Coil, Slab, & Freehand

Kokopelli

I made this out of coils for my dad. I put the Kokopelli on it because he used to live in Tucson Arizona and the Kokopelli is on EVERYTHING- plus I like how it looks. The Kokopelli presides over childbirth and agriculture; he is also a god of trickery and represents the spirit of music. This vase now sits in the “man cave” of my parent’s house.

Vitruvian Man

Over the past couple years of my life I have been inspired by the work of Leonardo Da Vinci, his paintings, inventions and ways of thinking are absolutely fascinating. I also found my love for Da Vinci in my favorite novel, The Da Vinci Code. The Vitruvian Man has so much meaning behind it as I absolutely love it. This vase is a slab project I did in my pottery class in high school.

Splatter bowl

This is a coil project, where I turned the coils and had the ends showing to give the effect of circles on the outer edge, and then I smoothed the inside out. I painted it all a solid color and then to tie the outside and inside of the bowl together I splattered the blue spot on the surface.

 

Shapes

I happen to be a pretty random person, so when I had to do another slab project I made this “bowl” out of various shapes, and colors adding lots of texture and variety. The only part of this bowl that I do not care for are the colors… this is not one of my favorites.

Luna

One of our class projects was to create a head. As I started sculpting and forming the facial features of Luna, I was envisioning a creature from space. A person who was out of the ordinary and had stars on her skin. I then started forming her hair and gave her beautiful thick hair pulled off to the side with her antennas (which were made from wire).

Elements

Fire. Earth. Air. Water. Everything that keeps our world going around. This is the wall mask I created, I took the four elements and had them form a pin-wheel and they go around the surface of the mask. This mask used to hang on the wall in my room.  The concept of this mask was inspired by the novel "Angels and Demons".







FERNS
I also made a collection of three vases of different heights. This was a coil project, that I then painted a fern branch on each of them. These vases stay at my house in our kitchen.

COLOR PAINT & CHALK

Then came my greatest revolution in my art career. Which is the concept of multi-media, which is using different mediums.

“The Ranger Tower”

This is my favorite place in the entire world; The Ranger Tower is up at my cabin on Big Sandy Lake. The 300 step trek up to the sky is an adrenaline rush like non other; only to have it topped off by a view of the lake. The picture of the Ranger Tower, done in colored pencil, was taken one weekend when I was in 8^th grade and had one of my friends from high school up to the cabin. The tree line across the bottom and middle are from a picture I took from the top of the Ranger Tower looking out across the water, this was done with tempera paint, and did the sunset with chalk. The sunset was a picture I had taken during a boat ride across the lake.

“Wild World”

“Oh baby, baby it’s a wild world

It’s hard to get by just upon a smile

Oh baby, baby it’s a wild world

And I will always remember you like a child, girl”

-Cat Stevens

I grew up listening to Wild World. Dancing around like a little kid wearing my leotard. Everything was so carefree and innocent. Wild World is the song of my life and has always been my song. This song just seems to fit my life especially now that I have moved out and am living in the dorms. I am always going to be my parents little girl. Now at some point I know my dad will probably be going through my blog here and reading what I have to say... and I’m just sayin’ I want this to be my father daughter dance at some point in the future…yupyup.

I did this drawing for my dad for father’s day my junior year of high school. I did colored pencil trees and skyline, with graphite rocks along the bottom, and then I wanted a very odd color in the background that also tied everything together so I decided on the lovely green color.

“Shock”

This is one of my favorite multi-medias from high school. The image of the rock reminded me of   my favorite childhood movie The Lion King’s Pride Rock, in the middle of an epic thunderstorm with huge clouds of black and shades of purple. I also found this silhouette of the little umbrella girl that I thought would add the perfect touch to complete my piece.  I absolutely love the colors and contrast.

“Shining Bright”

“To be a star,

You must shine your own light,

Follow your own path,

And don’t worry about the darkness

For that is when the stars shine brightest”

I love that quote. And I love the stars, I remember some of the best times over the summer were going camping, with my best friends Amanda, and going to the parking lot right next to the camper and laying right in the middle just staring up at the stars. My best friends and I had also taken an Earth and Space class together so we were familiar with a bunch of the constellations. Growing up my family also spent a lot of time star gazing.

Black and White

After Art One I was in Art Two. Art two focused on other ways to look at your art, our first project we were given to was to find the picture of someone’s face, someone who we found interesting. I decided on a picture I had found of a little girl from India. I loved the rich textures and colors of her dress, the look of her hair, and even the lock in her nose. In art one we had learned how to use graphite pencils, for art two we were given black paper and white pencils, white colored pencil, and white chalk. After I finished drawing the little girl I wanted to bring back one of the colors found in her dress which I mimicked in the background with colored chalk.

h2o is How I Paint

In addition to all of my different art I have done in school through my art classes I have also done different painting in my free time. I have to say painting is one of my most favorite mediums for doing art, at home and up at my cabin I enjoy using acrylics. I love the richness of the color and how it dries.

