20% Time

20% Time Project

I am going to be making a series of paintings with my better-half, Eloisa. There's going to be twelve paintings in total, which combine all of our paintings into one. We will use watercolors, acrylics, and oils. This project will show people how practicing and challenging yourself can improve your skills. We do have resources, and somewhat of an experience. Our main goal for this project is to improve and experiment in painting.

What's 20% Time?
A 20% Time Project is when we are given one day a week on a project of our choice.

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October 19th, 2018... an introduction and ramble

Finally, the day as come, for... our twenty-percent time project. I have been waiting for this moment, as when we were in seventh grade, we did not have the opportunity to do this. I am aware of the fact that the seventh graders now get to do it, because life is like that sometimes. Moving on, I immediately knew what I was going to do for this. You already know what I'm going to do, if you read the introduction- that's right, I'm calling you out, people who didn't read the introduction. I'm getting really off track. The point is, I knew exactly what I wanted to do. Here's one thing I want to reflect on: 

Why painting, and what painting?

I have complained about watercolor many times. I have literally, like, fifty drafts on this blog dedicated to my hatred of watercolor. The reason I despise watercolor is because I'm no good at it. This project would help me improve a lot, since I feel like watercolor could look cool if I knew how to actually use it. I'm really excited to explore my inner Bob Ross with oil paintings. Have I ever used them? Nope. But I have watched Bob Ross forever, so I know his guidance will lead me to victory. 

So today, we gave our pitch, and succeeded!

(Progress - 1/4, we just started, so it's pretty clear why.)

~

October 26th, 2018... mentors, and why I need one

In response to the above, have you seen my painting skills? If you said no to an obviously rhetorical question, you'd still be correct, because I have none. Ah, self-deprecation. So, we must come up with a mentor.

Here's what I've searched up because of this:

"good modern artist who is nice and who won't yell at middle schoolers"

"modern painty paint person" 

(Progress - 1/4, we really couldn't find even one option for a mentor through our searches.)

~

November 2nd, 2018... finding a mentor again, haha

I'm having a Johnny Johnny moment. That's never good. Eloisa and I have searched far and wide for a mentor, and we still haven't found what we're looking for (get it... get it). Here's some of our candidates so far, and here's some people who are amazing at painting. Our standards are too high. By the way, ELOISA NEEDS TO STOP ATTACKING SALVADOR DALI. 

-Kasey Golden

Here's her Youtube channel.

She's an artist who often does sketches in a series, but uses watercolor to color them, so yeah.

-Daria Callie

Here's her website and YouTube channel.

She's an oil painter who does realistic portraits of people, and sometimes animals.

We haven't got any replies back, because we're gross, booger kids.

Eloisa is being extra, so now I have to one-up her, so I'm going to evaluate on the process of emailing, which was foreign to me, due to the fact that I am a 13 years old child, and therefore I do modern things. I made a mistake while emailing that I cannot take back, but you live and you learn. Honestly though, the word "emailing" just sounds so... musty. 

(Progress - 3/4, we have sent emails to both of these possible mentors before checking with teachers to see if they're ok.)

~

November 9th, 2018... "you guys still use gmail?"

I take back my petty because now we have a mentor. By the way, the title is a quote from a child in the crutchler realm. More importantly, here are some things I would like to announce:
1. Hot wheels

2. I hate eggs 

3. I'm wearing a sweater that has eggs on it

4. w e  h a v e  a  m e n t o r

5. It's Daria Callie

That's right, kids. A literal art god has decided to donate to two young preschoolers in their time of need. I am so happy we finally have a mentor, and an amazing mentor at that. Just look at one of her art pieces:



The best part is that the only medium we're using that we're very inexperienced in is oil, which is what she specializes in. 

I don't know how to make a smooth transition from one subject to another, so let me just briefly take moment to say that my fellow partner, Eloisa and I are gremlins.

We made a slide for this project, and it contains ideas for painting. Let me insert a picture from the slide right now.

We obviously have more slides, but this is the most complete one. We're still looking for more things, of course, but so far we're having a really saucy time with this project.

(Progress - 4/4, not only were we able to get a mentor, but we were also able to make a slide for general ideas of what we might do.)

~

November 16th, 2018... I don't want a lot for Christmas

So, today is Friday. I really forgot about 20% time, to be honest. A lot has been going on this week. I'm going to have a mini-rant about my life for a "brief" moment. I had Mock Trial last week, and was kind of upset because of a reason that's both reasonable and petty, so I won't say it, and this week upset me more. That's all I have to say. I didn't mess up in my part though, so that's not the reason. Apparently I lied. That is not all I have to say, however I promise you that now is the fun part, r e a d i n g. 

What have we done so far, other than recreating the fish with legs sketch? Well, uh. We'll find out. I randomly found a palette knife in my house, which made me mildly concerned that it was just lying around, though because it is to my benefit, I decided to not complain about the fact that a palette knife was randomly placed in my house. The point is, we have somewhat of a supply list. We're also still trying to find out what we can base/inspire our paintings on, thus we added to the slide. If you don't know who "we" are by now, because I realized that I haven't clarified that, it is prominent that you have not read this, but, who can blame you? Anyways, I'm rambling and I am not okay. I'm using weird words and that's making me scared. 

Here's some of our slides. Please ignore the sentence above the one next to this one. 

This is a slide for people we can possibly draw. All of these people look either really nice/cool, or like... yeah. They're all from magazines. If you have any questions- by the way, this is my attempt to sound professional- please ask me, preferably in person. Literally, just. Go up to me randomly. I would like that. I don't know why, I just would. Also, as you noticed, we didn't choose guys. Eloisa and I both agree that guys are hard to draw. The end. 

This is a slide for cool backgrounds. I took four-sixth of the photos. My credit was given by Barry Bee Benson for my amazing photography skills on Eloisa's twenty percent time page.

