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I found it surprising that Lauren never used canvas while painting and she only uses fabric, bedsheets, and silk. She fell into using silk when she was pregnant to avoid using bleach. I found this interesting because it seems to have been her favorite out of each of the mediums she has worked with before. Her architectural perspective and sources of inspiration were very intriguing. She creates large, cohesive exhibits which was also surprising to me. She explained that she “enters the abstract inspiration through a single letter”. I think it is very interesting how she is able to find a source of inspiration through letters and create meaning beyond that. It feels authentic, emotional, and truly expressive. I also liked her abstract work inspired by her husband. She used his “colors” to create the work that would not resemble a person to me, but has such an authentic and intriguing perspective as it is inspired by her love’s clothes and hair color.

I am particularly fascinated by Elizabeth Layton’s work so I will be doing my final project on her!

Some of the points I will discuss in my paper:

• The subjects of her work (they are all elderly people, grandparents)
• The emotions expressed by the subjects
• The colors in each of the pieces and the role they play relative to the overall emotional feeling
• The repetitive patterns and composition

I think one of the most challenging aspects of this assignment was creating depth with some of the lighter values with ink. Applying some of the marking techniques that we learned in class was really helpful. For example, when I needed to capture the texture and value of the orange, I used the stippling technique to apply the values. Watering down the ink also made applying values easier. 

During the critique, I noticed many aspects of Grey’s project that I felt would have liked to incorporate into my own. In some parts of her piece, she used a smaller brush to capture the details of her still life. She used the cross-hatching marking method to show value without watering down her ink too much. This helped add to both the quality of the values of darkness and light, and the quality of the composition.

I used a q-tip to add texture to the orange. I had previously practiced with the q-tip, so I was familiar with the possibilities of using it. I planned on applying the ink with a q-tip and a gift card for the texture of the banana as well, however I did notice issues with the q-tip as I began working. I noticed that the marks and spots on a brown banana are much darker, heavier, and straighter than what could be produced on paper by a piece of cotton. I took the risk of using my bamboo paint brush in a different way. I first dipped it in the ink, then I pressed the brush on a piece of sketchbook paper which caused the brush to spread out rather than combine as a paint brush. With this, I dabbed the brush on the paper to create spots on the banana. This risk definitely paid off because it captured the texture of the banana that I was hoping to establish in my project. 

Some of the helpful comments that I noticed were mostly regarding the trash can and salt shaker. Someone noted that it looked transparent, which is not what I was trying to capture. This helped me to realize that the values in that part of the drawing did not contrast enough to represent the space and depth between the two objects. 

In my approach to this drawing, I tried to blend the darker ink values into the white value of the page. I would definitely try to identify overall values of objects and layer the values with different marking techniques. I would also use one smaller tool to capture more detail in some aspects of my piece.