different ideas ranging from using a mirror and a staged car crash to bring attention to drunk driving and placing mannequins painted with with flags of different countries to show how many people die trying to immigrate to the United States to placing hundreds of flowers in the cracks of the sidewalk and creating an interactive paint-peeling art piece. These were all interesting ideas and we had a lot of arguments about which one we should pick based off of practicality, budget and time frame. Eventually, I came up with the idea of a tree branch installed near the stairs, emphasizing the relationship between the storey of the HTHNC building students took classes in and the development from Freshman to Senior. This idea was revised until it became a tree installed opposite to the stairs. Once we had decided on an idea, we had to think about implementation. We went through many sketched revisions of the tree while priming about 10 canvases to be painted. Ryan superimposed the measurements of the canvases onto my sketch of the tree. We then sketched the tree on the canvases in the order they were organized on photoshop. After sketching out what was going to be drawn on what canvas, we began painting. This was a very difficult part of the process because painting was not the strongest skill of many of our group members and we had a large number of canvases to paint. In order to finish painting the art piece I skipped elective, stayed in during lunch and worked on it after school with my partners. Eventually, the art piece came together. Gracyn and Ryan were in charge of installation.
BIOLOGY ART PIECE
~Description of project
In this project, I made an accompanying image to my research paper on a biology topic. I made a visual representation of the genetic engineering process that I studied in Biology the previous semester. My paper described what I learned through the Amgen Wallace Labs about the natural and artificial processes of creating a recombinant plasmid. By using restriction enzymes to cut open an existing plasmid, genetic engineers can add the desired gene so that it will both incorporate and express that gene.
~Artist statements
This art piece is an illustration of basic principles that I studied in Biology. Last semester, I studied genetic engineering and its effect on evolution in my Biology class. Specifically, I studied the process of inserting a new gene into an existing sequence. The art piece is in the style of a comic strip and shows how a bacteria about to be destroyed by antibiotics incorporates an antibiotic resistance gene and avoids destruction. The comic strip consists of several scenes with accompanying written explanations. Although the comic accurately portrays the genetic engineering process, drawing is not meant to be realistic but rather a stylized comic version. In scene one, you can see the bacteria with plasmids floating around in it. In another part of the scene the antibiotics are waiting to attack. The text states what is happening. Then, as the comic continues, each scene shows the process of the bacteria becoming resistant to the antibiotics.
~Pictures
~Reflection
It was fun and interesting to work on this project. It required me to re-read the paper I had written and remember the details of the topic I had studied. Then, I selected a simple example of one way recombinant plasmids are made in nature. I made several drafts of the comic. Because there was so much content in what I had studied, I had to go through several versions of my comic strip with a focus on clarity. I had to make sure that I had concise, interesting and accurate text and images, Then, I incorporated my peer's feedback to make my final draft.
PORTRAIT
~Description of project
In this project, I had to find a photo of a famous person and then re-create it in a sketch. This was a short, one week, mini-project.
~Artist statements
I chose to sketch Tom Hiddleston who is the actor that played Loci in the Avengers movie. He has an interesting face and I found a photo with excellent light and dark variation that would make it interesting to sketch because of the shading involved.
~Pictures
~Reflection
This project enabled me to improve on my technical artistic skill. It also gave me confidence that I can make a realistic sketch in a relatively short amount of time.
PASTEL ART PIECE
~Description of project
In this project, I was to try a new medium, pastels. It had to be a landscape drawing. This was another short, one week, mini-project.
~Artist statements
I drew a 3 part picture. The water light blue ocean, the tentacles of an octopus that make bright red hills coming up out of the water and the background of black mountains and a purple sky.
~Pictures
~Reflection
This was a challenging project because I am unfamiliar with pastels. I had to try to use this new medium to create the art piece. Pastels are particularly difficult.
They create a thick line, they smudge in ways that you don't want them to and if you don't take care of the dust that comes off, it can add color in places where you don't want it. It was challenging to deal with this unfamiliar medium and make it work to my advantage.