This slide's purpose is so we don't fail at everything. We need people to guide our narrow jibs. Legends like Bob Ross, and, uh.. definitely more individuals will help us slightly succeed. I'm really excited to start painting. I'm practically buzzing. Also, I'll give our progress right now a good 10/10, besides the fact that I've been singing Mariah Carey songs a lot. To answer Eloisa on her blog, I definitely do not love Mariah Carey too much. That's impossible, because everyone loves Mariah Carey. 

(Progress - 2/4, even if I did say I'd give it a 10/10- all we have managed to do is update the slide a bit.)

~

November 30th, 2018... a pair of pigeons making progress

Eloisa and I are making really good progress, as you might've guessed from the introduction. I bought acrylic paints and tested them at home (funny story, one of my paints fell behind a couch, and I had to retrieve it with the help of a glove, a spider web, and a flashlight- it was a long journey). Right now, we're brainstorming what we're going to sketch for our first painting. 

Here's the testing paper for the acrylic paints:

As for ideas towards our first painting sketch, we found two pictures that we think would go good together- one of which I took in Little Tokyo (let me have my little narcissistic moment), and the other being from Paper Magazine.

I was thinking of making it kind of like an ocean themed thing.

I also feel like this image can really inspire us:

On a serious note, because I can totally do that sometimes, Eloisa is coming up with a cool concept that I like to call "PaINtINg: whAt ArE wE gOInG tO Do?" Also, Eloisa drew a picture of us on the bottom of this "cool concept" paper, and it's great.

As you can see, we're deciding how to make things contrast and blend with each other in a not-distracting way. Of course, the image obviously portrays what I just said, and I didn't just think of a description for it that wasn't "Eloisa took advantage of the moment and drew Filthy Frank."

[slygremlin.jpg]

(Progress- 4/4, we have tested out some of our paints, found out what images we're using to base our first painting on, and made a drawing on what we might do for our painting in terms of how to make the background really boom.)

~

December 7th, 2018... we rampage Michael's (not clickbait)

Today, Eloisa and I went on a buenaventure to Michael's in hopes of getting more art supplies and family bonding. Before we did so, meaning in class, we (attempted to) sketch the model we have decided we're going to draw first. This involved lots of mess-ups and my infamous M&M container.

[confuzzledcloisa.jpg]

Here's the picture reference (also, see if you can spot the Gwendolyn in the camera roll).

And kind of lastly- of the school day for twenty time, of course, here's our sketching process on this (yes, we both sketched things). Take in mind that this is a rough draft, and for the majority of our paintings we will be using a 9 in x 12 in canvas.

At this point, we both were struggling to draw lips, because drawing lips at an angle is very hard. This caused Eloisa to search up references, leading to this glorious picture:

It's like, an inside joke thing. Anyways, continuing on.

So, our final product isn't, uh, final yet, but we're getting there. Now here's the part I have been waiting for. Our trip to Michael's. Michael's is a magical place for us pretentious little crutchlers. We were very excited to buy the whole store with the fifty thousand coupons and gift cards blessed upon us by Eloisa's mom. 

[readierthanspongebob.jpg]

After stopping by Micky D's, we were greeted with this. I circled all of the paints we got. When we were picking them out, we were mainly focused on what colors would work with our current project.

"Quick" explanation on the color choices based on our image.

Yellows are for hair:

Pink is for background/skin/clothes. We got the pale peach color for skin as well:

The red will be for the outside flesh-like border on her face, the browns for her eyes and skin, and the blue for the clothes, skin, and background.

Now, we also got eight canvases, and had to go through a whole journey of trying to find a small empty cup that was once full of Sprite from McDonald's. Due to that journey, please enjoy this photos:

It turns out Eloisa's mom had the cup in her cart the whole time.

Before leaving, we also decided to test out markers, mainly to do this:

Wait for it.

There we go.

Back to being productive. At Eloisa's house, we tested out the paints on paper to see how they'd look, and also mixed them together/added water to them for gradient, transparent, and watercolor paint affects (we're not going to actually buy watercolors when we can just make them out of acrylic paint).

It was a fun journey, and I'm honestly really excited for next Friday, even more so than Rebecca Black.

(Progress - 4/4, we have made a semi-sketch of our image(s), gotten more paints, and collected canvases so we are able to start our actual painting.)

~

December 14th, 2018... Spiderus is an icon

I am excited to announce that today is officially the last Friday before break. Watch me regret not doing anything at all over break when we come back. Eloisa and I have painted the background for our, well, painting on a new canvas. It's pink and blue.

Then she painted clouds using colors I mixed for her.

I guess I'm kind of the planner (I give suggestions/ideas and mix the colors) and she's more of the painter (that is very literal, I think everyone knows what a painter does). That's not to say she doesn't plan and I don't paint, though. I just feel like those are our natural roles overall.

Here's what mixing colors does:

(Progress - 4/4, Eloisa and I painted the sky, I mixed colors for our future additions to the painting, and we added clouds on top of it.)

~

January 11th, 2019... actually, I'm eleven so-

Please someone get that reference. I was 100% right about regretting not doing anything over break. Eloisa was productive unlike me, and I'm happy to add one completed painting to what we're calling our "bonus" collection. Eloisa made a painting we named "Daniel" after our marvelous friend, Daniel. And I am working on a painting, but it's a surprise, o o h. 

Here's her painting!! :^))

We scratched our plans on painting the model girl in this painting. Why? Because the background just reminded me so much of the ocean that I told Eloisa we had to paint a jellyfish. She, of course, agreed. I also told her we should add stingrays on top of the sky, and she also said yes to that. We both love sea animals, but wHO DoESN'T?? Also, yes, I'm going to ignore the fact that we completely scratched what we've been planning this whole time for something that really deserves out attention, a jellyfish.

Our jellyfish is turning out great so far, and I mixed some colors to get a kind of peach-orange, and then Eloisa mixed the paint with water so we could have a watercolor texture to add to the opaqueness jellyfish usually have. The paint was kind of lumpy at the top, but eventually we decided that it was ok for the paint to have a little of a rough texture.

(Progress - 4/4, we have a beautiful jellyfish child.)

