College Portfolio

Here are some of my pieces from college. They are all hand drawn and hand rendered.  These are from my first round of college, graduating in 2001.  So they are a bit rough and as I look on them now I see many things that need to be fixed.  However, I was and am very proud of my work.  There are many many more pieces that I have in my professional portfolio but I don't want to put everything on the web.

Greek Style Hotel Room Perspective

Loft Apartment Perspective

Loft Apartment Perspective

Loft Apartment Floorplan

Victorian Mansion Restaurant Ballroom Dining Area Perspective

Victorian Mansion Master Bedroom Perspective

Victorian Mansion Residential Dining Room Perspective

Victorian Mansion Residential Living Room Perspective

Victorian Mansion Residential Kitchen Perspective

Colors are everywhere!!

I LOVE COLOR

One of the great things about art and designing is color.  You can use it in splotches, large areas, as patterns, as accents, or as a whole theme.  Color has a way of setting the mood of the room or artwork.

Dark Mood (click for website)

At first glance, a piece of artwork can produce a feeling inside the viewer, based solely on the colors used.  When looking at a dark painting, one with lots of blacks, grays, deep blues etc, you are immediately left feeling dismal or gloomy.  Expecting to see dark forces at work in the piece.  However, when you view a painting with bright yellows, reds, oranges, whites etc, you immediately feel brighter, happier, sunnier.  The tone has been set and the artist will use those colors for that specific purpose.  Furthermore, a death or funeral scene will not seem so dark and depressing if painted with those brighter colors.

Light Mood (click for website)

Now for our basic art lesson for the day.  The color wheel is made up of 3 primary colors, 3 secondary colors and 6 tertiary colors.  The primary colors are red, blue and yellow.  Any color found in the rainbow can be created by using these three colors, and these colors can not be produced by mixing any other colors together.  The secondary colors are orange (red + yellow), purple (red + blue) and green (yellow + blue).  The tertiary colors are created by mixing a primary with a secondary; yellow-green, red-orange, etc.  

As a little side note - the red blue yellow color wheel is not entirely correct.  It is the artists' color wheel.  In actuality the true primary colors are yellow, magenta and cyan.  Most people recognize these from your color printers.  However, most art students are taught the ROYGBV color wheel.  To see an explanation of what I mean check out this website: Color Theory.  (Image below from this website as well)

Study the color wheel for a moment and take the time to see which colors are opposite each other.  These colors are complimentary colors and have many uses.  The complimentary color can be added to create shadows.  For example, when in my high school art class (I use this example because it is most vivid in my mind), I was working on a color still life.  One of the pieces in my section included an orange bottle.  In order to show the shadows, I used blue.  The result was near perfection.  I say near because I was in high school and still learning many many things about color and art.  The complimentary colors are red-green, yellow-purple, and blue-orange.

A relatively common myth is that black is the lack of color and white is all colors.  This is wrong.  Black absorbs all the colors, while white reflects them.  So I guess, it would depend on the way you look at it.  Black could be the absence of color since you don't perceive any while you are actually seeing all the colors reflected from the white.  Either way you view it, both are colors.  Furthermore, both can me mixed with the primary and secondary colors to get desired shades, or hues, of color.  

Check out these vivid colors and tell me that you love color too!

  (for images see links: Purple Orange Yellow White Black Green Blue Red)

Welcome to Art Attack

I started this blog as a place to post my creative endeavors.  Drawing, crocheting and furniture painting are the most recent mediums I express myself with.  However, I have an extensive background in art and am currently looking to take some fun, non-credit art classes to get back into my old love.

I also want to use this blog as a place to spread the joy, love and knowledge of art that I have.

A little history of myself:

I started drawing as a young girl.  When I was 4, I drew a picture of Donald Duck that looked dam close to the real one.  Unfortunately, it was never saved :(  For as long as I can remember, I received art supplies for both Christmases and birthdays and always used them up but the next present was due.

Since the art classes in school were general, my parents signed me up for outside lessons on Saturday mornings.  I still remember the studio and the teacher.  When they moved to a larger location I stopped going.  They changed the class schedule and I had gotten older and didn't want to spend my weekend mornings in class.  One of the pieces I drew while in these classes is hanging in my old middle school.  My art teacher entered it into the school contest when I submitted for my portfolio for the high school art program.  I tied for 1st with another student.  Funny, I remember buying a new bed-in-a-bag from Caldor with the money I got!

As I stated, I applied to the high school art program and was accepted.  It was 3 years with 2 classes per year.  The classes were divided by halves.  The first two marking periods were one class, while the last two were another.  These classes included drawing, print-shop, pottery, photography, painting and one other I can not remember. To this day I still remember the art center, the way it smells and looked and the feeling I got when I created something I loved.

Continuing that feeling into college was what I wanted.  I was accepted at the Art Institute of Philadelphia after a semester at a non-art school.  It was the best decision I ever made!  I had chosen to major in Interior Design and AiPh was a great school.  I honed my creative skills and found a love for design that I knew I had but never really thought much about - side note, when I was younger I used to create entire homes with furniture and appliances out of index cards.  I would spend hours working on them.  I know what a dork huh?  So while I knew I loved homes and designing, I never really thought I would be a designer.  I graduated with my Associates Degree of Technical Science in Interior Design in 2001.  In 2007 I received my Bachelor's of Science in Interior Design from the Art Institute online.

My professional career didn't include must actual art work until I started my last job in 2006.  I was fortunate enough to work along side the resident artist and produce many hand drawn and rendered projects for clients.  It was by far my most favorite job to date.  That aspect of it anyway.

I began crocheting in February 2009 after a friend of mine passed away.  It has become a wonderful form of design for me now that I am disabled and no longer able to work.

That brings us to today and this new blog.  I hope that you will find some pieces you like and feel free to let me know what you don't like.  I am all about constructive criticism!!!