CHILDREN'S BOOK
~Description of project
In this project I helped write and illustrate a children's book. Done in conjunction with Spanish class, this art project involved working with my team to write a children's story which I then illustrated. Our book, Barry, The Barracuda, is designed for children from ages 5 to 10 years old. For this reason the art style was simple and crisp with more complex shapes than a book for toddlers. Finally, we presented our completed book to the third grade children at HTeNC.
~Artist statements
In coming up with this storyline, I was influenced by two of my favorite children's books La Gran Rana Bocona and Nadarin. This art piece represents my first attempt at creating and illustrating a children's book. The story of Barry, The Barracuda, is a picture book about the negative effects of bullying and bragging. The main character in the story, Barry, is the largest fish in a coral reef off the coast of Southern California. He routinely torments the smaller fish, stealing their possessions. One day, Sally, The Sardine, refuses to give him her pearl necklace. As a consequence, Barry eats Sally. The fish in the reef witness this and recount what happened to their friends. Each time the tale is told, Barry's persona becomes more and more menacing. This tale quickly moves beyond the corral reef to reach the Tomas, El Tiburon (shark), The King of the Sea. Upon hearing the tale, he searches for Barry who he believes to be an enormous, terrifying fish and therefore a worthy opponent. When Barry sees Tomas he is terrified for the first time in his life. He realizes that he is not the biggest fish in the sea. He spits out everything he stole, including Sally, the Sardine, and swims away never to be seen again.
~Pictures
~Reflection
In preparation, I studied the art of one of my favorite children's books, I Want My Hat Back, and imitated the art from one of the illustrations. Our teacher, Ms. Shani, also explained some of the basic principles of art in children books for different age groups. This gave me a better understanding of the kinds of illustrations that are effective to communicate story to children of different ages. Because the story was aimed for young children 5 -7 years old, I decided to create my characters in a clear crisp style. To achieve this style, I created all of my characters and sets in photoshop mostly using the pen tool. The first step I took to create the illustrations for this book was to make the character models for all the different fish (characters) in the story. Then, I set out to design each page which required creating sets/scenes for the characters, such as the coral reef. In addition, I incorporated the scanned watercolor drawings that my partners had painted for the backgrounds. I then inserted the png images of the fish to place them in the scene. I manipulated the models so that they would have different expressions and positions in each scene. An unexpected challenge was the size, color and placement of the text on the page. All of the text was on the same page that the images were on. It was time consuming to find the font and typeface so that the words would be large enough for kids to read without unintentionally interfering with the scene. This project has sparked my interest in illustration of children's books.
~Description of project
This was the first project that I worked on this year. This symbolic self-portrait had to to contain certain elements: a hand, a pattern and color. I used these three elements to create a portrait that showed more about who I am versus what I look like.
~Artist statement
My symbolic self-portrait is fold out art piece with a portrait resembling my physical self on the outside and symbols resembling my personality and family on the inside. I decided to use the fold out format because it helped to convey the idea that I am more than meets the eye. The outside of the portrait is semi realistic front view portrait of myself. The inside contains a scene of an estuary with a heron under the sun. These are symbolic ...My name is Sol which means sun. My last name is Garza which means heron. The water of the estuary is being held by two hands and the water is dripping through the fingers onto a skull. At the base, it had the words, "forward for those behind me".
~Pictures
~Reflection
I enjoyed creating this art piece. I was happy with the idea that I developed. It was a unique way of incorporating the various required elements and at the same time expressing my identity. Many of my peers traced their hands and drew patterns along with things that were meaningful to them on the page. While I found some of my peer's work interesting, I wanted to do it in a different way. I was trying to create an art piece that I would be satisfied with given the time frame and tools that I was given. This art piece has sparked some ideas that I would like to pursue in the future.
