More Past Pieces: Junior Year

Here’s all my stuff from junior year (2011-2012), when it starts to get interesting. This was probably my worst year of high school, and the fact that I couldn’t take art that year sure didn’t help any. Still, I managed to whip out some interesting sketches and pieces that I’m happy to post on here.

First, I had to write an original fairy tale for English class, and mine was about a dragon raised by a human girl. After that, I realized that dragons are one of my favorite things (besides brown paper packages tied up with strings, of course ;) Anyway, I just got really into drawing them in my sketchbook, so here are some of my best ones:

P.S.-I used a couple for illustration for my friend’s story!

Enough dragons for now. Here’s a pen and ink drawing I did on graph paper based on art:

In my school’s National Art Honor Society, we host coffee houses to raise money and showcase our members’ talent. For the first Thanksgiving themed coffee house, I entered this pastel drawing called, “Thanks to Self-Expression:”

Once again, I put a piece in for the Deborah Heart Challenge, called “Music Comes From the Heart:”

For a Valentine’s themed coffee house (ugh, Valentine’s Day), I did this mixed media piece based on a lyric from Taylor Swift’s song “Back to December” – “You Gave Me Roses And I Left Them There To Die:”

In March I went to a Graphic Design class at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, which was totally awesome. I learned a lot about negative space and what attracts and repels the human eye. Our first project was to create a logotype of our name using Illustrator, and this is what I came up with:

The second major project in my Graphic Design class was to create a collage about our identity inspired by surrealism. I used some of my older drawings, some paint, a photo of myself, and Photoshop to create “An Artist’s Mind:”

When the coolest class I’ve ever taken ended, I went back to my sketchbook and just did some different things, like this blue butterfly and a girl:

And I also re-worked that fabulously awful watercolor painting I did of a blue moon so that it had a much more artistic message. I’m planning to create a larger acrylic or oil painting of it eventually, once I get more practice:

I couldn’t resist making this Dragon Girl that lives in my head:

For the last NAHS coffee house with a Renaissance theme, I decided to use some juxtaposition (a fancy word I learned in my Graphic Design class that just means to put things next to each other) and create some real “Jedi Knights:”

Ever since that piece, I’ve just been practicing some portraits in my sketchbook of random celebrities. For example, this is part of a famous shot from Casablanca, the greatest movie of all time, of the character Ilsa played by Ingrid Bergman:

This one is Sharon den Adel, lead singer of the amazing band Within Temptation:

And, in case you didn’t know, this is Emma Watson, my favorite celebrity ever:

That’s all my best stuff up on this blog, so from this moment on, it’s AP Art all the way!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Some Older Pieces of Mine

The next few posts are just pictures of things I’ve done in the past before this crazy AP Art course came along, so bear with me. This particular post will show drawings and paintings from my freshman and sophomore years.

However, the first piece is the weird exception to the rule: I think I did it when I was around ten years old, I’m not sure. I was bored one day and decided to paint with watercolors, and this image came into my head. Will it hang in a museum or other prestigious exhibit with (one day) my other pieces? Probably not. But I found this piece in a notebook a few years ago when I really started getting serious about art and it just inspires me so much. It helps me to keep going if I get stuck on a sketch or I hit a roadblock with a painting. So there you have it:

The next one is from freshman year (2009-2010). It is a watercolor painting of a butterfly, so I have creatively named it “Watercolor Butterfly.” I know it’s not perfect, but considering I was a puny little freshman at the time, I’m proud of it:

Moving on to sophomore year (2010-2011), here’s a drawing of an autumn tree for a typography assignment: “Fall Text Tree.” If you look closely, you can see that the entire drawing is made of letters of words like fall, autumn, wind, etc. I really like it and want to do more typography soon:

Next, I participated in the Deborah Heart Challenge and Art Competition both sophomore and junior years, and this challenge’s only requirement was that the piece contain a human heart. I made a heart out of cardboard and tried to make it look like it was put together with things like zippers and chains and stuff like that. “Broken Heart”

One of my favorite pieces of all time, this is called, “I’m Spying on You.” I love working with pen and ink and making extremely fine details and intricate designs. This work had three inspirations: Harry Clarke, The Wizard of Oz, and Alice in Wonderland:

Here’s a piece I made with oil pastel and one GIANT piece of butcher paper. I had to incorporate the human skeleton, muscle, and skin somehow, so I used sign language to spell the word “Free” with hands:

Another watercolor piece, this is just a nice landscape with a rainbow sunset and blue and purple flowers:

Ever heard the phrase, “Music is the soundtrack of my life?” Well, guess what-it’s true. This piece proves it. “Music = Life:”

Finally, I ended sophomore year with a bang with this self-portrait. I just gridded the paper and drew designs in the square and around myself. This IS my favorite piece I’ve done so far:

That's it for my earlier pieces. The next post is all junior year, everyone's FAVORITE year of high school (yeah, right)

Welcome!

“Everything you can imagine is real”~ Pablo Picasso

My name is Abby McGrath. I’m a full-time aspiring artist and part-time eccentric weirdo. If you want to know more, look down at the “About Me” section.

This blog was created at my art teacher’s request (that is a much more pleasant word than order) because I’m enrolled in an AP Art course this year. The main purpose of the blog is not only to showcase my art, but to record the progress of my work and chronicle this AP course. In this blog, you will find:

o   High-quality photos of completed artwork

o   High-quality photos of sketches and works-in-progress

o   Links to news articles about what’s going on in the art/fashion world

o   Descriptions about AP Art

o   Witty sarcasm about random things

o   Obscure references to movies/TV shows

o   Rants about how hard my art teacher is working us...(just kidding ;] )

o   And More!

You’ll also find a link to Teen Ink.com, which features completed artwork of mine and thousands of other teens in this crazy world. Plus, there’s a link to the home page of the AP Art course on the College Board website. And, if that’s not enough for you, you can go over to my other blog, The Quiet Storm, which is mostly just my random spurts about various subjects, and does not necessarily showcase artwork.

Hope you like my blog and continue to follow it as I post more art stuff!