My Year in Art

I like abstract art and lines/curves are very easy to work with but can be very elaborate if done right. I wanted to paint a sequence that blends itself into the other colors over time, I did this so the audience can see how subtle and then extreme the transitions of colors can be. I didn’t expect any particular reaction based upon the vision I went with but I expect people to just say their honest opinion of it as they have up until now. This piece has my signature wavy look to it which reminds me of many of my past works.

I always tend to go more in the abstract direction because I like the style more than realism and the end result is more of my liking. This relates to the fairly recent artists that have moved away from the realism approach that was originally established, leaving us at a time of preference. Although I like abstract art a lot my inspiration was just the idea of abstract as a whole, no specific works were drawn from. Basically, all I did was outline curved stripes and then paint them in using whatever color was next on the wheel. I started with red and went the traditional color route on one half of the stripes and then added white for the bottom half.

I was aiming to depict the character Adagio from Vainglory in his two states: his pre-fallen angel and what-if demonic forms. I think the final product communicates a very Yin-Yang-like message. This isn't intentional but it does signify the character pretty well as he's a mess of positive and negative thoughts. I didn't set out to achieve anything in particular. With the creation of this piece I made something I'm proud of, I feel like that's an achievement. I usually go along the abstract side but I decided to focus on recreating something else which is actually how I started drawing. When I was in middle school I would just draw characters from games, anime, etc until I came up with my first original character.

I drew the frame for the body first: extending the arms and adding specific hair to each side. Using where the hairstyle changed as a reference point for dividing the light and dark sides, I then drew a halo and started to detail the bodies on each side. I started with the wings: using hatching, cross-hatching and light pen strokes to individualize each feather then moved on to the backgrounds. I naturally thought of fire for the more demonic side because fire is a natural depiction of evil but it took forever thinking of a background for the angelic side, which I did not come up with until the very end of my project.

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The two inspiration images were the original renders of Adagio’s dark and light side drawn by the Vainglory Developer Team. They can be found here, respectivelyhttp://forums.vainglorygame.com/index.php?threads/22403/ andhttp://www.vainglorygame.com/vainglorylive/coming-soon-seraphim-adagio-tier-iii/.

I created this project in the hopes of creating a very complex, yet refined print. The sketch and translating it to the linoleum was very simple but once I began the channeling everything went downhill. While I am very happy with the final project it took a lot of extra work to complete: I had to redo my channels about 3 times and with each print I found something else to fix as well.

With this project I really had to exercise my patience, more so than ever before with an art piece. I am proud that I was so persistent because otherwise I would not have had a print acceptable to me or the grading standards. I learned about linoleum printing in particular that any design is possible to create but channeling is actually the core of this art form. If you do not channel well, the whole thing is pointless. With other art forms, this is also true in some ways but never has it been truer in my experience.

I am most proud of my line and value project pictured above. It's my favorite of the 3 because it was the biggest challenge for me as an artist. I have difficulty drawing realistically and although this is a fictional character he resembles a human in many regards which are the hardest thing for me to draw. Being able to finish this project with such a result was a major personal success.

My biggest area of need would be polishing the final product. Since I had so much time I decided to create a background for the left side of the image but it ended up being worse than I expected. I honestly think I should have left that alone. There are many smaller examples of this throughout each piece but I certainly have an issue with making finishing touches.

I learned that making art is a piece of work in itself. I really had to test my boundaries to create an accurate rendition of Adagio in my drawing and I really had to test my patience with printmaking. Overall I am proud of my work and I learned of myself that my issue is not learning skills, it is keeping consistency and the desire to finish my work with the highest quality possible.

Currently I am focusing my talents outside of visual arts. I want to learn and endeavor more along the grounds of auditory and written art forms.

Photography, Comics (internet and cartoons mainly), Music (particularly Hip-Hop and sub genres of Rock) and filmography are actually the most inspiring forms of art to me. I am not too into the visual art communities although it is my preferred method of creating art. I really enjoy hearing other stories and the creativity that goes into expressing beliefs, I feel as though the arts listed are the forms that I enjoy this from the most.