My last post

So this brings about the end of my passion project blog. This semester is coming to a close, and although I have not been able to do all of the different art topics that I had planned to, I was able to do a fair bit. The list of things to do in this project that I had in my head was probably not very realistic, but I think that I got a good amount done in the duration of this project!
 Looking back I realize that I was more or less succesful in reaching my goal, which was simply to explore and improve overall in art.

Though I still have a long way to go to get to the point that I would like to be at, I think that I have gotten more confident in art, and I have learned some very valuable things about many different types of art. I chose to do this project on art because I enjoy it a lot, and I really wanted to improve. I would see amazing sketches or other pieces, and I would think "wow, I really wish I could do that!". I already knew the basics, and I was able to do art to an extent, but I wanted to get better and be able to do more. And I think that I did. I have learned alot of valuable things like different techniques, and I have become alot more comfortable with different types of art. Especially in sketching portraits. I also was able to explore in different things that I was not at all used to, like felting.

This project was more or less a success because it made me force myself to take time to do art. I often get a bit lazy ( I am a very skilled procrastinator, which is definitely not good!) and I don't find the time to do stuff like this. This passion project made me find the time to practise and try new things, and now I am deffinetly a lot more confident in doing artsy stuff! :)

So thanks to everyone who read this blog, I hope you enjoyed doing so.

Connecting Christianity to art...

In Bible class throughout the duration of our passion projects, we were asked to think about how what we are doing can connect to our Christian faith. I discovered that there are many things that can connect this project and art to living our lives as Christians. First of all, we can enjoy God's beauty, order, and creation through doing artwork ( especially if the art we are doing is inspired by or is a picture of nature.) by doing this we can see and recognise the beauty of creation and the fantastic order that God has created everything in. We can see more of God when we enjoy what He has made, and we can learn to see the beauty in everyday things.
Secondly, when we create we are reflecting the image of God, who is the ultimate creator. We are made in His image, so we are reflecting this when we create things ourselves, being inspired by and in awe of Him and his creation. It can even be a form of worship, in a way.
Those are just a few ways how we can connect Christianity to art. We can apply our Christian faith in all aspects of our lives, and we should, whether its our hobbies, careers, or lifestyle. That is definitely a big part of being a Christian.

Watercolour

This my first art piece for the painting unit of this passion project. I used watercolour for the painting of the white leopard, and I am pretty happy with the way that it turned out. Like I said in my last post, I am not as comfortable with watercolour paint as I am with many other types of art, but I think I did an alright job regardless.

I have had a bit of experience with watercolour in the past, and I do like several things about it. First of all, I really like that you can create a lot of different shades from a single paint colour, just by adding water. In other types of paint, you would have to add a lot of white or black paint in order to change the darkness or lightness of a colour, which takes much more time and much more paint. Watercolour is a lot simpler and more enjoyable ( at least I found that it was) because you can simply use water instead. The more water is added to the paint on the pallet, the lighter the paint colour will be, and vise versa. For example, in my painting I only used one type of paint (black) for the whole thing, except for the eyes.
Another thing that I like about watercolour is that you barely need to use any paint at all. Because you mix it with water, all you need is a tiny dot of the colour you want. This is also nice because if you mix too much of a colour ( which is what usually happens to me) you don't really waste any paint.

One thing that I don't like to much about watercolour is the fact that the paint tends to run sometime. Since it is mostly water, it is a lot thinner than other paints, I had to be careful because the paint would sometimes drip. Also, at times I moved the paint brush too quickly, and as a reward I got a spray of little paint speckles all over the page. Luckily I managed to save the painting when this happened by quickly dabbing the spots up with paper towel before the watercolour happened to sink into the paper too much.
Also, you need to be careful with how many layers of paint or water you put onto the paper. If the paper gets too wet too many times, then it starts to "disintegrate" and the paper turns from nice and smooth to slightly rough and pulpy very quickly. I used artist paper that said would work well with all types of art, including watercolour, but I wonder if actual watercolour paper would be better.

This things can, however, be easily avoided if you are more careful and comfortable with watercolour paints.

The original painting of the leopard that I looked off I got from Pinterest. The artists name isn't given, but the painting is originally from silverridgestudio on a webpage called Etsy.