11 ADV ART & PORTFOLIO - Medusa Idea

I'm back to traditional paintings! Well traditional in the sense that there isn't anything noticeably off when you first see it. It's basically a portrait but front and back.
The painting is going to be of Medusa, before and after she was cursed to have snakes as hair. I don't really want to go into the story in depth because 1) I already did research on this and there's actually like ten different versions of the story about why/how she got the snakes and 2) I haven't chosen which one of the versions I want to influence my art, if I choose any at all. So I don't really want to give the background of the story because it may give you some unintentional meaning to my work which, I usually encourage, but this time the message is pretty straight-forward: I'm just portraying a Greek Mythology story using acrylic paint, a play with light, and a pretty girl.
Ok, so here's how this plays into everything else that I'm doing: It's a play with light. Basically, on the front of the substrate, I'm going to paint Medusa (before the curse) on the front, and Medusa (after the curse.. aka with the snakes) on the back of the substrate. But the portrait on the back will be flipped, so that Medusa's features correspond with the front. The pictures will (hopefully) collide in unity when a strong light hits it.
The only thing about this is that there is absolutely nothing about negative space in this project, which was included in my artist statement (and I was hoping it could be part of my concentration) so I'm a little stuck there. But it does follow through with the light part-- light does play a serious part in this piece. Maybe I should just change my artist statement / concentration. I absolutely do NOT plan on dropping the concept of negative space, though. I have too many ideas for that.
Although I actually did plan on doing this project a very long time ago, I didn't think that I would be doing it now. The only reason I'm doing it right now is because I need a break from doing layers. Layering is really complicated, and I didn't enjoy dealing with layering two projects in a ROW, which, both of them turned out awful. So I'm really looking forward to this one! Especially because this project is really what gave birth to basically ALL my other light/layering ideas. I thought about this painting a really long time ago, and because of it, I suddenly got more and more ideas about light and hidden paintings, which basically led to negative space and layering. So this is kind of like my first step but I'm doing it as my fourth step aha.

10 PORTFOLIO - Secret Garden Idea

The next project I'll be working on is going to be titled "Secret Garden"! WHICH IM REALLY EXCITED ABOUT BECAUSE I USUALLY NEVER HAVE A TITLE FOR MY ARTWORK but for this one I do!!
Okay well anyways, this is going to be more negative space stuff. Basically, what I'm going to do is that I'm going to take different slabs of wood and paint on the side. I'll place them strategically and then arrange it so that the different paintings on each side comes together. It's a little hard to explain-- not because the concept is complicated, I'm just bad at explaining things. But anyways I'm excited! Mrs. Miller and I already cut the wood which is absolutely beautiful. Here are some pictures of it because I am in LOVE with the wood.

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you can see the sap in the wood

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I LOVE THE RINGLETS!! they're so pretty

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9 ADV ART & PORTFOLIO - Ghost Ship

For this project, we listened to Sonic Escape's "Ghost Ship" and painted based on what we heard. What I did was that I listened to the music, and separated them into different sections depending on the tone of the music. Then, I took different layers of tracing paper and painted different images on each of them (corresponding to the different tones I heard in the music) using watercolor. I put them all together using glue spray adhesive, but the images didn't all come together like I thought it would. The piece was translucent and it was supposed to come all together when the light hit it. Another problem that I had was that the pieces of tracing paper that I used was so big that when they were put all together, they became wrinkled, which didn't help because the paper was already pretty wrinkled from the water from the water color (I ended up ironing the tracing paper before I glued them together)
Overall, I did not like the project at all. This is also a project that was more on the abstract side, and I'm used to being very detailed so I wasn't satisfied with the outcome (yet the process of doing this project was fun!). But I love the concept of it! The layering reminds me of the Ensley project except much, much easier and the substrate I painted on was good because it was translucent. I would love to do this project against but on a smaller scale and maybe with a different medium, so that the paper wouldn't wrinkle. But right now I want to take a break from layers ahaha. I'm so tired.
Here's a picture .. it was accidentally taken from the back but I actually don't mind