~

January 18th, 2019... string beans

Today we made the jellyfish's toe beans, and added his little opaque-fursuit thing. Well, it's not supposed to be furry, but it looks furry, so. Also, by toe beans, I mean the little strings that come out of the jellyfish.

Here's the "furry" part because I know a lot of people (including me) are not extremely familiar with the subject of jellyfish anatomy. I figured that people should at least know what jellyfish strings look like though. 

And here's our version of it with the string beans :)

(Progress - 4/4, we have added the string beans and fursuit to our beautiful jellyfish child.)

~

January 25th, 2019... "snacking" Eloisa

I'm not even going to attempt to explain the title. I just learned that the string beans on a jellyfish are called "stingers," and so now I feel bad for calling people out on not knowing jellyfish anatomy when I, too, do not know. We were both pretty out of it today, or at least I was, so we didn't get much done to be honest.

We did add more of some little stingers, and I took the best accidental picture ever.

Here's my best accidental picture ever:

And here's what we've done for the stingers (I accidentally messed up while painting one because the texture was so wonky, so I decided to water the paint down and make it opaque, which ended up looking really cool, so we just went with that.)

The differences between those two box shapes are annoying me. Anyways, we went back and kind of added an outline on the jellyfish since it looks really weird without one. Like, if you ever look at a picture of a jellyfish, you might unconsciously notice that it has a dark outline that kind of brings all of the colors of it together.

Also, might I add that every Friday I wear my paint jacket, which is literally just a jacket that has a whole lot of paint on it. Unfortunately, this brings a lot of sarcastic commentary and attention towards me, which I usually love, but it's become so repetitive. Just let me wear the jacket :(. 

(Progress - 2/4, we barely added anything, and I guess this was kind of a "I will force you to relax" day.)

~

February 1st, 2019... I drink a lot of soda

Hi, here's a little secret: I have actually been putting 2018 instead of 2019 in my blog posts because I refuse to let go of the past. So now, I'm going to pretend that I haven't been doing that, and I'm going to do what I do best. Speak very loudly, even though I'm technically typing very loudly, which is the same in my mind.

I'm really proud of Eloisa and I because, we actually did a lot today.

Here was our project before we did anything to it (ft. my face because I've been putting Eloisa on everything since I obsessively take pictures of anything that moves, and Eloisa has been using my pictures since we're a cool team like that):

Also, Eloisa zoomed in on my face. 

Thank you, Eloisa.

Anyways, that was our painting before we did anything to it, so keep that in mind because what we did sister shaker-ed my Quaker oats.

First we cleaned the palette, and then Hannah, Ava, and Gwendolyn decided to help us out of the goodness of their hearts, of course.

I wasn't able to get a picture of what the palette looked like before we started cleaning it because I'm tired, leave me alone, but. I can 102% say that it was really, really messy. I am, after all, I really, really messy person. Let's go completely off topic and remember the time I spilled orange juice on a carpet a few months ago, and then made it worse by trying to clean it with my sock.

Here's a fun fact about me: you can learn fun facts about me anytime with how often I drift off! Now, you're probably wondering what we did with the dried paint because that's how minds work.

His name is Timothy Abraham Jr. and he is twenty-five, working at a library for the aesthetic of it. He's an absolute disaster, and my fingers look confused about everything that is happening.

Let's get on to the actual painting part now.

We were trying to finish the jellyfish's stingers, but as you might recall from what I said about a few sentences ago, though my rambling covered it up, we cleaned the palette. What does this mean? It means that the color we originally used for the jellyfish stingers were gone. So, I whipped up another batch and made it slightly lighter because gradients look c o o l. Then, Eloisa had the genius idea (that is not sarcasm, it was indeed really genius and I'm very proud of her) to add highlights to the jellyfish and it's furry-part-thing, and it kind of makes contrast, and also, to make it seem like it's in a certain lighting. 

Here's what the painting looked like after we did that:

Our final goal for today was to fix our oopsies (basically, as you can see in this image, there is some gross paint spots on the blue part of the background), to paint the sides blue/pink to add up with the background even if no one's going to notice, and to add more stingers. Again, being the sassy lassie she is, Eloisa was like, "What if we add some background stingers too." Me, being the soda drinker I am, said, "What ok cool."

SiDe

Now here's the grand finale. Keep in mind- why do I keep saying that, anyways let me repeat it again because not doing so makes me uncomfortable- keep in mind that this isn't our final result. We like suffering, so we're going to add stingrays in the sky. But, below this, I'm going to put a "before we started working on it today" photo, and an "after we started working on it and finished everything we planned to do on it today" photo.

You can hear my smugness, but I'm allowed to be proud of us. Also, the change in expression is like, a metaphor, kind of. Even if Eloisa and I are two different people who react to things differently, however are still constantly compared to each other, and agree with the people comparing us.

(Progress - 4/4, we added more stingers, fixed the errors in our paintings (like, spots and stuff), I put parenthesis in something parenthesis-ed (is that a word), and we added highlights to the jellyfish buddy.)

~

February 8th, 2019... the word "because" is in here twenty three times (now twenty four)

I miss Eloisa. Today, she dearly departed from me, as she had to go on a special secret mission, so I'm all alone.

This kitchen's not the same without her. 

We've decided that she would talk about her progress on her bonus painting, and on Thursday she would smuggle me some oil paintings she bought recently so I could test them out today. Unfortunately, Hannah is creepily watching me from my shoulder instead of doing her twenty time project (jk Hannah's a good child). Another unfortunate event is that Eloisa left out her oil paintings, and her sister got to them. What does this mean?

1. RIP Eloisa's brand new oil paintings.

2. Hello Michael's, we need new ones.

3. I wonder what her sister did with them, y i k e s.

Most importantly, it means

4. I had to come up with a new plan for what I'm going to do on Friday.

Now, I know you're probably thinking, "Christabella, why don't you just work on the painting of the jellyfish (that's floating in the sky for some reason) since you guys are almost done with it anyways, so that when Eloisa comes back, you guys can just immediately start a new one." As logical as that sounds, this is a project where Eloisa and I work together to paint (excluding our bonus paintings), and I would never work on our painting without her. Therefore, I'm going to do...

