Missing Piece - Parallel Project Reflection

   For this project I had to work through some of the challenges that were thrown at me along the way and be careful not to add too much or too little detail to certain spots to make it look better. I was thinking at one point I could just use stencils to make the rhino but I was told I needed to challenge my artistic abilities and try to just paint it by hand. Considering how it worked out I'm pleased with the piece and even though it's not fully finished yet, I'm still excited to see the final product.

   I had to practice a bit with stippling and getting the right shades of paint for different shadows, but they turned out pretty well. I wasn't sure if I'd get the paint in the right spots but the stippling really added to the texture and made the rhino so much better than before. Instead of choosing regular painting to create the texture of the skin, the stippling did that for me and made the skin look a lot more realistic and almost rough looking.

Parallel Project Preview

I used many of my own unique ideas in this piece, and found it to be one of my most successful pieces this year. Our teacher told us to create a piece based on a current event we found, and I found on poachers who hunt down rhinos and cut off their horns so they can be used for many reasons like for medicines or just to make large sums of money. I decided to base my piece off of some of the pictures I found of the injured rhinos to make my piece, and when I thought about what mediums to use, I had the idea of using a puzzle with missing pieces to better represent the message I was trying to give off. 

I don't know of any pieces in particular that are like this one but I got the idea from a puzzle I once had of some wild animals in africa, and if you took out certain pieces of the puzzle, parts of the animal's faces or bodies would be missing. I took the idea and ran with it and luckily found the perfect picture to help me create my piece. 

My artwork is intended to show that if we take advantage of beautiful creatures like rhinos, we are taking a part of their identities away for our own selfish purposes. The issue I primarily examined was the problem our world has with poachers, and how we need to do a better job of giving these animals the proper treatment they deserve and protecting them from any danger that does not normally occur in their natural habitats. This artwork shows a bit of what I am like because I am very aware of problems such as these and I care a lot about what we do with our wildlife around the world. We need to protect animals like these because if we don't, there's a good chance our future generations will lose them and never get the chance to know what rhinos are like or even get to see them in real life. 

wounded rhino article link: http://www.news24.com/Green/News/Wounded-Tala-rhino-goes-missing-20140521

Apex High Free Expression Tunnel Perspective Project Reflection

During this project we had to learn to take things one step at a time and not freak out if something went wrong. We had a few arguments along the way but got through them when we took a few steps back and looked at the piece as a whole, and came up with solutions to whatever problems we had. 

We collaborated a lot during this project and had to consider many different ideas while working on the piece. It was hard to try to add everyone's ideas but we managed it and had a pretty diverse set of decorations on the wall. 

I asked other people in my group countless times about any feedback they had on my piece and I was glad because I received great tips and advice on how to improve the parts that I was doing. My group helped me a lot and we all became much closer while working on this piece, and they inspired me to keep working even when it seems like you messed up. If I kept moving forward, I could fix any mistakes I made and I knew they were there to help me.

Perspective Project Preview

I used my own unique ideas in this piece by coming up with cool looking "graffiti" to have on the walls of our Free Expression tunnel like the "Class of 2013/14" and the multiple arrows in a line. There is a free expression tunnel on NC State's campus that we took inspiration from for our mural and we decided to recreate it but with a twist. We wanted something that represented our own school's creativity and the free expression tunnel did just that. 

We had to teach ourselves how to draw in perspective with chalk, which is harder than it looks, to make the piece look more realistic and give it a 3-D effect. Once we figured out a process that worked, it actually became a lot of fun to work on the piece and see our abilities grow. We gained plenty of new skills while using the materials at hand, and I never knew how much I could do with simple sidewalk chalk. I learned how to create more details with different shades of the same color, and give something more depth by adding a few shadows. When we started we weren't sure how we were going to decorate the piece, even though we did have some ideas like in our sketch books. 

My group and I had to start out with a good background color and when we were coloring things in, it was difficult to not use up all of a certain color of chalk so we had to alternate colors which we were afraid would mess up the flow of the piece and make it look messy. It turned out to be okay and we were definitely pleased with our hard work. We hit a few bumps in the road but we easily came up with new solutions to the problems like when we used the wet pieces of chalk and paper towels to buff out the clumps, we had a bit difficulty on some bricks so we actually had to use regular paint brushes to "paint the chalk on" so it would spread better. It felt weird to use the brushes but they did wonders in helping us.