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jayden johnson
Final Projects 2022-2023
inquiry: the connection between a woman and earth
"Washed Away"
Idea: My thesis is "anxiety and the toll it takes on you as you grow up." Every person with anxiety has somewhere or something that can completely calm them. Where all worries disappear. For me, that place is the ocean. The ocean is the only place for me that can make all of my worries disappear. In this piece, the surfboards represent all of my anxieties about to be hidden from underneath the oncoming wave. Whenever I am upset, even if I don't go in the water I go to the beach and hear the waves crash over and over again to the same familiar pattern. giving me a sense of normalcy. Whenever I dive under a wave, it crashes over my head and makes everything just go quiet. There is something so calming about the waves crashing over your head and the peaceful silence when submerging your entire body under the salty water. There is no other place that I have found that can completely clear my head.
Materials: In the theme of stepping out of my comfort zone, I decided to mostly use acrylic paint and palette knives. I used a few paintbrushes as well. I wanted to use palette knives because they helped spread the paint across the canvas as well as create a texture for the waves. The white paint I used was thicker so that I could more easily create a texture with the whitewash.
Process: Originally, I didn't exactly know what I wanted to create. I knew that I wanted to step out of my comfort zone and use materials and techniques that I'd never tried before or been avoiding. I started painting a sunset but quickly realized that I didn't really connect with it. I painted over it in white and decided to research more before going back to the piece. I wanted to create a piece that instilled realism but still showed a bit of abstraction. I also wanted t create something with a large amount of dark and light contrast.
Height: 12in
Width: 9in
"Floating"
Idea: My thought was to show the peaceful, calm side of the ocean. When you think of jellyfish, they come off as relaxed and tranquil. They have a calming demeanor to them.
Materials: I used a pencil, technical pens, alcohol markers, and colored pencils.
Process: I originally started with only pencil and ink for this piece and there was one jellyfish. Then my art teacher told me that I should try to add color to the piece which scared me because I was worried that it would ruin the piece. When I began adding, color I was worried because I thought it looked better before without the color. But then when I added the water in the background, it made the piece more interesting and added depth to it.
Height: 12in
Width: 9in
"Falling Through"
Idea: My idea was to create a piece that projected what it feels like to have test anxiety and sort of show the how it feels to be stuck in a room for a long time when you're longing for something else. The melting clocks sort of symbolize the idea of time consistently passing by until it sort of fades away into nothing; boredom. I wanted to use reds for the room itself because the color red is known to be associated with negative feelings and I wanted the given room to sort of have that feeling when looking at it, then the only thing that's blue is the doorframe. I did this to try to depict it as the only way out and blues are usually associated with more peaceful thoughts, more specifically, the ocean.
Materials: technical pens and colored pencil.
Process: At first, I had a checkered floor and a desk in the middle. I was going to have one clock on the wall and a door. Then I was messing around on a plane ride and tried this squiggly design and decided to run with it, erasing the entire original floor and replacing it with what there is now, to give the illusion that the floor is falling. From there, I decided to add more clock, making them more and more disfigured as they go down the wall and I decided to add more linework to the wall between the clocks to add more dimension. When it came to colors, I wanted to use red for the walls because it is associated with negative emotions. I used blue for the door because blue is a color that is associated with relaxation and calming, showing that that is the only way out.
Height: 12in
Width: 9in
"Title"
Idea: I wanted to create an almost abstract ocean piece so that I could leave the interpretation to the viewer of the piece.
Materials: acrylic paint
Process: I originally began with wanting to create a sunset piece but I was getting kind of frustrated with it so I decided to start from the beginning so I painted white all over it and decided to paint something that resonated with me more.
Height: 12in
Width: 9in
"Title"
Idea: I wanted to depict the connection between a woman and nature and I thought that a good way to do that was drawing a mountain that has the outline of a woman. I got inspiration from when I was in a trip in Hawaii, I was looking at the mountains and one picture I took looked eerily like the silhouette of a woman so I decided that I wanted to recreate that image in a way that personally connected to me a little bit more than the original image so I added the element of the ocean and a sunset above the mountains.
Materials: colored pencil
Process: At the beginning of this piece I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do exactly with it, I just knew what I wanted to depict. It began with a hill in the front corner and a palm tree on the right and I was going to add some sort of mountain scape in the back but I wasn't really connecting with it. I let the piece be and while I was on my trip to Hawaii, I got more inspiration and practically started from scratch. Since then, it has been a little difficult for me to finish the piece, as I have been worried that I am going to ruin it by adding more to it.
Height: 12in
Width: 9in
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