Empty bench

I love how this painting is very sharp at the top but as you look at the picture the image gets blurred and more out of focus the closer to the bottom you get. I like the intensity of the colors. The angle of the bench is really cool too! I would have to say mu favorite part of this picture is the reflection on the trees and the glow of the lights on the walkway.

First picture

I believe this was the first picture I took and developed by hand, with my manual camera. I like how I only have part of the sewing machine in the frame. I found the machine in a thrift store. I wish this picture was in color thought! I think it would be really cool to see the vibrant teal that the machine was. I like to ask people what they think it is when they see this picture. I have gotten some interesting answers.

Book

Darkroom

I took this picture with a 35 millimeter manual camera and developed it in the darkroom myself. This is one of my photographs that I managed to keep very simple. It is one of my favorite pictures of mine. I didn't even set up this shot. It was a picture that was taken on accident. I really like the angle on the cat and I like the detail of its markings. I also think that the line breaking the concrete underneath the cat adds something to the picture. It isn't just a cat on a plain background.

What I am

I saw this picture the other day and It really caught my eye. I don't usually care for conceptual art that much. I really liked this piece though because of how simple it is. I think it makes a big statement through its simplicity. I like this because the artist finds his work as a piece of art when others don't see the art in it at all. I would like to personally focus more on the simplicity of my art. I tend to get carried away with backgrounds and other distractions from the main focus of my work.

Picturing the Other

Papercraft

Alphabet Soup

B

T

O

V

Y

J

Scratch

Good Luck

I think this is so funny! I like how it says "good luck," when black cats are often thought of as creatures of bad luck. This is the front of a card. the design is very simple. I would have probably put the cat on a different color background to make it a little more interesting. My eyes are drawn to the eyes of the cat because they are so bright and are looking right at the camera.

Black Cat

I snapped this photo of my landlords cat a few days before Halloween. I like how antique it looks. the coloring on the cat's face around his nose is really dark, which I don't like very much. I think this picture captures the feeling of Halloween with the leaves on the ground, the dull colors, and of coarse the black cat. I got carried away with the blur affect. I think the picture might also look really cool with burnt edges.

Jessica Cook

Jessica was my best friend throughout grade school. She followed her dream and became a model in LA.

I can appreciate these images of her even though I don't like the fashion. These shots make her look almost inhuman. Like a robot or something. I enjoy the angle of the pictures. They aren't taken from strait on. The lighting exceptionally pleasing to the eye. I don't enjoy how the words overlap her face in the picture at right. They should be places a little lower on the page. I like how the pictures have the same feel and color, they relate to each other, but they aren't the same.

Fall

I was walking to my truck after class and happened to look down and see these leaves. I crouched down to take a close up, when a woman approached me and asked what I was doing. I told her what I was taking a picture of and she didn't seem to see the point in taking pictures of random leaves on the ground.

I like this picture a lot. The one brown water drop does stand out and looks awkward. I also wish I would have taken the time to notice the grass in the bottom left corner. If I would have noticed that I would have tried to frame the shot so there was no grass showing.

Norman Rockwell

Norman Rockwell has always been one of my favorite artists. He really pays attention to detail. He draws the the wrinkles in the clothes and the shadows under the muscles in the legs of the girl. Rockwell's drawings and paintings are usually rather simple like this one. There is not much to the background at all, just a simple bench. I really appreciate that the face of the woman on the magazine doesn't exactly line up with where the girls face would be. He arranged it to be really close and give a certain feeling but he off set it ever so slightly, making it more realistic. It seems more natural that way rather than posed.

Halloween

My first Ashland Halloween. I was Rosie the Riveter! I put my costume together about an hour before I went out to celebrate. I had everything in my closet. This pictures feels kinda forced and unnatural. I do like the exposure though. There is an older feel to it. This picture reminds me on Norman Rockwell's work to a degree. All in all halloween was a positive experience this year.