P a i n t i n g  c o n c e p t s .

Like I mentioned in that mini rant where I called myself out, we're literally almost done with our jellyfish painting (yes, we want to add stingrays to it, and yes, it is unnecessary and will end up making us regret it in the long run). This means we got to think of what we should do next.

I have several ideas in mind, because, being the "creative" person I am, I take inspiration from many things. This includes a fake Faberge egg that's actually a toothpick holder that is somehow in my room for unknown reasons. This fake Faberge egg that's actually a toothpick holder has images of Russian buildings on it. Russian buildings are really, really neat.

Just look at those colors, they're like, amazing. Also, I would like to have a border around the painting. Here's what I mean.

There's nothing tape can't do. I'd also like the background to have a gradient (like our jellyfish one, but with the same color scheme this time a.k.a just darker blues)

Mind you, this is a concept sketch, and I will repeat this phrase about ten times throughout this post. Why? Well, it's simply because this concept sketch isn't meant to look good, it's meant to demonstrate what I mean by things like "gradient" or, I don't know, "border." Most obviously, if we paint these things, it'll (hopefully) come out better than my concept sketch.

I'd like the buildings to break the border, like this.

Don't make fun of my buildings, it's a concept sketch-

Lastly, I don't know if you know this, but here's another fun fact because it was bound to happen eventually. I love the movie Ponyo. When I was five, I just had an obsession with, like, ocean things. And then Ponyo came out, and I literally could not let go of that DVD. Believe me, my mom tried, but, did she succeed? So, I'd really like to draw the little fish children from Ponyo surrounding the building

Here are the fish children:

Here's what I mean by, like, "surrounding the building":

In the concept sketch (I told you I would keep saying this word repetitively, didn't I), there's only, like, three of them. In the real painting, there will be probably one hundred if Eloisa doesn't stop me. 

Here's fun fact number, uh, something big, I think: During science, Eloisa and I saw an albino peacock, looked at each other since we have telepathic communication powers, and were like, "we must paint."

So here's just a quick albino peacock appreciation post.

I want to find out how we could maybe incorporate the albino peacock to the building painting idea, since judging from pictures, the color scheme would already work out fine. For this painting, I'd really like to utilize all the mediums we have (oil, acrylic, and watercolor). To make the buildings look (I don't know why, but I just strongly dislike this word) "textured", it would be a good idea to use oil. Especially since the buildings seem to be the main focus of the painting, and we're not very experienced in oil, so this would push us to learn how to use it. For everything else, we could just use acrylics and watercolor, since we do have experience with those two.

So, that's just me getting more ideas towards what our next painting would be since we're basically (almost but not really but kind of) done with painting our jellyfish.

(Progress - 2/4, this was like, a "what should we do next" moment, but once Eloisa comes back, we'll get this show back on the road.)

~

February 15th, 2019... Gary came home

Eloisa came back, and so we actually worked on the painting today. This was our reuniting conversation:

Me: So like, uh, since we're practically done with the painting, do you want to just finish it and move o-

Eloisa: Stingrays

Me: Ok, but,,

Eloisa: S t i n g r a y s 

Not to sound edgy, but for some reason I'm just not in the rambling mood I usually am. Maybe it was the whole wheat bread I ate this morning, or the whole wheat bread I didn't eat, but. I'm just not feeling it, which makes me sad. Anyways, please ignore that and pretend that, like, this entry is going to be the same as all the others, and that this didn't cause the mood to totally change.

Eloisa wanted to paint stingrays in the sky, and that sounded practical to me, so we pulled up two reference pictures and decided where we were going to place them. 

These little buddies were our two reference pictures:

We placed the first one, with its little wings facing up, on the upper left of our painting, covering one of the clouds. The second one was put on the right side of our painting, and Eloisa made it smiling instead of frowning because, wholesome stingray means wholesome painting.

I mixed up three different shades for our stingrays (and all of them contained blue, metallic black, and "bleached titanium", which is basically just a fancy word for "white that has, like, some yellow in it")

Then we got to painting the two stingrays.

Now, I know I always complain about watercolor, but I'm going to be honest, water saved our painting. Adding water to our paint made blending the colors so much easier, and it just. Restored my faith in watercolor, even if the "watercolor" we used was actually just watered down acrylic paint. 

I'm mentioning this because Eloisa and I used this technique multiple times while painting the stingrays, so the three hues I made kind of blend naturally together. Let me tell you, putting two colors that are similar to each other side by side won't do enough for overall image. You, like, have to blend it out.

Here's some images in chronological order of our progress on stingray one.

We sketched the child (and yes, we might've eaten a bit while painting, but don't do that kids, it is a big no no).

We painted the child (first we put a base coat of one color, starting from the outline of the sketch and then going inward)

Then we added in the different hues later and used blending technique I talked about earlier so it didn't look like this:

Eloisa gave him gills and an a smiley face, and we were done with the first stingray.

Eloisa pulled a sister sneak and took a photo our painting through me taking a photo of our painting.

So we moved on to working on this gremlin stingray on the side.

(Also I know the image quality of the second stingray sketch is horrible, please forgive me.)

We didn't finish the second stingray, but we did somewhat almost finish it.

Here's Eloisa painting his little fins. She added some dots on the left side, and used a darker shade for the right fin to show that one fin is in front of the other.

Here's me painting the stingray's stomach (alliteration), and dipping my poor brush in water every five seconds to blend the "fancy word for white that's slightly yellow" with the grays.

Now, here was our final product for today:

We weren't able to finish today, but I can 100% guarantee that by next Friday, we'll be done and ready to start a new one, maybe even using a new medium. I'm sorry I wasn't really in the mood for writing today, and I really hope that next Friday I'll recover from not being able to ramble.

(Progress - 2/4, we managed to finish painting one stingray, however we couldn't finish the other (even though it's practically done, I'm just being over-dramatic), therefore this deserves a 1/2.)

~

February 22nd, 2019... I almost put "22th", hello?

