For my watercolor grid project, I came up with 4 different ideas but I ultimately decided to go with a chameleon. I knew I wanted to have an organic colored element in the painting so I choose to put the chameleon on a tree branch. When people picture a chameleon, most would usually think of a cool colored reptile but I wanted to play along with the color-changing characteristic of chameleons so I made the chameleon warm colors. I was a little worried about a watercolor project because I have very bad patience and I knew that if I didn't wait for something to completely dry, it would bleed into the next square. If you look closely, you can see some spots that did bleed because I was too impatient. This project also took me quite a while to do because I wanted to do different patterns for every square and I had to keep coming up with different texture ideas. Eventually, I caved and did some patterns multiple times because there's no way I could come up with over 200 unique designs and maintain my sanity at the same time. I also came up with a backstory for this chameleon. His name is Bamboo because he lives in a rainforest in Ethiopia. Bamboo was hit on the head with a falling coconut as a baby and now he's colorblind so he can't blend into his surroundings very well. He made friends with a green snake named Coconut (a little ironic) Coconut didn't eat Bamboo because she thought his colors were so beautiful. Since Bamboo can't blend in, Coconut will wrap around him to hide his vibrant colors so he doesn't get spotted. Sometimes, creating stories about characters in my artwork keeps me focused when the work is tedious and it also gives me ideas to make my characters unique.

At first, I wasn't super into creating a cubism piece. I wanted to use bright vibrant colors on my pieces and shading seemed like such a bore. When I did my cubism practice in my sketchbook, I loved the outcome but just didn't like the process. This made me realize that I really had to choose a subject that I felt really strongly towards. We started this project around the anniversary of my Great Grandmother's passing and my mom was having a difficult time. That's when I chose to dedicate this piece to her. When she passed away, my mom bought me a locket for Christmas that year. The locket had angel wings in the shape of a heart that opened up to reveal an engraving that said "Guardian angel." When the package arrived my mom brought it to my bedroom and when I opened it, my lamp started flickering. This made me feel like she was there with us and it made the locket all that more special. When I was sketching ideas for this project, my lights flickered again when I came across this idea so it was the obvious choice in my mind. This drawing brought up a lot of great memories which kept me focused on it. Shading isn't my favorite technique so I did have to only shade for short bursts of time and take breaks in between. This made this project take a lot longer than I wanted it to. I did love the outcome of this piece as it came out better than I expected. I thought that since there were so many shapes, it would just look weird and unrecognizable but you can make out the feathers fairly easily. Would I ever do a cubism piece this big again? No, absolutely not but I did love the way this came out.

For my contour lines hand drawing, I automatically wanted to do sign language. I was excited to do this project because I have been drawing hands since I was a small child and I knew I would have a lot of time to spend on the coloring aspect of it. This piece is LGBTQ+ pride-inspired because I knew I wanted to do a rainbow. I wanted to sign the word "LOVE" but I needed something with 5 or more letters so I went with "LOVELY" instead. Contour lines were no new concept for me so this gave me more time to focus on other elements of the project like the spacing between the hands and using Prisma colors. I actually spent almost 20 minutes making sure my hands were spaced the way I wanted them to. I was so excited when we were given our own Prisma colors. When I was younger, I watched artists make super realistic drawings using Prisma colors and I would try to figure out which was the drawing and which was the real object. I was shocked at how pigmented the colors were and I have wanted to try them ever since and I was so excited to use them. I loved how smooth they drew and was astonished at how effortlessly the colors blended. That's when I decided to try and make the hands look like they were glowing. I could color with Prisma colors for hours and still be amazed at the quality compared to my usual Crayola pencils.