This composition is primarily about my hobbies. The gears, my interest in engineering. The code, my love for programming. And the forms and grid for my affinity for math. I placed them the way I did in an effort to layer them and interconnect them to show how many of my interests often are very done in unison. Most of my concerns as I was creating this composition were primarily about my lacking ability when it comes to painting. Often in the past, I’ve had trouble with watercolors in particular as I lack the patience required to maintain quality and keep my composition neat. I thought the overall organization of my piece was successful as although it lack color, it still felt balanced. During the process of developing my composition, I enjoyed the often calmness while painting. The serenity of the painting proved to be rather placid. I primarily struggled with guiding my paintbrush into making straight lines and mixing different pigments to receive just the right color.

I found many of the aspects of this assignment to be fun and not overly difficult. However, I struggled when it came to the carving part of the project, as achieving deep cuts in the linoleum while maintaining accuracy proved to require patience and sufficient understanding of the cutting tools at hand. Besides from this, I found much of the planning to not be all too difficult due to the heavy amount of preparation we have done and am happy that I have improved my skills at drawing out animals. The sky took some though to decide how to depict it as a linocut, but I eventually settled on a gradient of small nics in the linoleum. The printing process took some getting used to but eventually came with ease and allowed me to creatively coordinate differing colors onto my linocut to piece together my final collage. If I were to do this again, I would have liked to take more time on the project in order to achieve more details in the linocut, primarily in many of the textures as they seem very flat. This can be seen in the stones along the bottom that I initially wanted to look grassy/overgrown.

During my two days of creating textured painted paper, I discovered how many different objects, as well as methods of using said objects, can affect the texture of a painting. I also realized the necessity of using diverse tools to get diverse textures. This involved using many weird and/or shocking objects sponges to toothbrushes, as well using proper tools like paint brushes and rollers. When I simplified my landscape to large shapes, I discovered how a landscape can be reduced to remove most details and leave only general shapes that represent different colors. I was surprised of how even without specific details, a landscape can still have depth in it and still maintain its beauty. If I could, I would have done a better job of cutting out cleaner shapes out of the paper, as well as trying to find pieces of paper that didn’t require me to split up shapes into multiple segments. For instance, there were no good blue papers, so I had to split the river into multiple parts in order to fill it. I would have preferred to have been able to make it all one piece. During this project, I particularly struggled with cutting the colored paper around the non-colored paper. This was primarily difficult when it came to the smaller pieces that were hard to manuver the scissors while holding the papers together with my other hand. I felt I did a particularly good job when it came to segmenting the original landscape into large shapes. I was able to complete this step with ease and I believe this was because I chose my landscape with the end goal in mind.

Using a macro scale can allow artists to focus on the small details of an object while a more zoomed-out scale can miss many of these details. I feel like Georgia’O’Keefe influenced me the most as she painted many organic subjects and even though they were usually flowers, I felt inspired to take some of what I saw in her artwork and use that knowledge to paint an animal. I used acrylic paint on a canvas board. At many points during drawing the grid, I had to redraw lines and make decisions on which details and color shifts I wanted to be signified in the final painting.The grid definitely aided in creating an accurate drawing as it allowed for me to more easily correctly draw certain shapes and make sure everything was positioned correctly. One of the biggest challenges during this project was trying to get colors accurate to the picture as mixing the paints often took lots of time and frequently unexpected results. This was made easier by having the reference image right next to me so I could compare it to my paint.

During the planning stages of this project, I made many decisions that would impact the final product. One of these was to place myself standing, slightly to the right of my room. I thought this choice would ultimately result in a more interesting composition while making the portrait still prominent. I also chose to avoid showing much of the floor as it wouldn’t have much going on and yet would draw attention due to its contrast to the rest of the room. Throughout the room, I ensured to include pieces that reflected me and my identity as their is a high presence of technology as well a hanged version of one of my previous compositions as well as a poster portraying a video game I have developed. During the making of this, I wondered how much detail I should include and how much should each thing stand out. Due to time constraints, I did not dwell on this as much I would have liked. When looking back at this project, I believe I should have included more details in certain sections, such as possibly including assorted items on the desk, as well as place another piece of furniture in its place that either does not attract as much attention or holds some sort of significance.

During this development of this composition, there were many troubling aspects. For instance, the general texturing of many parts of the painting, I found frustrating as I couldn’t make it look consistent and rather much of the large bodies of paint ended up looking uneven. Precisions also proved to be an issue as I had a difficult time controlling the water and having it go in the way of which I wanted it to. However, I thought that I did well at mixing colors to achieves specific tints and shades. I also feel my composition was well planned out is generally balanced with not too much going on, but also not too little.