Progress: Sculpture Project

So far I have not gotten very far on my sculpture, but I do have a clear vision of what I want that I think I can achieve within the time frame of the project. I have started on carving out the legs of the figure, and I've cut out the pieces of wood that I'll need for the body and arms.

These are the legs so far, and one thing I noticed while carving was that the wood is very hard and can be kind of challenging to carve into especially around knots in the wood. I would like to carve them into more realistic looking legs but I don't know if that will be possible and so I may have to leave them as looking more natural or similar to a tree trunk. Because this kind of wood was so difficult to carve into I am going to use the already prepared wood for the torso which is much larger and more detailed.

Career: Interior Designer

Today I will be talking about Interior Design as a career path.

An interior designers job is to create indoor spaces that are both visually pleasing as well as maximally functional. They are responsible for understanding what their client would like and how they will interact with the space, and can design anything from housing to office space. They must also ensure that anything they design, other than being functional and aesthetically pleasing, is safe and cost effective for their client. They also need to have good communication skills. An interior designer must work alongside others like engineers and contractors while designing an area, as well as be able to present a design to inspectors. They must also have good time management and a good feel for deadlines.

To become an interior designer you would typically need at least a bachelors or associates degree. While your major does not necessarily affect your ability to be hired, most interior designers will have some form of fine arts education. Experience with business and finances is helpful as well, especially if you are self employed working as a designer and not working through a firm or larger company. Obviously, the higher your education level the better, and interior design programs at higher levels do exist, even up to the level of a doctorate if you are interested in teaching interior design.

If you are looking to pursue a degree in interior design in Virginia, there are programs at many different colleges, such as VCU, or Virginia Tech. Within the US, the Savanna College of Art and Design has a particularly well known program, as well as other colleges such as Pratt Institute and Cornell University who also have high quality interior design programs.

Progress: Self Portrait

Here are a bunch of pictures from my process when I was drawing my self portrait. Overall I am very proud of how it turned out, but there are definitely a few things that I know I could have done better. I think my biggest issue while drawing was that it just got very repetitive, in part because I didn't use too many different marks from my artist copy. I think if I had utilized cross hatching more effectively I could have gotten more contrast in between lights and darks on the sweatshirt and overall had more effective shading. I also think that I did make certain areas on the face a little bit too dark which makes it look kind of cartoony, which I didn't intend. I do think that I got differences in texture though, which I am proud of. I was very worried about the hair, but I used a mix of really swirly strokes as well as regular hatching and I think it ended up looking pretty good. Again I am very proud of this overall, and I think I learned a lot through making this piece.