JBU Honors Program T-Shirt Design
I designed two T-shirt designs for a local farmer's market, created for the purpose of screenprinting with no more than three colors.
Still Lifes From Life
OIL PAINT
My oil painting classes always began with still lifes early on the semester, where we set up a scene of our choosing and approached it with a unique goal each time. One still life was done entirely in burnt umber and sienna, another featured titanium white and phthalo blue, and then we graduated to full color. These made my skin crawl with how tedious they were, but I am indeed grateful for how still lifes taught me to really look and paint what I actually saw, not what I thought I was seeing.
Oil Painting & Oil Pastels
FINE ART
I found a love for working with oils about halfway through my college career, especially during my senior year, when I tackled both an oil painting class and an oil pastels class with Peter Pohle. While I feel well-versed in most illustration mediums - ink, marker, pencil - the classics are something I struggle with, especially paint. Approaching oil painting by understanding how to group values together rather than connecting everything with lines was revolutionary for me, and it forced me to push colors, lighting, and forms in ways I haven't done before. This is definitely a new favorite medium of mine.
Portraits From Life
OIL PAINT
My professor highly encouraged us to work from life as much as possible, which was definitely a struggle for my models, but produced the best results. I had my friend pose for two of these pictured here, wherein I had unlimited time to accomplish these pieces. The third piece was done in about 90 minutes, hence the unpolished details, but it may actually be my favorite. The more gestural strokes feel more authentic and effective.
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I think portraits might be my favorite subject to capture in oil. I love the subtleties of skin tones, the folds of their features, and the texture of hair. If I were to pick this up as a more constant hobby, I would forever be on the lookout for faces that catch my eye and figures that would suit a painting.
Reference-Based Work
OIL PAINT
A few pieces during the semester were completed based off of photos on my computer screen, which were definitely not ideal in my professor's eyes - understandably - but still resulted in good pieces. My entire final project, in fact, was based off of photos I took. Another painting was done as a copy of a master artist in order to learn different approaches to oils.
Pet Series
OIL PAINT
My final project for my first semester of oil painting was to complete a series of various pet portraits, specifically of pets that I had had in my life. This was a labor of love in memory of my sweet dog Molly who had just passed, as well as a tribute to my brand new cat Basquiat who filled her place. I created four medium-sized pieces wherein I could take and choose the photos myself, and as such, I shot for dramatic, bright lighting, as strong value contrast helped me build a good composition. In retrospect I wish I had sized and cropped the photos better to create a more consistent composition for the paintings themselves, but I still loved how they turned out. I had a lot of fun with the looser, more abstract backgrounds as well. I think I might have identified my style with this series, as I learned to develop a subtly colorful, painterly, almost-Van Gogh style.
Lemon
OIL PASTEL
While completed as a personal exercise in a new medium, I was also able to make use of this piece later in a screenprinting exercise for a school assignment. Oil pastels are far out of my comfort zone and I had previously never been able to strengthen my skills in this area, but my 2020 quarantine gave me ample time to open up an old box of pastels and give it a shot. I created a handful of oil pastel pieces during that time and this was my favorite. Inspired by social media artist Christian Scott, I utilized his techniques to make my oil pastel linework crisper and more colorful. I had always struggled with preventing the colors from blending together and completely muddying my piece, but his tutorials prevented that disaster from repeating. I also incorporated his technique of scratching off excess oil pastel to create texture and reveal lower layers of color, adding more interest and detail to the overall piece. Because this art was entirely for fun, I felt very little pressure working with an entirely new medium, and it was so therapeutic for me to complete.