Ok, so I don't know what has been up with me these past few days, but I'm not proud to announce that, the writing block thing is still a thing. On the bright side, and as I pr edicted, we did finish our painting (why am I so proud, we were legit finished last week- also yes, I did search up synonyms of "legit" to sound more professional, but I couldn't and I just gave up, my brain dictionary is small and I'm a child). 

So, it all began with Eloisa putting on her smug "I'm ready, Freddy" smile.

We basically just had to finish coloring in the stingray on the left, and then add our signatures.

So, this is our

finished painting. 

This is honestly such a big moment for us. We've been working on this painting for a while now, and started it on December 14th, 2018. It took us two months to finish, which is honestly a lot longer than I thought it would take. Now that we've finished our first painting, we know more of what to do and what not to do. The best part is, we won't have Hannah asking us every two seconds if we're done with our painting yet. That's a joke, Hannah is great (but she has been doing that, though).

-Don't ever use colors that you mixed together/made for the backgrounds, unless you plan on making a whole lot of it (ok, that might be confusing for people who don't paint, but it basically means colors that we make by using the original colors of the paint provided)

-Adding highlights/shading the picture by adding different tints of the colors will make it pop out more, and it'll make it look real cool.

-When painting with acrylics, adding a little bit of a lot of water to the brush, or putting some water in the color actually helps it blend tremendously. 

-I never clean my brushes and I should do that.

So, we took a picture with our painting because we can. Our dearest pal Gwendolyn took the picture below. 

Oh, and she also took this because Eloisa is just naturally a mood:

I forgot to mention two things.

1. We signed the painting on the side edge instead of on the actual painting, because we both agreed that we worked too hard on the painting. We don't want an "only to have our painting be ruined by our messed up signatures" moment.

2. I have a lot of run on sentences and repetitive wording. We didn't name our painting. We totally forgot to. So next Friday, I'll remind Eloisa that we kind of have to, uh, do that.

If you guys were expecting my writing to be neat, well:

So, we finished the untitled painting. What do we do? Do I bask in the glory while Eloisa tries to remind me that it's not over yet? For like, five minutes, yeah. Then we just test the oil paintings that Eloisa brought. Luckily, her sister didn't get to them this time, so they're in a-okay condition.

Here's a "brief" explanation as to why we only have four colors (if you count white as a color- yes, I'm one of those people):

Red, yellow, and blue are all primary colors. What does this mean, though? It means that from red, yellow, and blue, you can make every other color on the color wheel. 

-Mix them all together because you're a mess = brown

-Mix red/blue = purple

-Mix yellow/blue = green

-Mix yellow/red = orange

So, from the primary colors, we make the secondary colors, purple, green, and orange. From this moment forward, you can use the secondary colors you made to mix with the primary colors, and get intermediate colors as a result (ex: red-orange or blue-green). We also need the white to make the hues lighter, of course.

Here's our test paper. My contribution was writing "CASH MONEY $", laying out some colors on the side, putting paint on my face "accidentally", and observing (can you observe with your nose?) that oil paints smell like fish.

That was an adventure.

(Progress - 4/4, we finally finished our painting and then tested some oil paints :^).)

~

March 1st, 2019... guys, Daniel dabbed (and then Ms. Hefler did but like-)

Today is the iconic day that I, Christabella, got Daniel to dab.

So, we're fresh off from finishing our painting, so we've decided to take a stab at the new, scary medium called "oil paintings." Yes, we did kind of test oil paintings last time, but we didn't really get to actually dedicate our time on learning how to use the medium. Now, I know Eloisa's tried to use oil paintings before, but I have never done so much as touch an oil painting until now.

I tried to blend some red on my fingers with blue to see if I could make it look like blood. Ms. Hefler said I needed to make it kind of lighter around the edges, or something like that. Also, I wasn't able to get a picture, but afterwards, the paint dried extremely lightly on my fingers. I don't know if this happens on paper, though it's a good thing to keep in mind when we're painting. The colors might dry differently than how they were originally presented.

Eloisa got upset at me for this, but I just really wanted to try and see how oil paintings work with different mediums. So, I mixed oil with acrylic, and honestly, I like the texture better than how regular oil paintings are textured. They literally feel and look chalky. Like, incredibly chalky. Since I mixed it with acrylic, I also tried mixing oil with water, and the result was disgusting. Never will I ever, again. Unfortunately, water helps blend with acrylics, but not with oil at all. Funnily enough, Eloisa and I are learning our blending techniques (ex: to make the paint appear more realistic using different tones/shades such as the eye seen on the "sketch" paper) from our mentor, Daria Callie's, videos on YouTube. Here are a few:

BLENDING (My approach to it and tips) || Oil Painting

Oil Painting Tips | Color mixing, mediums, etc

COLOR-MIXING FOR PORTRAIT PAINTINGS || Mixing flesh tones

What are our painting ideas so far, or what we might paint (yes, I did have to clarify the same thing said in a different way, because the first way I said it is confusing). Like I said in one of my previous rants, I would like to paint an albino peacock, and I think oil paintings would be a good medium for that due of the kind of chalky, thick texture.

Eloisa and I are planning to message our mentor either this weekend or next Friday, so I'll make an update on how that goes LasT sUmMer next week. 

(Progress - 2/4, we're learning more on how to use oil paintings due to our lack of experience.)

~

March 8th, 2019... why can I still not write,,

Ok, I procrastinated this one, extremely. Here's the funny thing, I asked Eloisa about emailing our mentor, she was like, "yeah we should." But did we? Nope, we, uh, might've forgotten to. There's always next time though.

So, since we're kind of in this weird rut about "what are we going to do today, Ferb" due to our lack of experience in oil painting- or my, because Eloisa practiced oil painting and it looks better than anything I'll ever do. This is why we decided to practice drawing peacocks, and this isn't random, it's actually from the painting idea thing I did a while back when Eloisa left me. But we don't talk about that time. She has never ever left me since. Kind of. Oh, we also decided to do it because someone forgot to bring their oil paintings, but once again, we don't talk about that-

This is, like, extremely hard to see. So here we have, um, something on the upper left hand corner that you should ignore (why did I say "left hand", is that even the right way to say it), and something on the lower right hand corner that is unfortunately not as prominent as the other drawing. That is the one you were supposed to be able to see though. Here, I want to quickly trace it, but I have a lot of other assignments to do because I am actually the ultimate procrastinator. 

