Today, I finished painting the background of my drawing and started to paint my person's hair. I decided to paint the background a monochromatic blue color. I used pale blue, light blue, blue, darkish blue, and dark blue. I really like how it's turned out and I think it will be a nice background to the person who I am now working on. After I finished painting the background, I then started painting the person's hair. I've decided to make her hair a dark brown/brown color, even though that is not the original color of her hair. But, I asked Mrs. Story if I had to paint her hair the exact color that was in the picture, and she said no, so I decided to make up my own colors that still sort of relates to her hair, but are different. In the next class, I hope to keep painting her hair but also start to add extra patterns to the blue background. Originally, we were supposed to add circles to each square, but I asked Mrs. Story if I could do something a little different and add squares inside of the square instead. She told me that was fine, so I'll hopefully be adding those in the next class too. 
   When we first started this project, I had a hard time painting the lines really straight because I have a slight jitter in my hands. I don't know why, but my hands have always shaken a little, ever since I was a child. So, this has really prevented me from painting straight lines. But thankfully, I have learned a new technique! Instead of just holding the paintbrush in one hand or having my hand sit on the desk, I've figured out that if you hold the paintbrush with your writing hand and then put your other hand on your writing hand to make your hand steady, you can easily paint the lines straight by holding the paintbrush with both hands. It might look/feel a little odd, but it really works. 
   But, like I had said before, I'm really excited to see how my painting will turn out. I really like the person I am drawing and I like the colors I am painting on  the canvas. 

    We finally finished our color wheels! Mine didn't come out as well as I had expected because I have a very unsteady hand and therefore can't really make straight lines even if I put my hand down on the table. I spent about 2 - 3 days making it, and I wanted to move on, so I decided to leave it as it is. But, I'm taking Foundations to get better at painting, so I hope I can learn how to keep my hand more steady and therefore be better at making straight lines. I am already accomplishing that in our last project in making the background colored squares. I'm excited to see how my painting will turn out!

    Because I missed a day this week for RAFT (on Tuesday), I am a day behind everyone else who had class on Tuesday. So today, I worked on drawing my image on my canvas. I am drawing Alison Krauss, one of my favorite singers, so that will be nice. I started out drawing my person really well, but when I asked Mrs. Story about how to draw Alison's nose (which I was having quite a hard time with) she told me I was off on the grid on my picture and on my canvas. So unfortunately, I had to erase the whole thing and start over again. I guess that was good though, because this way I will be getting more practice drawing people and I will know that my drawing will be better than if I had kept it the old way. However, I did waste a lot of time (about 45 minutes) drawing it the first time in class, so I only had about 15 minutes to try and re-draw my picture. I only got to erase the whole thing and finish the bottom half of the picture, so hopefully, I will be able to finish the drawing on the canvas in the next class. I am hoping to paint my picture with an analogous color scheme, probably Violet-Red, Violet, Blue-Violet, and Blue, so that will be nice when I start painting. Overall though, I'm really excited to see how this is going to turn out, especially since I haven't had much experience with drawing people and painting, but I hope to improve these skills with this project. So far, I think my drawing is ok. I just need to keep up with the rest of the class and make sure that I don't make anymore mistakes! :P

    Today, I finished working on my palette for painting. I tried to paint inside the lines the best I could. The only issue is is that my hand shakes (even when I put it down on the table). I don't know why it does that, but it has always shaken a little when I try to hold it still, so that makes painting extra hard when you want to keep lines straight (and you can't use a ruler). But, the places where I did go over the lines, I tried to cover up with white paint. Besides finishing the palette, I also took a color quiz. I got a 100% on it, so I guess I don't need to explain any of my answers. I thought it was a little challenging, just because I couldn't really tell what the colors were, but I guess I got lucky. :) For the next class, we are supposed to bring in a picture of a famous person or just a picture of ourselves to paint. I am going to be bringing in a picture of Alison Krauss, one of my favorite musicians. I'm excited to start working on this next project and I hope to be able to learn some techniques to how to keep my hand still when painting.... :P

    I have finally finished my cross hatching. I drew a few more lines on the walls to spruce it up a bit, finished shading the floor completely, and shaded in the brick wall behind the hallway window. I"m actually really pleased with how this has come out. My favorite part of my drawing is still the apple box, just because I like how I drew the actual box and decorated it, but I still like the different types of cross hatching in my drawing, and the different light tones. I'm not sure if I'll be coloring it in next or not, but I like this finished product better than when I just had to plain old pencil lines.