INSTALLATION ART PIECE
~Description of project
In this project I was in a group of eight people working on designing, creating and installing an art piece in the school. My group was composed of Ryan, Ashley, Tristen, Gracyn, Sam, Brandon, Jacob and myself. This was the same group that was working on the team building project with Robin (Team Hufflepuff). We were tasked with creating an art piece that could be displayed somewhere in the HTHNC building.
~Artist statements
We created a large painting of a tree meant to symbolize the development that HTHNC students go through from Freshman to Seniors. We came up with this idea because of the interesting fact that HTHNC Freshman start on the first floor of the building, then move up to the second floor in their Sophomore and Junior years, only to return to the first floor in their Senior year. I thought that it was interesting that the least developed(Freshman) and most developed students(Seniors) were on the same floor. I thought that it would be interesting to try and represent this phenomena through a tree. We tried to create an art piece that conveyed the feeling of a journey where you start and end in the same physical place but have significantly developed mentally and emotionally. We tried to make half of the tree convey upward movement. This half of the art piece was the "spring tree", growing up as Freshman move upstairs to become Sophomores. The other half of the art piece was "fall tree", losing it's leaves and going down as the Juniors move downstairs once again to become Seniors.
The "spring tree" side of the art piece had a blue and green color scheme to symbolize spring while the "fall tree" side of the art piece had a red and yellow color scheme to symbolize fall.
~Pictures
~Reflection
This was a very challenging project. The first challenge was the large number of group members and conflicting ideas about what our project should be. We went through many different ideas ranging from using a mirror and a staged car crash to bring attention to drunk driving and placing mannequins painted with with flags of different countries to show how many people die trying to immigrate to the United States to placing hundreds of flowers in the cracks of the sidewalk and creating an interactive paint-peeling art piece. These were all interesting ideas and we had a lot of arguments about which one we should pick based off of practicality, budget and time frame. Eventually, I came up with the idea of a tree branch installed near the stairs, emphasizing the relationship between the storey of the HTHNC building students took classes in and the development from Freshman to Senior. This idea was revised until it became a tree installed opposite to the stairs. Once we had decided on an idea, we had to think about implementation. We went through many sketched revisions of the tree while priming about 10 canvases to be painted. Ryan superimposed the measurements of the canvases onto my sketch of the tree. We then sketched the tree on the canvases in the order they were organized on photoshop. After sketching out what was going to be drawn on what canvas, we began painting. This was a very difficult part of the process because painting was not the strongest skill of many of our group members and we had a large number of canvases to paint. In order to finish painting the art piece I skipped elective, stayed in during lunch and worked on it after school with my partners. Eventually, the art piece came together. Gracyn and Ryan were in charge of installation.
BIOLOGY ART PIECE
~Description of project
In this project, I made an accompanying image to my research paper on a biology topic. I made a visual representation of the genetic engineering process that I studied in Biology the previous semester. My paper described what I learned through the Amgen Wallace Labs about the natural and artificial processes of creating a recombinant plasmid. By using restriction enzymes to cut open an existing plasmid, genetic engineers can add the desired gene so that it will both incorporate and express that gene.
~Artist statements
This art piece is an illustration of basic principles that I studied in Biology. Last semester, I studied genetic engineering and its effect on evolution in my Biology class. Specifically, I studied the process of inserting a new gene into an existing sequence. The art piece is in the style of a comic strip and shows how a bacteria about to be destroyed by antibiotics incorporates an antibiotic resistance gene and avoids destruction. The comic strip consists of several scenes with accompanying written explanations. Although the comic accurately portrays the genetic engineering process, drawing is not meant to be realistic but rather a stylized comic version. In scene one, you can see the bacteria with plasmids floating around in it. In another part of the scene the antibiotics are waiting to attack. The text states what is happening. Then, as the comic continues, each scene shows the process of the bacteria becoming resistant to the antibiotics.
~Pictures
~Reflection
It was fun and interesting to work on this project. It required me to re-read the paper I had written and remember the details of the topic I had studied. Then, I selected a simple example of one way recombinant plasmids are made in nature. I made several drafts of the comic. Because there was so much content in what I had studied, I had to go through several versions of my comic strip with a focus on clarity. I had to make sure that I had concise, interesting and accurate text and images, Then, I incorporated my peer's feedback to make my final draft.