So, due to my laziness, here's a close up. I learned that drawing peacock feathers is extremely hard. I also learned that I'm going to repeat my phrase from a few decades ago, and say, this is a "ConCePt sKetCh pls don't judge me x d."

Now, here's the better side (aHEM, ELOISA'S). 

Then in English, I used our acrylics since someone forgot to bring their oil paintings. I really, really, really like the way peacock feathers look on the insides. Like, ok, that sounds weird, and gross. Let me just explain.

Like, this part of the feather. So I used the acrylics to try and do something like that and test out how it would blend. It didn't work out great, but Eloisa says she thinks if we used oil, it would come out a lot better. That and we don't have green acrylic paint, so I had to get

c r e a t i v e .

It would work a lot better with oil paintings since they're textured, and also, this was supposed to be smaller. This is like, fifty minutes of Christabella making excuses.

See, ignore the fact that I didn't use the right color scheme at all, our peacock is going to be unique, and see how much better it looks when it's smaller.

Here's me circling it.

Like I've been saying, for some really strange reason I've been having a "writer's block" moment, and it's scaring me, since I usually ramble a lot, like right now.

(Progress - 2/4, so we still haven't contacted our mentor (I think), but we're preparing for our next painting so that's a start).

~

March 15th, 2019... my life is a Netflix movie at a 58% rate on Rotten Tomatoes

I would elaborate more on that, but we have important matters to get to, and I actually don't have Netflix (sad moment cry for me). For the first time, Eloisa and I did not work on our twenty time.

Ok, don't get mad at us. We absolutely love twenty time. We breathe twenty time. Unfortunately though, one of our fellow crutchler children, my amazing friend and companion who I will not name for privacy reasons, got hurt. She is part of another project Eloisa and I are doing together (because we do everything together, obviously, we even meditate and talk about our eczema together). So we decided today we had to use our energy to focus on that project since it's due soon, and also because we have to change things up at the sudden, uh, oof is what you can call it.

So you don't get mad, I've decided I'll share a picture that I forgot to show, which is of me posing next to Ms. Hefler's birthday hat, taken by the infamous Eloisa (jk I love you Eloisa) on March 1st, 2019.

This was before I got my haircut, and let me tell you. That haircut gave a whole transformation.

Like, it was so quick.

I mean, in history we talked about our painting. We do know what we're going to do. We have it all planned out. Can we pull it off in such a short amount of time? Who knows. Another thing we talked about, and this is kind of- ok, extremely embarrassing (at least to me i"m sEnSiTiVE)- is that originally we planned to make, like a bijillion paintings. We've learned from experience how hard it is to actually finish a painting, though.

THREE MONTHS

Ok, to be fair, that's only about 2.7 hours each week in three months, with the first few weeks being us preparing for what we're going to do. We started painting on December 14th, 2018, and finished on February 22nd, 2019 (oh my god it's been that long holy-). Also yes, I scrolled all the way up and I regret it from the memories it brings. Ok, so spring break- oh my god, I am tired- I mean w i n t e r break means that there was, like, three Fridays of not painting, plus one because Eloisa went to Kansas to milk chickens or something. So, that's like, four Fridays we didn't paint in between those weeks. 

So if I'm counting right, that's only, like, seven days. Seven days and each day we work about 2.7 hours. In total, that's like 18.9 hours. That's not even a full day. That's like, a little bit over 6/8ths of a day, so I think we did good. I probably didn't do that math right. I'm pretty tired right now.

We'll work on twenty time next time, that's a promise. I'll go into more details about it next time, but for now. We had to take a break, I guess.

(Progress - oh my god, we keep forgetting to contact our mentor and I really need to remind Eloisa about that/4)

~

March 22th, 2019... I had something to name this but I forgot it

So, what's funny is, we probably got more done "today" then we ever got done these past few days. The reason it's funny is because I'm writing this at 11:23 pm on Sunday, and if that isn't procrastination, then. You see, I could say that I had a lot of work to do over the weekend. I actually did have an immense amount of work. But, did I do it?

Anyways, we finally contacted our mentor. Right, after about six long hours of me repeating to myself to contact our mentor, two days of forgetting after the six long hours, and five days of remorse because of those two days I forgot about the six long hours- I need a breather after that one- we have contacted our mentor. 

"wE'Ll GeT baCk To YOu iN TwO MonThs" - Chloisa Cuenaventure (which is just an inside joke of Eloisa and I combining our names thinking we're clever).

Here was our message to our mentor, which I wrote while eating dino nuggets that I convinced my mom to buy because they were on sale at Costco:

Dear Daria Callie,

We apologize for our absence, though we have made progress on our painting. We are currently working on an oil painting, and have finished the acrylic/watercolor painting. We know this is not the medium you specialize in, however, we would like your input/opinion on our painting.

We are both inexperienced with oil paintings, and want to paint a peacock. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Images of our acrylic/watercolor painting and oil painting practice will be provided below. Once again, we would like to thank you for your time.

Sincerely,

Eloisa B. and Christabella C.

The oil painting practice is all Eloisa because, do you really think I could do that?? I definitely know that is not going to happen anytime soon.

So after writing the email, we practiced oil paintings again, but unlike the other times, I took it pretty seriously- or as seriously as someone like me can.

I realized how much easier it is to blend with oil paintings. Dare I saw, behind the horrible, chalky texture when you touch it and the putrid fish-like smell, oil paintings are starting to become my favorite thing. Once again, does it mean I'm good at them? Absolutely not. Eloisa is literally a professional, but unfortunately I don't have much talent when it comes to painting. I'll get there, maybe. But by there, I don't mean on Eloisa's level, I mean on a decent scale. Eloisa's level is, like, too much for me. That would take me years.

