Sa-Shai Daniels' Portfolio

The Biome Project was an art project all about the representation of nature and the different biomes that used to thrive all over the world, but have now begun to slowly die off because of the way humans have mistreated the earth. For this project we had to make a piece of art that represented a biome that we thought was the most interesting and beautiful. The biome that I chose was, the swamp because I really loved the soft colors and textures that you could see there. 

We started out by researching the biomes that we had chosen, then we found pictures of things we could use to inspire our artwork. We began by make an ink stain. Then made abstract sketches of plants and animals that could be found in the biome we had chosen. In my painting I chose to use flowers to represent the plants and a slightly more realistic stork to represent the animals. After that we improved on our sketches by adding color. We used guache, which is a type of paint that you can change the opacity of. When we had finished making all the individual pieces we began the process of making a layout with our pieces. I tried to make the layout so that my finished piece would have movement, and a clear path for your eye to follow. After finding the best way to lay out our pieces we glued them down. 

There were many challenges during this project, but my biggest one was getting done on time. In the end I managed to finish, but only because I worked on it after school as well as in class. This project was great because it showed me ways to apply art skills that we’d talked about in class. Like balance, when I was making my sketches it was hard to find the balance between abstract and realistic. But eventually I was able to balance the colors, textures, and styles of art. The most important thing I learned during this project was how to make something abstract still have a clear meaning. This was really important for me to learn because I love creating abstract art, but before this project I was never able to make my message understandable. 

The quality I used for this project was creativity. Creativity is all about letting your imagination run wild. I’m not usually comfortable doing that, but this project gave me a chance to explore the more imaginative parts of my mind. By using creativity I was able to create an original idea for my biome art project.