Saturday, February 12, 2011

Portrait for a Thousand

For this project we were assigned to make a portrait of our favorite teacher. Truthfully this may only be the third portrait I've ever made and I feel I'll have to do it again. It's not because I think this turned out bad. I think I can do better if I keep doing it. ' So without farther delay, this is my birthday present to you Ms. Anne-Rose Baker!

Sunday, February 6, 2011

The Key To My Heart is the Key to Your Doom

The theme for this piece was "Lock It." Let me start out by saying this piece literally drained me. I was so excited to start and had the idea in my head for about a week. To put it down to basics: Me, one week, hours of drafting, hours of coloring, very little sleep.
Okay moving on, because I have moved on to playing cards I decided to continue that route in a less literal fashion. In my research for our last assignment, I found out the Club suit is many times associated with marriage. Also there's this metaphor, saying in marriage the man represent the key and the woman represents the lock. To incorporate these two concepts I had the woman's body shaped like a key and have the key look like a Club, holding a heart shaped locket. I wanted to invoke a play on words ( Lock It=Locket), and invoke two meanings with the picture. One the woman is the key to her own lock and two ....well... notice the vague hand in the cell reaching for the lock and the small 'A' on the woman's cheek? I'll leave the viewer to come up with their own thought. Now some may be wondering why I didn't use the Heart suit. Well, I think it's grossly over used and I wanted to try something...interesting....

Fifty-Two Pick UP!

To continue my theme of manipulation and control through games, I have shifted to chess and plating boards to cards. The foundation for this piece was the theme "Book It". I wanted to make the cards look like they were flying outward. I did not choose the cards' signs by random, I actully went through all 52 cards and found their basic meanings and chose the cards that relate to stories. And so, not neccessarily in order:
'Face Down Card' - The Unknown, Mystery
' Ace of Clubs' - New Endeavor, New Beginning
'Five of Daimonds'- Change in Scenery, Setting
'Seven of Clubs'- Competition, Fending Off One's Adversaries
'Joker'- 'Wild Card', Plot Twist
'Jack of Hearts'- Impractical, Immature, Kind, but Unrealistic -Basically the handsome, funny guy that's always the first to go...or burn