Grade 8 Art

Curie Chiou

Jun.14.17

I Process

Before we actually started drawing, we first had to decide whether we are going to present a one-point perspective or two-point perspective drawing. I decided to drawing with one-point perspective because I personally think it’s easier and is more familiar to me. After that, I started to draw out my ideas on the actual drawing paper based on the sketch I did previously. I drew out the vanishing point and the eye level/horizon line first, since nothing could be done without those two elements. After that, I drew out vertical lines and horizontal lines that are perpendicular and parallel to the horizon line and also lines towards the vanishing point to represent my buildings and roads. After that, I started to draw out the details, such as windows, doors, signs, and some little decorations. I tried to create spaces within each building by making them have different heights so they could look more real. Also, there’s unity in the buildings, because there isn’t much difference between their shape. However, the surface of each building, such as the design of doors and windows are all different and unique, creating a feeling of diversity in unity. I feel like with the similarities and differences between shape within each building, it could create a feeling of a prosperous city with stores from different countries. My drawing pace was a bit slower than others, so when my classmates are mostly all painting, I wasn’t done with my drawing. Since I’m not even done with my drawings of buildings, I drew the road first instead. I created different values with black, using black, dark grey and light grey to create a feeling of which color gradually fades away as it gets further. I think many of my window designs and decorations present the element of pattern. For example, on my Laduree building, the macarons show patterns as well as rhythm. Furthermore, the windows on Big Hit and Lord Stow Bakery also show this element of art (pattern). My painting order started from the road, to the buildings on the left side of my drawing, to the sky, to the buildings on the right side and lastly till the little details. It’s a bit disordered, but I surprisingly found it easier to paint during the process. For example, as I’m done coloring the roads and the buildings on the left side, I think my painting is lacking a balance between colors because I accidentally painted the roads too blackish. As a result, I painted the sky with light blue with a sort of gradience, to make my city look more lovely with the light colors. Sadly, I don’t think my drawing demonstrates the element of movement and emphasis. I drew cars in my painting, but I didn’t additionally draw out some tracks to show the movement, even though they’re actually stationary. In fact, I chose to not emphasize anything on purpose, because I think in an actual city, nothing is being emphasized, not that they’re all identical, but they have their own uniqueness, so nothing could stand out because each building are all the emphasis of themselves. Lastly, I think I created harmony in the color scheme of my buildings, and contrast between the roads and the leftover parts of my painting. In each individual buildings, I like to use gradience to show harmony, such as my street churros and laduree building at the left side of my painting. I showed gradience within multiple colors and single color together using light colors such as orange, yellow, and pink to create a warm harmonious feeling these desserts could bring us. Finally, I showed contrast between the blackness of the roads and the buildings pluses sky that tends to be brighter. As I’m done with this project, I’m actually a bit satisfied, because even though it may not seem as appealing, but at least the colors and drawing turns out to be in the way I wanted it to be.

II Evaluation and Comparison

• Lines

In my work, I demonstrated a substantial amount of lines since it’s the basic compositions of a drawing. My lines are either vertical lines, horizontal lines, lines going toward the vanishing point, or curvy lines. Vertical lines are mostly used for the outline of the buildings, and the horizontal lines are used on the cars, Taipei 101 and the yellow road blocks. On the other hand, the lines that are going towards the vanishing point are also used pretty frequently, to show the buildings are getting smaller and smaller as it gets closer to the horizon line. Lastly, the curvy lines are used especially in signs to make it more creative.

In my classmate Serena’s work, she used a variety of lines in an equal amount in order to draw out the famous architectures from all over the world. Since she’s drawing with two-point perspective, her lines tend to be separated by straight and curvy lines instead of vertical lines and horizontal lines. She used straight lines to draw out the pyramids, big ben, Taipei 101 and the Tower of Pisa. On the other hand, she used curvy lines to draw out the UFOs, the Sydney Opera House, Eiffel Tower, and the tallest tower in the world in Dubai.

• Shape

In my work, I demonstrated different shapes within the design of each building. For example, each building has different shapes of windows, doors, and decorations, such as that I drew several peanuts characters on the snoopy accessories buildings, drew macarons on the laduree building, and had an especially unique door on the Big Hit building.

In my classmate Serena’s work, she demonstrated the element of shapes pretty well since each building has its own unique shapes. I can see different kind of shapes in all of these representative buildings of different countries.

• Space

In my work, the roads had occupied a lot of space. Also, I also created some little spaces by the boundary of each building, to make them look more as real life.

In my classmate Serena’s work, the grass she drew occupied a lot of spaces, creating some sort of foundation of the buildings. Also, even though the mountains and pyramids at the back are partly being blocked by the buildings at the front, but we can tell that it takes up a lot of space because the sky relatively takes up only a little space.

• Color

I used a lot of colors to show harmony and contrast. For example, I used bright and warm colors together to create harmonious feelings, and overall the darkness and lightness on my painting furthermore shows contrast. The color scheme I like the most is on the snoopy accessories building, because I mixed light pink and sky blue together to create the magical feeling.

In my classmate Serena’s work, she overall mostly used light colors to make her painting looks very colorful and bright. I also noticed that the colors she used tends to be bluish, such as the sky, Fuji Mountain, and Taipei 101.

• Value

I created values in my drawing to show the color that’s fading away as it gets further away and closer to the horizon line. For example, on the road, the part that’s nearer to our eyes are darker, and as it gets further away, it’s gradually getting lighter as if it’s blurry.

In my classmate Serena’s work, the part where she applies the element of value the most obvious is the sky, the ground, and the pyramid. Even though the sky only occupies little space, but you can see the part that’s nearer to the landmarks is lighter, and as it gets further upper, it gets darker. At the ground, you could see mixtures of values of green. I think the reason the grass doesn’t have a specific pattern of value arrangement is because she’s trying to imitate the real life situation which the upper grass are lighter because it’s more exposed in sunlights, and the lower part is darker because they’re less exposed to sunlights. Lastly, the pyramid also has values contained. The outline of the bricks pattern are darker, and the surface is lighter.

III Improvements