Finally the home sculpture project is finished. I am quite satisfied with how the shape of the hanging objects ended up turning out. One of my biggest concerns while making this was if it wasn't going to end up being evenly distributed in terms of weight and then it wouldn't hang quite right, but thankfully I was able to maneuver the different size objects so that they allowed for the overall mobile to hang properly.
       Additionally, minor story time, while I was attaching one of the pine-cones to the mobile, a beetle crawled out of the pine-cone and onto my hand. I, of course, freaked out and killed it and hid outside my room for about an hour out of fear that there were more beetles in my pine-cones. So, yeah. The things we go through for art.
       For this project it was hard for me to originally get inspired to make anything creative, so I turned back to a previous exhibit that my art one class had visited, which was about unity in art. Using that for inspiration, it was easier to work out an idea that demonstrated unity while also adhering to the given theme of environment.

       I've done some further thinking on the content of my sculpture project as I've kept developing it. So one thing that I have decided is that I am going to take inspiration from the content of a previous art exhibit by Hoss Haley: Yield, for the content of my sculpture project. In terms of what the content will center around, it will focus on the control that I have over the objects that I am incorporating into my sculpture as well as how the objects in their own way also have a control over me and how I place them, which will overall tie into the central theme of environment for this project.
       In terms of the progress of the physical side of the project, I have made it so that it will be able to hang once it is finished. The hoop that will hold up the rest of the mobile now has two strings crossing each other attached to it so that a hook or anything else necessary to hang it can be attached to the top of the sculpture.

       I didn't necessarily think that I was going to be making another one of these progress posts, but what can I say? Sometimes you get inspired and changes need to be made to art. Anyway, here I have posted all the pictures I have of my progress of my painting, with a noticeably new one in the lower left-hand corner.
       A couple of noticeably new changes have been made to the previously thought "done" painting. For example, the top left corner of the painting felt almost as if it was lacking in terms of composition since the dots seemed to be more concentrated and more purposefully placed in the lower right of the painting. So, to remedy this, I added more of the yellow dots to the more empty space of the upper corner of the painting in order to have the composition seem more balanced and have more of a sense of continuity. In terms of other new things added to the painting, while viewing the painting, Mrs. Mosley and I agreed that there could be more depth added to the dots in order to make the painting more interesting to the eye. This was because the dots, even though having different colors in them, were all essentially hues of a color and were not varied in either way. So, to achieve more depth, I added a glaze on top of some of the dots. The glaze was made by taking the whitish original glaze and mixing it with different degrees of blue in order to create a rough complement for the colors of the dots. This does have some flaws, however, since most of the dots are not one solid color and are instead more of a mixture featuring any combination of colors from the palette of red, orange, and yellow.
       Due to this, it was difficult to decide what hue would work best to slightly desaturate some of the dots, but blue was decided on since it would be the most likely not to interfere with the background composition, which is heavily based in blue. Then the glaze was layered onto the dots in different degrees in order to desaturate some more than others, therefore creating more depth as a result. I don't think that the glaze on the dots is an element that makes or breaks my painting, since they're not the emphasis when viewing the painting, but I think that it adds a more subtle aspect of depth to the composition that will allow for the painting to overall be more interesting and to appear more finished and complete to the viewer.

Also, be on the lookout for a new sculpture project that will be happening very soon! (And maybe my art class will finally begin uploading pictures for our gallery...*wink wink nudge nudge* Mrs. Mosley)

       Pictured to the left is the final painting, though the orientation is incorrect. Since I had to paint the final edge of my painting and allow it to dry, so I had to turn my painting on its side. The final picture posted in the gallery of my website will be displayed the correct way.
       For the intentional orientation, I have the dots rising from left to right in order to complement how those from the Western Hemisphere typically read from left to right.
       The color scheme is split complementary. I had the darker complement make up the majority of the painting in order to mimic Clyfford Still's paintings which were often described as "voids of darkness with glimpses of light."

       Ah, yes! The moment of truth! The self-portrait is finally finished! For the result, I feel as if I managed to mimic the master's mark quite successfully. For the hair, I kept the marks minimal to keep it similar to the marks making up the hair of the original Old Master's drawing. Additionally, I also applied the marks as uniformly spaced as I could in order to replicate the Old Master's drawing. In terms of the previous post when I expressed doubt about how to properly apply marks to the shirt, and I decided to simply apply marks in the same fashion as the rest of the drawing in order to not draw unecessary focus to the shirt.