“On the Rocks”

This is more of an abstract painting that has three different layers to it. The top layer is a sunset; the middle layer is some water with melds into the bottom layer which are rocks that are being splashed on by the waves. I love the how the colors stand out here. This painting was inspired by different photographs of Lake Superior. Summer after my 8^th grade year I was able to have the opportunity to go kayaking in the Apostle Islands for ten days. I spent a lot of time on Lake Superior, and I loved it. This adventure helped me find out more about my strength, determination and conquering my fears. This journey was not easy but it was so worth it. Now here at the College of St. Scholastica I can look out my window and have a view of Lake Superior and I can normally hear when ships are coming in and out of the canal which I think is pretty neat.

“Shadowed Waters”

I did this painting with a sun higher in the sky, but all the other colors around it in the sky and in the water are very dark and love the shadow that is starting to creep in from the side.

“On the Dock in the Bay”

This painting is based on a photo taken by my mom up at my cabin. It is of my sister Savanna and my cousin Ellie, during that summer they were the best of friends and had some of the greatest times just being silly kids. When I came up with the idea for doing this painting I was so excited to get going because I didn’t want to lose my ideas. However, I did not have a paint brush… so I ended up using a shish-ka-bob stick (a very longggg tooth-pick looking dealio). Which worked out pretty well (:








Stars in the Night
I also did a second painting with the shish-ka-bob sticks, it was of the night sky (: growing up I remember countless nights of going outside just to look at the stars. I just recently got my first tattoo of a dragonfly, and I think my next tattoo is going to be a collection of 9 stars on my foot, 5 representing my family, 3 for my best friends, and one for everyone else important in my life.

{image coming soon}

Just a little Color helps the World go Around

Today I am going to do two different sets of blog posts (: . The one I am going to be doing right now is on the next step of my Art One class from high school. After working with graphite we were given the grand opportunity to enter the world of colored pencil, which changed my whole perspective on art- because I loooovvee color. Naturally, I was pretty excited about being able to work on these next couple pieces.

“A Mother’s Love”

This is one of my all-time favorite pieces, I love the colors and the detail, and how everything came together. The image source for this drawing came from a post card I got from Save the Children. Most years I help out with this program by crocheting hats for premature babies like the one in this picture. In the past I have made hundreds of hats, this project is something I have done with My Great-Grandma, and My Aunt Margo.

“Sign of Peace”

This was my next colored pencil drawing I decided to do, I really like the concept behind it of people coming together to create peace. That is a pretty good message for most people to follow. The background is done with white chalk.

Shades of Grey

After yesterday’s blog posts about my beginning adventures with graphite I wanted to show and talk about my first pieces I had full control of, as far as my style, image source, and ideas… with some very helpful tips from my art teacher.

“HOPE”

The first piece is a mostly graphite drawing and then I added in some blue chalk where the river is. I added the blue in among the grey’s of the garbage to show that even in bad situations you can always find hope among the ruble. I found this image in a magazine I was given at a Peace Jam Conference- at Peace Jam I was able to meet with Nobel Peace Prize Laurette Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who I was able to talk about my work of art therapy through our local visitation center in Duluth.

“NOTHING ON EARTH COULD COME BETWEEN THEM”

 My favorite movie of allll time is Titanic, it has been since it first came out, and it is the love of my life. {IT COMES OUT IN 3D ON APRIL 6TH!!} So, with all of this love, why wouldn’t I draw an image from it? One of my biggest struggles with this drawing were their hands, and Jack’s face… which is where Mr. Harder was of great assistance. I remember when I was working on this I had art class right before lunch, and I was so into it that I missed lunch for many days because I just wanted to keep pluggin’ along.

The Elephant

The last of the three graphite exercises were created with just graphite powder and blending stumps, it was reallllllly messy, but I thought it was a really cool technique to learn. It is amazing how much texture you can add by crumpling toilet paper, paper towels, and printer paper.

The Sunglasses Guy

After learning how to use a graphite pencil correctly (which came very naturally for me), I got to move into the magic of blending stumps. I had a lot of fun working on the Sunglasses Guy, and ironically it kind of looks like my Padre when he was younger.... hmmm :P

The Barn

Sophomore year of high school was one of my favorite art courses ever, with my favorite art teacher Mr. Harder. In this class we started off by learning how to do preliminaries, transfer, and use a graphite pencil to create an art piece. Our focus was on “The Barn” .

Victoria Anne Johnson

Hi,

My name is Victoria and I have been doing art all of my life and I love it. I started off my art career with blue plaint on my highchair that i would just move around covering the white surface- it was also when I determined the beauty of body paint... Now, I am at a more of an advanced state, and I would like to share some of my favorite pieces I have done over the past couple years. I would also like to share some of my future ones to come. I am pretty pumped about this, so hope you enjoy (:

Peace and Love,
Victoria