FIRST QUARTER FINAL

MATTING

ADVANCED 2-D ART

mat board & mat knife

For seniors Elias Rodriquez and Jonathan Hsu,

choosing either their Pointillism or Prismacolor original to mat up, 

was their final for the quarter.

They both have cut two previous mats for me in the Intermediate class

last year,

but it's still a challenging task. 

And not only did they need to cut a mat, but they were required to embellish the mat

in some way to flow visually with their art piece.

Above we see Elias touching up his Prismacolor

by adding more highlights to it,

to balance with the white pen drawings he did on the mat.

Both works turned out phenomenally,

and I'm so very proud to show them off.

Elias Rodriquez

Jonathan Hsu

Modified Contour with Pen and Ink Washes, Watercolor and Collage - Student Work

Rarely do I show every piece a class has made but I'm making an exception today. And that's because all these pieces turned out so well. I have 6 students in my 2nd level 2-d class, and the assignment was part drawing and watercolor review, but then also incorporating pen and ink washes and collage. So a lot of hoops to jump thru for a small little review piece. The assignment was also about learning to cut a professional matt to frame piece with (very difficult for young kids), but as you will see, these kids are all pros already. Each student got to pick a shell to draw from and I gave them a sharpened dowel that they dipped into india ink to draw with. No pencils allowed!! They were to use their modified contour line that they learned in the first level class. I teach them to draw out of Dr. Betty Edward's book "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain". After ink was dry they were to mix up 3 values of ink washes and brush washes into shaded areas. They were also to incorporate at least 25% of watercolor and 25 %collage into the work. The results were so varied and wonderful that I had to share them all. Here we go with the piece above done by senior Paul Kim. As you can see he is so creative and such an outstanding craftsman. I adore his playful solution.

Above we have sophomore Sam Arias who came up with this sweet piece and look at her how she also incorporated collage elements into her matt, and how the whole flows so well visually. Below we have another talented senior, Kevin Aquilo. Look at his beautiful watercolor background and

oops, I posted him twice. LOL Anyways look at his collaged foreground and all the layers he used. Beautiful work Kevin.

A close up so you can see how sensitive his work is.

And then look at sophomore Hannah Park's playful piece above. Two shells this woman drew for me! With her fabulous fore and backgrounds. And below we have another sophomore, Cindy Kim, with her sensitive and serene piece. Lovely!

And last, we have senior Elsie Engly with her super creative solution to this assignment. Aren't these kids terrific! A close up below so you can see her attention to detail. For EXTRA CREDIT: On a piece of pink paper cut into the shape of a shell, with your name and period on one side, on the other side vote for your favorite artist of the bunch.

Scratchboard with Watercolor

My second year drawing students just finished up a unit on shading that involved pointillism, crosshatching and hatchure strokes, and culminated with these phenomenal scratchboard/watercolor pieces. Scratchboard is a heavier stock paper that is overlaid with a black substance. You use a metal nib to scrape away the black to get to the white paper. Once there you can either just leave it white or watercolor overtop it. This top one belongs to the very popular with the girls, senior, Sam Chon :)

And then we had two kitty cats done by very talented seniors Brandon Liao (who is headed to Art Center in Pasadena to study Entertainment Design), and Marisela Herrerte, whose mommy just donated a tub full of art and crafts supplies. Thank you Mrs. Herrerte!!! Love how both Marisela and Brandon matted up their cats.

And lastly we have seniors Ashlee Chang and MaryLou Bunn, both extremely critical thinkers who always come up with something special to incorporate into their pieces. Ashlee didn't like the way the upper left portion of her pup turned out so she cut off the offensive area and woven up some newspaper strips and inlaid them into 3 spots around her piece. And Mary Lou, who loves to watercolor, scraped off a major portion of her scratchboard so she could do a lot with the watercolor. She also incorporated text around the edge of the mat. Very cool work all of you. I believe Mr. Z is gonna buy MaryLou's piece. Nice!!!!!!!!!