So, we mostly did eyes. I did the mediocre one that kind of looks like it has jaundice. Writing that made me realize I can't spell mediocre or jaundice without the help of autocorrect.

Eloisa and I have different painting styles, but oil paintings make it show much more prominently. Eloisa's is pretty neat, and mine's is, uh, interesting. It'll get better. Probably?

White, blue, red, yellow, a kind of brown I'm going to assume. These are all the colors I've used. I believe Eloisa has more colors at home, but I'm not 100% sure on that. Just for clarification, though it looks like it says "WOW", it actually says "MOM". Do I put the " after the period or before it? We'll just do a before, either way it's going to annoy me.

I would put a picture of the paints, but I'm very tired and still have more work to do. I'm glad to say that this is the first time, though I'm kind of sleep-deprived, that I actually felt like writing in weeks. Like, I don't know what kind of bug spread to me, but the past few weeks, I just didn't feel like my usual, rambling self. Now, I finally feel like I'm not forcing myself to write, like, I feel normal again. Ok, that was like really weird and scary, and it sounded like a CeraVe ad. I only use Carmex and Cortizone 10- and Aquaphor, ok why am I naming my eczema creams- so that's not territory I want to cross.

(Progress - 3/4, we finally contacted our mentor and I got a real oil painting experience (kind of)).

~

March 29th, 2019... from 58% rate Netflix movie to paragraph long run-on sentence

This is the most I've ever postponed writing in my blog. I probably wouldn't have done it until next-next Friday, but the guilt aching in my gut for my procrastinating tendencies has been overwhelmingly engulfing my mind, almost as much as "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" (thank you, Ms. Hefler). It is now Tuesday. I have nothing else to do, because I'm a lonely person, so I've decided I can no longer ignore the fact that I have not written anything in here yet.

I've looked at some of my old blog posts to pass time and procrastinate on writing this even more, and boy am I scared. I've changed in a weird way where, it's actually completely normal but I'm viewing it as weird because I absolutely h a t e change. So, I'm just going to pretend that this paragraph never happened. I don't need to face the reality that I'm changing slowly, yet.

Here's to the topic at hand: we started our oil painting.

Here's what I realized: I cannot do oil painting and unfortunately Eloisa is stuck with me for the majority of doing this painting because I'm stubborn and will insist that I can totally do this even though it looks absolutely horrible before I even pick up the brush.

I need to stay on topic, but breaks from school for me are kind of horrible due to the fact that I have time to think about my life. Not something I would prefer to do. So our painting is on a peacock. 

Here's the sketched head. 

Uhh. I wish I could explain this?

Process of painting the beak (which Eloisa painted because I suck). I should probably ask her how she does that since I'm so disgustingly bad at picking out colors (and this is not self-deprecation, I 100% am the first person to say I'm right, or I'm great, so we really know how bad I am at painting if I push it to this point). But once again, I am too stubborn to admit I'm doing something wrong, or to ask her. I feel like I'm disappointing her though.

When did this blog become a vent. This is why I can't go on breaks, this cannot become a vent we need to stay focused.

So while she added the beak, I added a base coat to the feathers. I just mixed the blue and yellow until I got what kind of looked like a green.

So here's Eloisa's amazing beak and, uh, my base coat for the feathers.

I started adding details to the base coat but it still looks funny.

Let's end this on a happy note and hope I learn not to rant and just get better at painting instead.

(Progress - 4/4, we started the peacock oil painting).

~

April 12th, 2019... my natural instinct is telling me to talk about buckets

Hi guys, guess what. I'm going to stop being emo and start trying to improve instead of complaining about it. That sounds so sarcastic, but I'm being very, very serious. 

ALSO OUR MENTOR RESPONDeD To BOTH oF OUR EMAILS IWTH A SMILEY FAce LIKE TWO TImES LeT mE puT THEM HERE AKSKSKKSKS,,

BASICALLY WE SENT HER THIS:

EXCUSE MY POOR GRAMMAR AND LIKE ACTUAL PERSONALITY COMING ThROUGh BUT I"M STILL IN SHOCK THAT SHE'S OUR MENTOR

AHHHH THERE'S MOREEEEE

U M

:)

:)

:)

So, what did we do today? Uh, basically we just like worked on painting the peacock's head, and Eloisa helped me understand more of how to find out which colors to blend for what. I told her about, like, being iNsEcUre about being less experienced and ruining the whole thing and stuff, so she's helping me not do that, and also get better.

As you can see, I didn't update the base coat of the feather region, but I have a reason.

That's because I was doing t h i s. That's right, I'm still amazingly productive, totally. I was asking Eloisa, "do I have to add this much detail to each feather individually?" 

We both know the answer is yes.

Basically what I have to do to make each individual feather is start with that basic corn shape using green paint (which takes forever to mix because we have yellow/blue paint, not a generic green base- note: next time bring your palette, as in mine, not yours). Then I take some blue and put it as a skinny semi-triangle in the middle. After that, we get real detailed and add a highlight to the r i g h t of the individual feather using white paint, and a reddish-brown that has a name I forgot to the l e f t of the individual feather. I confuse lefts and rights so I need to remember that.

(Progress - 4/4, mentor responded (!!!) and we also made further progress on peacock painting).

~

April 20th, 2019... I drank too much soda and we're going to test next week and I

Yeah ok, the title could use some work but I'm like really not striving, at all. Testing is in like, how much days? I know nothing. Absolutely n o t h i n g. That is not relevant to our project though.