PORTRAIT
~Description of project
In this project, I had to find a photo of a famous person and then re-create it in a sketch. This was a short, one week, mini-project.
~Artist statements
I chose to sketch Tom Hiddleston who is the actor that played Loci in the Avengers movie. He has an interesting face and I found a photo with excellent light and dark variation that would make it interesting to sketch because of the shading involved.
~Pictures
~Reflection
This project enabled me to improve on my technical artistic skill. It also gave me confidence that I can make a realistic sketch in a relatively short amount of time.
PASTEL ART PIECE
~Description of project
In this project, I was to try a new medium, pastels. It had to be a landscape drawing. This was another short, one week, mini-project.
~Artist statements
I drew a 3 part picture. The water light blue ocean, the tentacles of an octopus that make bright red hills coming up out of the water and the background of black mountains and a purple sky.
~Pictures
~Reflection
This was a challenging project because I am unfamiliar with pastels. I had to try to use this new medium to create the art piece. Pastels are particularly difficult.
They create a thick line, they smudge in ways that you don't want them to and if you don't take care of the dust that comes off, it can add color in places where you don't want it. It was challenging to deal with this unfamiliar medium and make it work to my advantage.
CHILDREN'S BOOK
~Description of project
In this project I helped write and illustrate a children's book. Done in conjunction with Spanish class, this art project involved working with my team to write a children's story which I then illustrated. Our book, Barry, The Barracuda, is designed for children from ages 5 to 10 years old. For this reason the art style was simple and crisp with more complex shapes than a book for toddlers. Finally, we presented our completed book to the third grade children at HTeNC.
~Artist statements
In coming up with this storyline, I was influenced by two of my favorite children's books La Gran Rana Bocona and Nadarin. This art piece represents my first attempt at creating and illustrating a children's book. The story of Barry, The Barracuda, is a picture book about the negative effects of bullying and bragging. The main character in the story, Barry, is the largest fish in a coral reef off the coast of Southern California. He routinely torments the smaller fish, stealing their possessions. One day, Sally, The Sardine, refuses to give him her pearl necklace. As a consequence, Barry eats Sally. The fish in the reef witness this and recount what happened to their friends. Each time the tale is told, Barry's persona becomes more and more menacing. This tale quickly moves beyond the corral reef to reach the Tomas, El Tiburon (shark), The King of the Sea. Upon hearing the tale, he searches for Barry who he believes to be an enormous, terrifying fish and therefore a worthy opponent. When Barry sees Tomas he is terrified for the first time in his life. He realizes that he is not the biggest fish in the sea. He spits out everything he stole, including Sally, the Sardine, and swims away never to be seen again.
~Pictures
~Reflection
In preparation, I studied the art of one of my favorite children's books, I Want My Hat Back, and imitated the art from one of the illustrations. Our teacher, Ms. Shani, also explained some of the basic principles of art in children books for different age groups. This gave me a better understanding of the kinds of illustrations that are effective to communicate story to children of different ages. Because the story was aimed for young children 5 -7 years old, I decided to create my characters in a clear crisp style. To achieve this style, I created all of my characters and sets in photoshop mostly using the pen tool. The first step I took to create the illustrations for this book was to make the character models for all the different fish (characters) in the story. Then, I set out to design each page which required creating sets/scenes for the characters, such as the coral reef. In addition, I incorporated the scanned watercolor drawings that my partners had painted for the backgrounds. I then inserted the png images of the fish to place them in the scene. I manipulated the models so that they would have different expressions and positions in each scene. An unexpected challenge was the size, color and placement of the text on the page. All of the text was on the same page that the images were on. It was time consuming to find the font and typeface so that the words would be large enough for kids to read without unintentionally interfering with the scene. This project has sparked my interest in illustration of children's books.