Art of Apex High School: Student Spotlight: Claire

Sticky Situation

Repetition

For the theme “sticky situation”, I first thought of things that are sticky, such as honey, syrup, glue, gum, etc. Then I went on a tangent about hard, difficult, or “sticky” situations such as the Great Molasses Disaster, or a car stuck in the mud. I decided the composition would look better if there were multiple little things rather than try to make repetition in a situation. So I went with a still life.

I liked the gum stuck to a shoe idea, but repetition would be hard to incorporate, and gum packets and honey seemed too original so I went with maple syrup. The media I used was acrylic which worked really well for the syrup colors. I could mix the colors to match my references, and the colors also blended well, allowing me to show the highlights and lowlights in the syrup. The paint also dried relatively quickly so I could put a layer of paint on and move to the highlights all in one day. I also got to use the matte medium which allowed me to thin the paint a little, and help make the shadows more bendable.

I really liked using this media, even though it was a risk I took in the project. It was hard to work with, and blend, but it made the different colors of the syrup a challenge. To incorporate repetition I did a still life with multiple bottles (3) each had a different shape and darkness which made it interesting, but they were all maple syrup bottles, creating repetition. The mini lessons also helped a lot during this project, because I learned how to add highlights and low lights without just adding white or black to the paint.

I learned to add colors that are opposite on the color wheel to darken, and add a yellow, or lighter shade of a color to highlight. The bottle painting on the black paper help to teach me how to use the white as a high light, and the watercolor lesson helped with layering and incorporating in other colors.