I was trying to come up with ways in which kids use their imagination when they're playing, and one of the things I thought of was pillow forts. I loved making them when I was younger, and would pretend to be a princess at the top of a tower made from the throw pillows and couch cushions in our living room. This piece is meant to represent that, but in the way it always looked to me in my head. It was really fun to come up with the different colors and designs for this piece, because I wanted it to be really colorful and interesting to look at. I think I missed the mark on a lot of the textures and details, and honestly I made this piece in a bit of a rush, so I'll admit it's not my best work. That being said, I think the explanation and connection to my investigation is strong in this piece.
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This piece is about imaginary friends. A lot of younger kids have imaginary friends, and I wanted to represent that with this piece. It's cut out from the paper surrounding it because I think that's part of the point of a vivid imagination - no matter where someone is, as long as they're creative the rest of the world can just fade away leaving them to their own thoughts. This is a similar approach to the one I used on my previous piece, using a cut out picture to represent the way imagination can make the rest of the world disappear for a little bit. This piece was made with alcohol marker and colored pencil. I'm not super happy with some of the textures, because I wanted them to be a bit smoother, but I do like the perspective of the piece.
This piece is from the perspective of a kid who's afraid of the dark. When I was little (and even a little now) I was scared of the dark, and convinced every shadow or unexpected light and sound was some sort of monster. My color choices are meant to juxtapose the inky black darkness of the room with the bright colorful imagination aspects, like the person in the closet or the eyes under the chair. This was one of my first times working with alcohol marker and I really like it, and I'll probably continue to use them in future pieces. The style of this piece is a departure from art I make not for class, but I think it's different in a good way. If I were to make any changes to this piece, I think I'd make the perspective a bit more dynamic, because the piece feels a little bit stiff.
This piece is sort of a partner piece to the one about dreams. This one, however, is about daydreams. I think that daydreams showcase creativity and imagination in a more direct way than dreams, because instead of randomly firing neurons in the brain's pathways, daydreams involve more conscious thought. I think I did have some shortcomings in the technical qualities of this piece, like with keeping shapes and lines sharp. I think my color choice was solid but that I could have done a better job of making the overall piece neat and tidier than I did. Overall, I'm proud of the vibe this piece gives off, and though it took some explaining to my friends who saw it out of context, it fits well into my investigation. I want to continue to experiment with different art styles and mediums because I think it gives a good underlying message of my own creativity throughout my investigation and the processes that go along with it.
This piece is about dreams. I tried to use the rule of thirds in this one, because I want to work on the technical aspects of my art, in this case proportions. I used oil pastel for this piece because I like the way pastels make the work feel more fluid. I chose to make the piece about dreams because dreams are pretty much a direct reflection of the brain's subconscious creativity. Instead of depicting a certain scene, I felt that colors and patterns would help convey my message better than trying to illustrate an actual dream, because they're so subjective. I really like oil pastels, they're easy to work with to me. I will probably use them in other pieces too.
This piece was one of my earlier pieces, but I'm proud of the way it turned out. It's about how children's imaginations work when they're somewhere like the park, because I think that's a really good place to see how creative they can be with games and such. A really popular game is The Floor is Lava, so I portrayed that with monkey bars over a pool of lava. I went to my local park to take pictures to use as references for this piece, because I really didn't expect the structures to be so complicated and detailed. This piece is made with alcohol markers and fine liner. I think I won't use just alcohol marker on many more pieces, because it's difficult to get the textures right and the rather cheap markers I have tend to dry out really quickly.
This piece is about video games, because I feel like they're a really good example of how getting invested or "sucked in" to something can get the imagination working. I had to do some research for this piece, like looking up mushroom clouds, fighter jets, and even had to find a good example of a loot box from video games. I tried to capture the blocky graphics effect that many video games have in their environment with the trees and bushes and I think I pulled it off. My point with this piece was to show how creative and immersive video games can be, which my friends say is what makes them so fun. I made this picture with layers of alcohol marker and colored pencil to get a smoother finish on a lot of the textures.
This piece is about what it feels like to be in a theater after hours. I work on plays at my local community theater, and sometimes I end up staying pretty late depending on what my job is for that show. I wanted this piece to be about and represent the ghost light. The ghost light is a combination of superstition and utility in theaters. For practical purposes, they're used to light up a theater when people have left so in an emergency, the house and stage aren't just pitch black. Falling off of a stage because you can't see the edge or the stairs really isn't fun. The ghost light is also a superstition, because theater veterans will tell newcomers that the ghost light is used to keep the ghosts happy. I like to think that the ghosts use the light to perform their own shows, after everyone else has left. This piece shows the stage with the ghost light. I purposely tilted the frame of the image a lot because I liked the way it created the effect of looking around a corner. When I'm in the theater and it's really late, I tend to get spooked pretty easily, so I tell myself the strange noises and sometimes weird shadows are just the ghosts starting their show early. This piece was made with paint pens, tempera paint, alcohol markers, thread, and tracing paper.
This was a pretty large piece. I decided to make a piece focused around writing, because I think that encompasses a lot of creativity, and several of my friends who do a lot of writing have told me it helps them clear their mind. To make this piece, I found magazine pictures I liked without following a strict or specific aesthetic, and tore the pictures into strips to make the background of the entire piece. Then, I took magazine pages that were mostly text and cut them into strips with scissors to maintain the neat edges. I arranged the strips of type sort of like rays of light cutting through the cluttered background of the images.
This was my most recent piece, and probably the one I spent the most time on. It's made with several different materials: paint, yarn, fine liners, coffee, and even a magnifying glass and the sun. Including time for drying, this piece took probably 20 hours in total? Like I said, a long time. It has a few meanings for me, but the biggest one is the creativity that's required to maintain a connection to other people right now. The hands overlapping and yarn connecting them together is supposed to represent relationships. The hand with the green background is full of gold paint in swirling lines, because I wanted it to feel more organic and natural than the one with the blue background. It's sort of hard to see in the picture, but the blue backed hand is full of 1s and 0s, which is supposed to look like binary, because the only way I've been able to see anyone but my parents has been through a screen, over the internet. I'm proud of this piece, because I know I put hours of effort into it and I like the way it turned out, even just aesthetically. This is the final piece I had to make for my investigation, so I thought it would be good to go out with a bang so to speak.
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