I'm an ARTIST!

When I read the title of this post, I say it in my brain like Shrek says, "I'm an ogre! Yaaaarrr!" so you should say it like that too. Just so you know.

So, it's Friday night and I'm sitting at home alone, watching Dateline and decided I should share with you all of my amazing artwork. You see, over the past month or so, I've developed quite the talent. Lewis and I have been taking an Art for the Elementary Classroom class together, and pretty much I am rocking it.

Well... compared to my previous artistic abilities, that is. I am rocking it compared to those. Sort of. You be the judge. But don't you dare judge me, jerk.

These first two are blind contour drawings. If you notice, they are created with one continuous line (each). The first one is of Lewis (obviously. I can't believe you even had to ask) and the other one is my hand.













Next, we have a display of my abilities to make 3-D boxes. I know, right? I'm so cool.


I did this one on the day we explored negative spaces. We had to draw the spaces within a plant, like all up there among the leaves and shiz.


Now, I know you're probably bored now with all my black and whitedness. So here's some color. A color wheel, in fact. I mixed the paints myself. (By the way, I just saw a Juicey Juice commercial, and it told me that there is a Juicey Juice channel on YouTube. I didn't even know YouTube had channels. Dag, I am so out of the YouTube loop not being able to get it here!)


This painting is one I did the same day as the color wheel. Basically, I just extended the painting to fill the rest of the paper. The painting I used is the one of Joseph Smith greeting the Navuoo army peoples while a group of people looked on. Bet you thought there was a really big group of people watching. You were wrong. So sorry the photo is blurry.


A couple of class periods ago we started our crayon unit. The first thing we did was walk around campus and collect rubbings. The rubbings here include the letter A from the ASB sign, a Y from something that said BYU, the number 2004 and the word "women" in brail, a couple of ground textures, both sides of a dime, the bark of a tree, something about emergency power, maybe a grate... and a few other things I can't remember.


Here we have a brown paper cultural crayon art work. I chose to make mine like a Ghanian Adintra Bark Cloth. The symbol in the middle means fence; the ones on the top and the bottom are handcuffs; and the ones on either side are hourglass drums.


This little number is a sgraffito. I filled a page with patches of different colors and then colored over the whole thing with black. Then I scratched away my picture. This one used another Ghanian symbol in the middle (God's tree). The other designs are my experimentings.


Also as a part of the crayon unit, we made pretend stained glass. I drew my design and outlined it with a Sharpie sharp and then colored in the little stained glass sections. Then the whole thing was ironed to make it translucent. Pretty sweet, yo. Between this one and the sgraffito, though, my arm hurt pretty bad.


Next, I did a color-resist. I drew a picture and then painted over it with black watercolor paint, which was repelled by the crayon (mostly). It would have worked a little better if I had pressed harder with the crayon, but I kind of like how it turned out. It looks like night. It's supposed to be some trees on the bank of a river with a waterfall and mountains in the background. I messed up when I first started drawing the mountains cause I got distracted and forgot that I was still holding the blue crayon and hadn't picked up the white one yet. Whoops. In the end, I added some blue and purple to the paint to soften the black a little bit.


Don't worry! You're almost to the end! This is the last one for the crayon unit. It's a lamination. I grated a bunch of crayons (with a cheese grater, not my own) onto a sheet of wax paper. Then I put another sheet of wax paper on top of it and ironed them together. Then I cut it out to make this! If you look closely (or click on the photo), you can see that I gave it a face.


One other project I did was a retablo with a small cardboard box and salt dough. But it's not at home, so I don't have a photo of it. Maybe I'll post it another time. Maybe not.

These last two are silly ones I did a few months ago when I was bored and needed a creative release. Or maybe I was just being silly. Too bad for you, I'm forcing them upon you. What, what?! If my class ever does a photography unit, I'm totally using these.


Mmm, now I want me some M&Ms. Maybe I'll make some pudding.