Wagenveld,+Grace

"One"
 * Q2 PAINTINGS:

//"At this moment there are 6,470,818,671 people in the world. Some are running scared. Some are coming home. Some tell lies to make it through the day. Others are just now facing the truth. Some are evil men, at war with good. And some are good, struggling with evil. Six billion people in the world, six billion souls. And sometimes... all you need is one."// **

This quote is from on of my favorite TV shows One Tree Hill. In this show there is a character I can relate to a lot. This character is Peyton. A lot of the art work I do comes from some type of inspiration she gave me. The reason I started getting into doing paintings of traffic lights is because she did drawings of them. I loved the different perspective I got by painting them, then when I usually just look at them in the street. The quote that was just said is one of Peyton's quotes. It's one of my favorite quotes because I believe it to be true. It doesn't mean that that "one" has to be a boyfriend or girlfriend. That "one" could be your sister, your best friend, or just a family member, even a random person. I realized I wanted to do this because lately I have been looking over the past years in high school and I've realized that I have had so many different people help me through these years, and if it weren't for them I don't think I would have made it as smoothly as I have. As a lot of people know I love to use black. I decided that I wanted to make an emphasis on the number so I decided that the number would be in black. To give it a sharp background i wanted to put a solid color. Even though this quote is uplifting and i guess positive, I felt like it could also be looked at negatively. A lot of people don't have someone there for them. Red seemed to be the appropriate color to fit it. The quote goes around the pictures boarder in white. It's vague but you are able to see it up close.


 * "1.4.3."**

My sister wanted me to do a painting for her. I have put it off for a long time because I always knew I wanted to do something that would mean a lot to her. I decided that for christmas I would make her something. We once saw in a movie that one of the millions of ways to say I love you is 1.4.3. 1- stands for 1 letter - I. 4- 4 letters - Love. 3 - 3 letter - You. 1.4.3. Every time we leave in the morning or if we just want to say it we say 1.4.3. Singing has always been something she loves and I knew somehow I would have to incorporate that into the painting. Bears are pretty much her theme. Soccer is something we both share so I felt like it would kind of connect me to her in the painting. While sketching out how I was going to do the painting I found this asian artist who did paintings of baby animals for little children. That's where I got the idea for the bear. I knew how i was going to do the soccer ball and music notes. My friend Shannel gave me the idea for the checkered background. THat is when I decided how to do the numbers and put everything together.


 * Q1 PAINTINGS:**

I was born in Honduras. That is a country in Central America. I'm not your ordinary kid that was born in a hospital and grew up in a nice home with a pretty white fence and all. No, I was born literally on the streets of Tegucigalpa and raised in a couple of places. About 16 years ago when my adoptive parents went to Honduras to get me they took photos of where it was said I was born. In one of the photos there is a school. This is that school. The paintings I do all connect to me in some way. This painting is kind of vague and plain. It's simple with its colors and with how its done. However, there is a lot more to it than can be seen. One of the places that I would call home is school. For me school is where I'm the safest. This represents not only where I was born and where I came from, but also where i feel safe and the one place that I can truly call home. The way I did this painting was I took the picture that my parents took and put it on the computer. Since black has become my signature for paintings I decided I needed to figure a way to make this painting have a lot of black in it. I put the picture into iPhoto and made it black and white. From there I sketched the picture onto a canvas and started painting. Getting the texture of something isn't my strongest point. as you can see there isn't a lot of life to the school, it's kind of flat. I did the street part earlier today. I kind of just did what my friend does and slapped down some paint and starting mixing the colors on the canvas, little did I know that it would turn out a little more real and texture like.

When I was four up until I was about 8-9 years old I took ballet. I absolutely loved it! My teacher left the city so I decided to stop dance. I've always had this kind of secret passion for ballet. One of my best friends kiana loves ballet too. In october it was her 18th birthday.I decided that for her birthday i wanted to do a painting. I did some thinking and figured out that i could paint her a ballerina. Thus... this painting.