Collage project, 2nd semester final
This project was done earlier this year. I chose to do this project because my brother Edward Ellman is in the Army fighting for our freedom. He is my idea of heroism and this project was perfect for me because I got it done just in time. I put this project in the Patriotic Art contest to earn scholarship money for college. My idea for this project was to make it out of flag material with stars and stripes. My feelings toward this project mean a lot. It stands for freedom and family being in one picture. This project took me a while because I had to wait till someone brought in flag material from those flags that you would throw at the parade. But before that I had to take my brothers senior picture and copy it then put it on a projection screen and trace it on to the paper that it is on now. It was difficult trying to cut out the right shapes for each part of his body. Then I had to measure where about half way is and start putting on the stripes so that way the collage is half stars and half stripes. Then I glued the pieces on and put a shiny covering over it. I thank everyone who voted for this project in the art show. I hope this project gets me somewhere as in scholarship wise. But most importantly I thank Mrs. Magee for her help and support throughout the time I was working on it. This project meant to me and my family.
Thanks for reading this message,
Emily Ellman

Candy Butterfly
I made my candy butterfly more into the beginning of the school year. The butterfly wasn’t really made out of candy more like candy wrappers. This project was very difficult. I think it was difficult for me because I couldn’t get the wrappers to stick to the wire that was underneath it. When I was done with it, it was pretty cool. I mostly got my inspiration from my friend Sierras butterfly necklace that and I just so happened to be eating a caramel apple sucker. So I was like “Hey wouldn’t this be cool if I..” Mrs. Magee liked the idea so that’s what I did. What I had to do was get a bunch of wire that I could twist into shape of a butterfly. That was sort of difficult because I couldn’t get the wings to be about the same length. Then I had to get a bunch of tootsie roll wrappers. Once I got them I had to somehow figure out to get them to stay on the wire. I figured out that a lot of glue was my best way of doing it. After I got all the wrappers stuck together I connected the body of the butterfly which was made out of an empty dots box. Then I cut out a board and painted a bunch of flowers and leaves on it as my base. It turned out cooler than I expected. And that concludes my artist statement.

I had a fun time finding pieces to go together with April, the name I gave my collaged model. I wanted to give her something bright to wear and what better hue than PINK! It made her look more feminine, and then I found words in different sizes and fonts to scatter around her shirt that “defined” who she was as a person. Finding similar skin tones grew to be a challenge but I fortunately found enough and then it all came down to her hair color. I chose blonde even though I think blonde has more shades than brown. It was interesting finding a nice head of hair then realizing it didn’t match April’s hair color. She had to make things difficult. Near the end I just wanted to give her jet black emo hair, but they I wanted to portray a softer look rather than “I hate my life” persona. Once I had found all the right shades and highlights of blonde I put the Modge Podge across the paper. I don’t know if it was the ink in the magazine clippings but some pieces of paper reacted once I put the glue on and made the hair turn neon tinted yellow. It looked like she had a hair deformity. I think out of all the projects that I did, this one required the most searching, but I definitely enjoyed it! I made April into a diva.

This project was one of the more challenging of all my projects this year. I procrastinated way to long and had to only two days to finish it, lesson learned do not procrastinate on big projects it sucks when you try to make it up trust me. It was long and tedious work since it was a pretty big piece of paper. All the materials used to make this collage had to be a color blue and for some reason magazines do not have much blue in them. The picture I used was one of my oldest nephews, when he was six months old. I really love this picture, it was one of my favorites of him, when he was young and it holds a dear place in my heart. Another reason why this piece was so difficult was because by his hand area there was a lot of small areas that needed extremely small pieces of magazine paper and it was tedious to rip each piece out, another area where I had difficulties was at the top, because of all the random little white spots that needed blue in the small little cracks. I picked blue because it is the color my nephew picked plus it’s one of my favorite colors. That is all.

I really did enjoy working on this piece, though it did make me want to cry out in frustration sometimes. The gloves and face were so hard to do! These two parts of my collage proved to be the most difficult obstacles to overcome, as I had to use tweezers in order to properly position the tiny pieces of tin foil and magazine clippings. I spent a long time carefully selecting the clippings in order to properly replicate the shadows on her face. When it came to her gloves, I had some trouble deciding what material I should use. I dismissed the idea of using cotton balls due to their formless shape and airy texture. I finally decided upon using the tin foil so that the shape of the fingers would not be lost. The material was a pain to work with, but it produced a texture that mimicked the smooth, fitted texture of real gloves well. The parts that I had the most fun doing were Lady Gaga’s hair and jacket. I decided upon using pencils and buttonsbecause of the interest and intrigue they bestowed, and because the materials were easy to work with. I chose to use Lady Gaga, because she is such an authentic, unique person who is able to reassure many people through her music that being different doesn’t make you a freak. It makes you who you are. She had her own fair share of ostricization, but she didn’t let it change her into something she wasn’t. Instead, she drew upon her individuality and channeled it into her music, creating herself into a formidable powerhouse.

I chose this piece because I like the fox logo and I wear it. I chose to do a collage on this piece. I took a magazine and cut out some of the other brand names I liked out of it and pasted them around the fox logo. I struggled on pasting and fitting the magazine clips around the picture. I liked this project because it was somewhat easy and I got to draw and put magazine clips in it. I use the charcoal pencil and tried to make the outline. I used all the space on the paper.

This project is one of my favorites because in this picture is my oldest brother Edward and he is in the Army. So my idea for this project was to make it patriotic to symbolize the flag, and him fighting in iraq, with the quality of freedom in the picture. It would remind me of him everytime I would look at it and I'm proud of this piece on the way it turned out. I accomplished this piece by recognizing where to put the right pieces together to make it look more realistic. My struggles were trying not to mess it up and having to start it all over. I think this project was challenging only because I didn't want it to look to messy after I put the modge podge on it. The piece is well balanced between the ending points of the stars and the stripes. The texture was smooth and fine on the pieces of paper, but on the actual flag parts that I put on it, it was more of a coarse texture, it wasn't smooth, but it also wasn't rough, it was in between. The depth in this piece is flat. This was more of an emotional thing for me. It means alot to me on how it turned out and how emotional it would be to him. This piece is asymmetry because there is more stars on the top half of the picture than there is stripes on the bottom half. This piece has some saturation but not alot. The modge podge really put a glow or shine on it. This piece is one of the best pieces in art I accomplished this year and I'm proud on how it looks. Thank you for reading this art statement and I hope you enjoyed it.

I originally got this idea for this project from an art magazine called arts and activities. This particular project is called and exploding box. To create this box, I had to use materials, which consisted of two sheets of blue construction paper, a piece of white watercolor paper, black paper, scissors, and glue. I cut the black paper into different designs keeping the corners there to create negative and positive space. I then took whatever I had cut out and laid it outside of the box and glued the pieces onto the watercolor paper creating a design. I continued this until I had almost all the black cut out. I tried to create an ocean type theme because I love sea creatures. I made a star fish, kelp, seaweed, a fish, and a jellyfish. If you look at the exploding box carefully then you will be able to locate these designs. While working on this project I learned that I could use negative and positive space to create a design. I would do this project again because it was fun and it kept my mind busy with how to create a design.