    Today, I worked diligently on making more pen marks on my drawing. I added more shading in onto the flooring, added dots on the tile walls to show their texture, darkened in a few areas that needed to be darkened, and added a few simple lines to the lightly colored wall above the tiled wall, but below the ceiling. Yesterday, I was a little upset with how my drawing was going. So today, I asked Mrs. Story what I needed to do differently and she told me that I needed to take more time in making my lines more precise. I followed her directions and my drawing looks a lot better! I actually kind of like how it looks now. It is still busy looking, but it looks cleaner and by the time I completely finish my cross hatching, I think my drawing will look fine with all the different types of shading. I will probably take one to two more days touching up my shading, and then I will either color it in or keep it black and white. Either way, I think my drawing will turn out better than what I originally thought it would, and I'm excited to see if my cross hatching actually makes a difference on how my drawing will look.

    Today, I started cross-hatching my drawing. I at first went up to the second floor again to see examples of what other students had done, and then I came back down and erased all my pencil lines. After that, I then started filling in some of my drawing. I tried to make things look lighter/darker in their areas, but I don't think it worked out too well. However, I added dots to the ceiling to give my drawing more variety, and I shaded in my diamonds on the floor using curved lines. I sort of like how it looks, but I really messed up on the upper left corner. I guess I'll have to try and fix that tomorrow. So far, I'm not too sure if I want to leave my drawing black and white or add color. I think keeping the drawing in black and white shows the different tones, but I also like the color. I hope my drawing doesn't look too bad. I probably won't do much more cross-hatching to it, just because I don't want it too look too busy. I'm a little disappointed at how it's turning out, but I think I might be able to fix my mistakes in the next class.

    For the past two days, I have been redrawing each of my lines with a black pin point pen. Mrs. Story said to do this because we will cross hatch our drawing - another form of shading. For the bottom drawing, I was only able to finish the hallway and part of the left wall in one day. I actually think that redrawing over my lines makes the drawing have another feel to it. Instead of it being just a somber piece with pencil lines, I like how the dark pen draws out the intensities between black and white in the drawing. And, it is also easier to see. The next day, I finally completely finished redrawing all of my lines in the top photo.
   After we finish redrawing our lines, we're going to do is to erase all the pencil marks in the drawing. It kind of sounds scary to me, though, because I don't want to loose that perfection in my pencil lines, but I know I will have to erase them anyway, and I'm pretty sure it will look prettier in the end with just the pen marks and not having the pencil marks smudging against the drawing.
    We also saw other examples of student's works to have a feeling of what we will be doing. I actually really like how a lot of the student's works turned out and I hope my drawing will look as good as theirs. I haven't done this new type of shading before, so I'm excited to see how it will turn out.

      We only had 45 minute classes today, so I was limited on how much work I could actually get done. I ended up finishing the flooring, with the exception of erasing the extra lines, which I will for sure do the next time we have class, and I drew 2 air conditioning vents on the ceiling. I also started some shading on the left wall. I tried to make the front part look a little lighter than the corner to give it an in-depth feeling. For my next class, I will erase the unnecessary lines on the floor and will start shading in the rest of my drawing. For the doors to the right that have the student I.D. sign on them, I'm not too sure if I should write Campus Store on the top or not because I can kind of see the letters where I am sitting but I'm not too sure how to draw their angle. So, I'll ask Mrs. Story about that in the next class. I also would like to re-draw my EXIT sign on the ceiling because I just realized that it is kind of small in proportion to the other things on the ceiling. But over all, I am very pleased with my drawing and I am happy that I can actually finally get my proportions right! :)

    Today, I worked with Mrs. Story on my flooring. We had decided that my other flooring did not look quite right, so she showed me a really easy way to draw it. All you have to do is first see how many rows you want of the diamonds, then you find the right measurement to each row, and then you find the middle of each row and draw criss-cross lines in each box to find where the diamond should be. Once I had drawn that, I then went ahead and shaded in all the spots where my diamonds would meet. All I have left to do on the flooring is shade in the rest of my diamonds and erase the extra lines. I also finished drawing my lights on the ceiling. Again, I followed Mrs. Story's directions by first drawing a triangle and then making lines in the triangle to make it look like a round light. And then all I have left to do with my whole drawing is finishing the tiles on the walls, finish the floor, and finish my shading. But, I'm still really excited to see how this will turn out. I'm happy I did fix my floors because they now look proportional and they don't look sloppy.