ᴵ'ᵐ ˢᵘᵖᵉʳ ᵗᶦʳᵉᵈ ᵃⁿᵈ ᴵ ᵈᵒⁿ'ᵗ ʷᵃⁿᵗ ᵗᵒ ʷʳᶦᵗᵉ ᵗʰᶦˢ ᵇᵉᶜᵃᵘˢᵉ ᴵ ˢʰᵒᵘˡᵈ ᵇᵉ ᵖʳᵃᶜᵗᶦᶜᶦⁿᵍ ᶠᵒʳ ᵗᵉˢᵗᶦⁿᵍ ᵇᵘᵗ ᶦᶠ ᴵ ᵏᵉᵉᵖ ᵖʳᵃᶜᵗᶦᶜᶦⁿᵍ ᶠᵒʳ ᵗᵉˢᵗᶦⁿᵍ ᵗʰᵃⁿ ᶦᵗ'ˡˡ ᵇᵉ ᵈʳᶦˡˡᵉᵈ ᶦⁿ ᵐʸ ʰᵉᵃᵈ ᵇᵘᵗ ᴵ ᵏᵉᵉᵖ ˢᵃʸᶦⁿᵍ ᴵ'ˡˡ ᵈᵒ ᶦᵗ ᵃⁿᵈ ᴵ ʰᵃᵛᵉⁿ'ᵗ ᵈᵒⁿᵉ ᶦᵗ ʸᵉᵗ ᵃⁿᵈ ᴵ ˢʰᵒᵘˡᵈ'ᵛᵉ ᵇᵉᶜᵃᵘˢᵉ ᴵ'ᵛᵉ ʰᵃᵈ ˡᶦᵏᵉ ᶠᶦᶠᵗʸ ᵇᶦˡˡᶦᵒⁿ ᵈᵃʸˢ ᵇᵘᵗ ʰᵉʳᵉ ʷᵉ ᵃʳᵉ ˡᵃˢᵗ ᵐᶦⁿᵘᵗᵉ ˢᵗᵘᵈʸᶦⁿᵍ ᵇᵉᶜᵃᵘˢᵉ ᴵ ᵈᵒⁿ'ᵗ ʰᵃᵛᵉ ˢᵉˡᶠ ᶜᵒⁿᵗʳᵒˡ.

Eloisa decided to make the head kind of like, uh. A different color scheme. She basically thought there was too much warm tones (ex: red/yellow underlines) and wanted to make it more on the cool side of the color wheel (ex: blue/purple). I personally think the contrasting of it would be cool (ahahashsh get it-) because we're using blues/greens for the spotted parts, so if the other tones are warm it like, pops out?

I'm also kind of doing a bonus painting (maybe). I don't want to label it a bonus painting though. That puts more pressure on, like, the result of it. 

I started adding details on the layered mini feathers of the peacock. Don't get mad at me but, I did use my fingers instead of a brush, which is why it looks horribly sloppy. Eloisa tried to make me feel better and was like, "...Uh, it gives it a, natural texture," but I know that she was secretly fuming because my fingers are n o t supposed to be acting as a brush.

Off topic, but I have to quickly add this. Mrs. Hefler (our teacher) was telling us that one of her pet peeves is when people say "I literally _____", and I literally say "I literally" all the time. I have to come clean, it doesn't feel right not to-

The yikes feathers

The good content you were waiting for

Eloisa actually working, but also I just noticed something under the desk and I'm scared-

If you know what it is, please, uh, tell me?

(Progress - 3/4, I'm sad because the members in this band I listen to called Her's passed away, but relevant to the project, we have made more progress on the peacock).

~

April 26th, 2019... I'm the one with eyebrows
How do they expect me to print,, f o u r,, pages for baccalaureate? Ink is, like, super expensive?? And my mom hogs it all??? Um. 

Ok so "today" (because I'm writing this on April 26th most definitely), I had a mental breakdown. I think. Yeah, and then I decided to redo the whole feathers because I thought they weren't good enough. Eloisa was probably like, "emo" or something. 

So, I finally got my palette, so I was able to put a definite/another base coat. YEs, I'm going to regret this-

Anyways, Eloisa's kind of (a nice word for dumb-ish) because she thinks her painting color scheme is bad. It's not, like, at all. We added some blue to the peacock since it's supposed to be multicolored. It's really fun to make the spots/feathering because the brush is already textured, so all you have to do is "strategically" press down the beautiful color that is blue.

Ms. Hefler also has a weird obsession with the song "The Lion Sleeps Tonight", and Eloisa is having trouble coping with this. I asked Eloisa to tell me a little bit about it so I can put an excerpt for her, but I pronounced it as "expert" and I just. 

"the lion sleeps tonight like the lions sleep tonight and it makes me moist," claims Eloisa of the Captain America organization, a very reliable source. 

So basically all we did was add various shades of white to make what Eloisa calls the "emo" peacock. Then we just did the same things with the blues, plus the texturing thing I explained.

(Progress - 4/4, we have added a blue "zig zag" design to our peacock as well as some nice little specs).

~

May 3rd, 2019... "is celery a fruit"- Ms. Hefler
HHHHHHhhhHHhHHHHHHHHHhhhhHHHHHhhhhhhhHHHHHHHHHhhhhHhhHHh

Here's.

The frIENDLY LETTER.

T.

This is the last reflection (I think). 

Am I going to go all out? Quite the opposite. I am very tired. I just want to go home and eat some fruity pebbles, even though I've actually never tried any type of cereal other than Kix. 



These were really good. Oh, and Special K because like, my mom's a health nut.

Eloisa and I focused on reflections today since, we're not necessarily behind, but we both like to complain. A lot. Complaining a lot requires a lot of time to complain. 

I added outlines to the feathering, though they're still very dark so you can't really see them. Then I added speckle things to the peacock and Eloisa made more of a zig zag with the blue. We still need to email our mentor. I told her these exact words: "We will update you weekly if we can." It has been,,,

Two weeks.

I also practiced shading/gradients on my knee, and then faded it out. Ms. Hefler says that I should, like, show it. It honestly looks like a big finger.

So, I guess I'm kind of sad that this is ending so soon, but Eloisa and I will be working on it during summer.

And maybe we'll keep it, or sell it (probably n o t), or give it to Ms. Hefler, or, uh.

Imagine seeing this in your room at night. Helen proposed this wonderful idea to me, and I thought, yum.

(Progress - 3/4, we mainly worked on, like, the zig zag blue part and the speckles, but we still have to email our mentor).