Photos to come

Christmas has come and passed, but not everyone has received their presents yet, so no pictures will be posted right now. But I will say that the handmade Christmas was a success! I had a very good time and received many wonderful things. I got to see my pregnant sister-in-law Kendra, which was great because I think this is the first time I've seen her since she found out she was pregnant. I will see more family on Saturday (tomorrow) and I don't know what part of the country you're in but it is very hot in Florida this Christmas. I am wearing cropped pants and a tank top right now!

Merry Merry

Handmade Christmas

I am keeping myself so busy now that school is out making Christmas gifts. If you expect a gift from me, go ahead and expect it to be handmade! I will sign my great works of art upon request. I really wish I could post photos of the stuff I am making, but that would . . . you know . . .RUIN CHRISTMAS! You ruiner you . . .

More Awesomes to Come

This was my final project for my two-dimensional design class in school. Let me explain the project:
We had to purchase two identical paint by number sets. We painted one of them according to the instructions and had to add something to the second one. What we changed was completely up to us. To see examples, google "Charity by Numbers", which is an art show were people did this. The below link will take you to the gallery it was in.

http://www.coreyhelfordgallery.com/#/show/

Since paint by number sets are limited pickings, some of the people in my class ended up with the same one to work with. However, I got mine when I was on vacation in Texas and it just so happened to be on clearance when I got it, so I knew that the chances of any one else having the same one was small. But the real reason I chose mine, was because I knew right away I wanted a cityscape. I also knew this would be hard to find since paint by numbers always seems to be horses, dolphins and flowers. I really didn't feel like painting a kitty and a ball of yarn. I knew I wanted to make it 3-dimensional and I knew I wanted lights in the windows. My original ideas included monsters destroying the city, but since I knew time was limited, I edited myself down quite a bit from the original embellishment ideas. This is something I have to work on, as I never seem to finish any project because I make the project so big and overwhelming for myself.

So I found this picture of Venice:



And I knew it would be as close as I would find to a cityscape. So I built layers out of chipboard and built the whole thing into a shadow box with petite Christmas lights. I'm really proud of it. It is one of the coolest things I have created all semester and the best part it, I feel it is really true to my style. I didn't intend on it being so "pinky" in the beginning, but I was working with paint I already had that seemed more like coral in past projects. So I took it and darkened it and added red to make it more coral-y for contrast to its original pinky-ness. I also wanted to retain some of the original paint by number lines, so I drew them over the paint, which I think added an almost comic graphicness, which I really like. I think the combination of the colors and the lines almost gave it an old fashioned postcard effect. I almost want to do one of the Eiffel tower and the Empire state building with the same color scheme. Here is a side shot to show some of the layers better.



Here is a shot under a sweater, with the lights turned on. It is not a very good picture since they are all with my cell phone. When I get it back from the teacher, I will take better pictures and post them. I like how the little lights have a directional force as opposed to rope lights or LED light panels. I wanted the lights in the windows to look like lamps in a room. Notice the sconce light on the left on the front building. That was supposed to be the only visible bulb, but some of the others peeked around by the time I was done.




I not only want to take better pictures of this, but I think maybe one day, I will re-create it at my own pace and really give it a better execution, not that anyone else would notice. There were just a lot of snafoos that got in my way, like when I ran out of E-6000 glue halfway through (thought I had two tubes, but one of them had gone bad) and when some of the light bulbs went out after they got handled too roughly. However, I still did a lot of detail in this one. The bridge piece alone took about 4 hours to cut out the scroll work. I made the chairs out of black metal wire and the rope that stretches from pole to pole is actual string. When I take better pictures, you will see that the name of the restaurant "Bar Ducale" is actually cut out behind the paper so that the light shines through like a neon sign. I would have done more with the water if I had more time, like adding highlights and shadows and I would have brought the front of it forward so that it had a slight slope towards the back in the center.

Getting Christmas Ready

Decorated my Pappy's Christmas Tree. Now back to Finals!

Ahh!! No Time!!

Finals Week