Goodbye - Series #4

This piece from the movie "Call Me By Your Name" is my favorite out of all of them because of the shading of the shirt and backpack. I have never really painted fabric, but I used a very similar picture to look at as a reference. I think that the dark brown background works for this piece, to have the central point pop out. When figuring out the lines from the background, I did them randomly. I am happy that I chose to do this movie for this background, because coincidentally, the lines replicate those of a train. The train scene is an essential part of the movie. I hope to include more of a collage feel when I include pictures of that scene so that it describes it better. The shirt also has a lot of meaning for the movie, so I felt like painting it was special. I also used a minimal use of micropen in the shirt and backpack. To me, this piece symbolizes a goodbye to the past, due to the reference to the movie.

Rebellious - Series #3

This piece is revolved around the movie "Lady Bird" and her rebellious nature. She doesn't always agree with her friends, catholic private school, and mother. It's a coming of age film where Lady Bird really stands out, just like the color yellow. Pink and yellow are split-complimentary colors, so I figured that they would suit each other. It also matches the color of the backpack in the final collage. I think that adding her head and sign makes the painting stand out even more. I would have liked to include more pictures surrounding her bird self. It is inspired by a poster she made for her school in the movie.

Journal Drawings - Series #2

 This piece is centered around a scene from the 2018 movie "Beautiful Boy." In the scene, a concerned father is looking through his son's journal and sees some disturbing images and writing. The music feels tense and the expressions on the fathers face grow more worried. There is no dialogue in this scene, yet you can understand what this means for the family. It really stood out to me the first time I saw the movie. It was a Q&A with the son, Nic Sheff, and the actor who plays him in the movie, Timothee Chalamet. I learned that for the movie, Nic's younger brother drew and wrote all of the pictures from the journal and across his bedroom. It adds another layer of depth to the scene. I had trouble figuring out the color palette for this background. I was going to go with black and grey to further convey the mood, but it did not go with the rest of the paintings, and it wouldn't have made the pictures pop. For the drawing in the middle, I used micron pens. I took inspiration from all of the surrounding pictures and combined all of them to have that be the main focus, especially with it being mostly white inside.

Bikes - series #1

This piece is like a storyboard and introduction for all of the movies I will take about in this series. Two out of the three movies (Beautiful Boy and Call Me By Your Name) that I chose to base my mix media artwork on, involve bikes in some way. I also had to include the most iconic movie bike of all time: E.T. I really enjoy making collages with pictures, but this time I wanted the background to be focused on color, line, and pattern.  I decided to go with the blue-green color palette to match some of the backgrounds of the pictures. I added quotes that i typed up from the last movie  in this series.

Piece about Peace

The idea of peace and equality are so important to me. Butterflies really inspired this project for me because they represent freedom, by the way they can migrate to any place they want, without anything holding them back. I thought that the colors used, compliment the flowers I chose. They reminded me of a lovely sunset. I sprayed red transparent paint and gold glitter spray paint all over the bottle. I knew I was going to tie a peach colored ribbon to match the flowers as well. The bands in between the butterflies represent a rainbow, except they are similar tones to eachother. The peace sign  with the hands was made out of mixing different acrylic paints together. There is an emphasis on shadow and line on the hand. The black outline throughout many figures separates them with the background. There is plenty movement going on with the lines and butterflies. That was the most important part of this whole piece because it is universally known as a symbol of acceptance and tolerance. I decided to paint a small earth next to the peace sign to symbolize “world peace” and around everything, there are small flowers,  hearts, a star, and a female symbol. The whole thing evolved into something that is very dear to my heart and for that, I am proud of it. 

Taurus

I decided to free hand draw and paint this bull to celebrate the fact that I am a Taurus. I like to read about astrology, so my birthday is important to me. I painted different shapes with mostly watercolor, as well as acrylic earth colors because the Taurus is an Earth sign. I also thought that it represented a Bull's colors and habitat. Bulls are seen as stubborn creatures, so they seem to represent Taurus' symbol and animal. As a final touch, I outlined everything in black Micron pen and added a green, emerald gem at the top, seeing as that is the birth gem of May. I think this well represents who I am.

