Concentration #10: "Pensive"

This piece is, sadly, the last of my "freebies." I feel like I transformed this one the most from what it was before compared to the two other freebies. This emotion is "pensive," or thoughtful/confused/ruminating. The jagged design structure is supposed to represent the portrait's jumbled thoughts, with the glued-on scrabble board pieces the actual jumbled-up thoughts and words. Changes I made to the piece before and after the critique include altering the expression of the face slightly (lowering the eyebrows and adding values around the temple) to make the expression more "pensive" and less "vacant." :) I also cleaned up some of the scribbles I had made with charcoal previously and added more newspaper in some areas. As for the design structure, which used to be an irrelevant "D to S" gradation from another project I had done, I colored everything black to make it less busy, and added another concentration structure of scrabble pieces on top of it. I feel like this piece is strong because it has many layers and high contrast.

Concentration #9: "Elated"

I found it a bit hard to follow my last concentration...it was hard coming up with this one, because I wanted it to be conceptually equal to my last one. So I settled on showing somebody who is imagining winning a soccer game/scoring a goal, and all the glory with it: the portrait (great job Philip) has a very happy expression and the body language of his arms raised helps heighten the emotion. The design structure is an overriding radial/concentric structure which is also the soccer net. The portrait is interacting with the structure because he is "caught" in the net. After the critique, I added more contrast to the portrait, added different watercolor colors in the background, and included faint watercolor paintings of an imagined crowd on the right-hand side. I'm pretty happy with this one, but I think I want to turn away from really detailed, methodical stuff and try oil painting again!

Concentration #8: "Disgusted"

I feel like this one may be my most "advanced" work yet, conceptually and technically. I thought of how I could use an intermediary subject to help bring forth an emotion. Since my emotion this week was "disgusted", I settled on drawing a fly close-up with all its weird, gross appendages. I changed my usual medium this time by using watercolor crayons/watercolor for the first time. The fly's eyes are the design structure (repetition/gradation), and the portrait is reflected in one of the fly's eyes (AND MY SUBJECT WAS MARY NOVAK! haha), so you really get the feeling of someone being disgusted because they are looking at a gross fly. After the critique, I added color to the eyes to help it blend into the piece better, brought some circles more into the other eye to integrate them, and cleaned up the background to define the rest of the fly's body, etc. I personally am really proud of this one...:)

Concentration #7: "Angry"

Ok...so I'm finally getting up my next three (!) concentrations. This one is called "Angry," and is another work I added onto from last year (another freebie, you could say). To bring across the emotion of Angry, I used bright, warm, intense colors; an overriding concentric radial/gradation structure, and a subject of a very beside-himself old man. At the critique, I thought about how I could improve this piece and have it suit my new ideas for my concentration. In order to incorporate the portrait into the structure, I drew lines from his head into the wheel-like structure, to make it seem as if he is being pulled into the structure. I also blurred the lines of his face and made parts of the structure actually cut into his face. My whole idea for this is that anger is an unbalanced and "enveloping" emotion that's hard to control, thus the man being drawn into this endless cycle of anger. In addition, I added contrast/value to some parts and cleaned some things up. I think this one turned out well.