Kiss

I modeled this sketch after a drawing I saw of two men. The arm and hand of the woman in the background is very masculine and looks out of place. Though the shading isn't quite right I really do like it. I enjoy the roughness of the lines. The picture is not realistic but it doesn't seem like a cartoon either.

Give Peace a Chance

This snapshot is very powerful to me. I feel like it is kind of a tack off of the famous picture of John Lennon and his second wife Yoko Ono. I really like how the girl facing us is not straddling the man. It really gives this picture a more peaceful feeling rather than love or lust. Though both people are stark naked the scene is set up in a very tactful manner. the peace sign stands out because of its light contrast to the rest of the picture. I just think that a lot of thought went into the position of the man and woman as well as how the photographer decided to frame the shot.

Fam-Bam!

My grandma made shirts for the whole family when my twin cousins were born. This picture shows how goofy my and my cousin Adrianne are! I really love this picture and it is a very personal picture. My grandpa died in Feb. and my grandma died just last month. I love this picture because it has the whole family in it! It is fun to look back on old pictures like these and see how much everyone has grown up and changed over the years.

As the Sun Sets

I took this picture one night back in Redding California. There is this place called 'the wall,' it is a brick wall in the middle of a pasture. I think this is such a breathtaking picture because of the lack of colors in it. I didn't not digitally edit this picture at all. The one cloud in the top right corner seems out of place and I wish it wasn't in the photograph. Other than that I really like how the trees frame the setting sun. This was taken with a small point and shoot camera.

Posters

Text as Design

Collages

People of the Heart

This is my first painting ever. It is very simplistic. The paint I used was very old and it didn't come out the way I had hoped. I didn't know how I was going to show the separation between the overlapping body parts. It was kind of by fault that I realized I was just going to leave white space. I need to work on my proportions. Next time I am going to work on using different color values.

Ephemera

I really like the retro feeling of Ephemera products. I like how they aren't politically correct. They have pretty women saying non-pretty, non-feminine things. The way the wording is added to the picture is done very well. IT seems like it was always there. It doesn't feel out of place. The graphics are very simple but that is a good thing because it makes the words and the satire stand out.

Imagine

My best friend Elizabeth Vines painted this for my 19th birthday. She used oil paints. The picture looks much better in real life than it does on the computer. The only thing I notice that has fault is that the rims of his glasses aren't the same size. I really Like the background in this picture as well. It reminds me of something one might see on the cover of an actual Beatles record. Faces are very difficult for me so I am amazed by the likeness to the real John Lennon. The movement in his hair is very pleasing to the eye and makes the painting feel more real than if it were just painted solid black.

Figure Drawing

This is one of my first figure drawings. I have never been very good at drawing people. Where the legs come together is a problem area in this sketch. The curves and alignment aren't correct. The arms are too thin for the rest of the body as well. The shadowing is okay, but I should have given more attention to the light source and exactly where the shadows would fall along the woman's figure. The foot is the best part of this drawing by far. All in all I am proud of this artwork. It was just a rough sketch I did for fun to practice and hopefully get better at figure drawing one day.

This print really catches my attention. The message the artist is trying to portray speaks loudly. The lack of color in this peace gives it a unhappy feeling. The bold black against the tame background makes a dramatic point. This piece says that we need to break free of the commercial world around us. We are trapped in a world that revolves around money and material objects. This print is very simple but in its simplicity it speaks volumes. I really like that the cage is made out of a barcode. At first the viewer might think it is just a picture of a leopard breaking free form a cage but then as they realize that really it is a barcode and not just bars of a cage, the meaning of this picture becomes more relevant to the human race.

I really enjoy this photograph I took Last Spring. There is not much going on in the background of this picture which I actually feel is a good thing. Ali seems to stand out from the background because everything in this picture seems to made up of strait lines. His body is a nice contrast to the sharp lines in the background. I really take pride that this was not a posed picture. I was actually out taking pictures of my friend and then Ali came and joined us to go sit by the river. We were all sitting around just talking and I decided to snap some candid shots. The candid photos turned out being my favorite! I really appreciate the beauty of everyday life rather than a modified, posed scene.