Fashion for a Passion

Mitch Grassi of A Capella band, Pentatonix, is inspiring to thousands of people for just being himself. He has helped many people to love and accept themselves. His pride and confidence to do what is outside the social norm is admired and opening minds of many. This collage filled with quotes between Grassi and OUT magazine provide a look into the fashion forward and progressive person he is. Included in this piece are lyrics to an original Pentatonix song named "See Through" which represents being your truest self and it has connected with the band members and fans around the world. This is a piece that speaks on LGBTQ+ acceptance and breaking out of gender norms when it comes to fashion. To make this collage more 3-D, two barbie and bratz doll accessories were placed to represent the juxtaposition from when those pieces of clothing were meant for girls to wear and play with, to now: the erasure of these problematic stereotypes. The rainbow glitter represents pride, along with the multiple stickers and peace signs.This shows that LGBTQ+ representation in media gives many people hope.

Christmas Tree Silhouette

I continued to delve into silhouettes and also get inspiration from my older pictures. Photography is something I am really into, as well as editing and filtering photos. The picture that inspired this painting was taken in Houston, when I was spending time with family during the holidays of early 2017. It still gives me good memories from that time. I used acrylic paints to create this piece. To create such circular "ornaments," I used the end of multiple brushes and dipped paint on them and pressed it onto the canvas, one by one. I also used a piece of sponge to create a glow effect surrounding the top of the star. I wanted a lot of the tree to have black, just like the picture to show the contrast between that and the shining ornaments. Finally, I put some thin, white, iridescent glitter over top of the tree, mainly on the top and sides. I wanted to keep the silhouette of me all black, just like the background.

PTX Silhouette Series

It was easy picking a topic to do my four paintings on. I looked back on a very special and happy moment in my life: my first concert. The band I saw was Pentatonix in 2016. It was amazing seeing these people that I connected to so much right in front of me. Silhouettes interested me right off the bat and I remembered I had a picture from the concert saved that has all 5 members. Their logo on the album had these five colors and i really wanted to spotlight that. I outlined the majority of the drawing with pencil, then I painted with acrylic. In the first painting with all of them present, I really wanted to get that smoke effect by dabbing the paint brush and a piece of sponge. I made different shades with just black and white mixed with water. For the boxes/platform, I did the same with the variation of shades. For the other three pieces in the series, I decided to focus on one member in each box. I chose those three PTX band members, because they are the three main soloists. I really wanted to take advantage of the square shape of the canvas. The last two pictures are my own photos that I took and used for reference photos. 

Youthful Mom

This is a portrait of my mom that is using positive and negative space. The main tools I used was a pencil and soft charcoal sticks. I had to learn how to use shadows to my advantage and to leave enough white space for the highlights. It will be a Christmas gift for her and I am excited for her to see it.

Home, Sweet Home

This is zentangle in the shape of Texas. It is using negative and positive space and the style is decorative. Texas has been my home for 16 years now and I think it will stay like that for many more years to come, so i wanted to incorporate the state in my drawing. I used different sizes of micron pens to doodle and decorate the space with various widths/lengths of lines and shapes.I also drew the shape of Texas without any tracing or stencil.

Fabulous Flamingo

This flamingo has weighted lines all over it's body and I used a gold gelly-roll pen for that. I wanted the background to also pop, so i added pink watercolor which represents the color flamingos are. I also added in some yellow watercolor to go with the gold pen. I thought the outline of the flamingo would be easy to recognize and the added gold detail on the body/feathers was a special touch.

E.T. Moon

I decided to use cross contour on this famous shot from E.T. I chose it because it is one of my favorite movies of all time. I also wanted to include the moon that was apart of the scene, but in a creative way. I printed out many different filtered images of the moon and cut them up, creating one big, full moon.

Paco

This is an oil pastel piece of my pet Chihuahua, Paco. I only used a black oil pastel and a pencil. I used mostly hatched lines.

Peace Sign Mandala

My mandala is based on a peace sign because I am a big believer in tolerance and acceptance for people of all types. I chose a blue acrylic because it is a calming color and a yellow acrylic because it is a happy, bright color. They are apart of the primary colors. I also added some gold paint to make it stand out more.