This abstract painting (titled "little fuzzy worms") assignment was our first big assignment in Foundations of Studio Art from 2022. Beforehand, we had to do a color harmony practice, acrylic media testing sheet and create a final plan for our painting (all pictured below). The final plan involved figuring out a color palette using Adobe color, picking a song to base the painting on and creating a small scale painted inspired by our brainstorming. Above is the final painting and below are photos from the process.

In this painting, I mainly focused on composition and contrast. One of my inspirations was arcade carpets due to their fun shapes and heavily contrasting colors. For composition, I picked a spiral composition. Because my original idea was a flat composition, which wouldn't fit with the feeling I wanted to portray. So I went with a spiral, using my color placement to guide the observers eye. The combination of this palette and composition would perfectly represent the feeling I was going for.

After going through the original brainstorming and final plan creation, I started on the actual painting. First, I did a light wash of color and sketched in the composition with a large paint brush. Then I started on the flat colors. They took a bit of time to do since the specific paint I was using was extremely transparent but eventually the layering created something opaque. Finally, I used a sponge brush to block in the black background and refined it, adding the small sparkles and finishing the painting.

For our last project, we had to pick a photo we took, add a grid on it and then draw it using one of the previous mediums we had tested (charcoal, scratchboard, crosshatching, graphite or watercolor). The purpose of this assignment was to understand how to draw using a grid and how it could help the proportions of your final drawing. I picked a photo I took at camp and watercolor as my material. While I enjoyed the watercolor aspect at this scale, it was also challenging to properly match the colors in the photo to my painting. The gridding process was fast (and tedious) but overall, made the process go by significantly faster. By completing this assignment, I've gained proper knowledge on how to grid and how it effects the process and final piece. Above is the finished painting and below is the process.