August 24, 2021

Since the last post, I have completed two more pieces of art to add to my "Recreating History" Portfolio.

The first is a piece that is inspired by Vincent Van Gogh's The Starry Night. This was one of the first pieces that came to mind when I came up with this idea for an honors experience, and I was happy to finally tackle this project.

The side by side comparison of my work and Van Gogh's

I wanted to take the flowy, smooth texture of Van Gogh's piece and turn it into my own -- but how? I figured I'd change the vibe of the piece entirely, turning the work into a grid of colors and squares to see if I could get a similar result. I used colored pencil for more accuracy with filling in each square, and to have a good supply of colors to use instead of trying to mix paint each time. I'm glad that I tried out this method, and although I think it turned out different than what I was imagining for it, I like how my result still comes across as flowy and is reminiscent of the original.

The next piece that I have been working on over the past couple of weeks is my recreation of Salvador Dalí's The Persistence of Memory. This was also another piece that came to my mind when I had originally came up with this honors experience idea, so I was also glad to have tackled the challenge of recreating this one. For this piece, I wanted to accentuate the colors of the original while keeping the concepts on the original piece very similar. I wanted the piece to come across as abstract, yet serve as a callback to the piece that Salvador Dalí created.

The side by side comparison of my work and The Persistence of Memory by Dalí

For this piece, I used markers and black and white gel pen for the details. I don't dislike how this piece came out, but I think it is one of the weaker out of the portfolio so far. I wish that I would have taken more creative liberty in changing some of the focuses instead of just accentuating the colors.

I hope to get a couple more pieces done within the coming weeks to cap off this honors experience. Hopefully, I am able to find some new styles to try out!