In this painting you worked with gridding a board, then determining colors based not only on personal preference, but also on the relationship formed between the colors: pushing and pulling, warm versus cool, loud versus soft. You were to find an area or areas of emphasis and create movement with your color choices. Please reflect on your painting through the following questions. Using specific examples from your work not only reinforces what you are writing, but also tells me you are really looking at your work. I believe that I fall in the meets for the Technical Skills rubric. I tried to fallow my planned grid that I drew out on the "pre-drawing" stage and I feel that the overall shapes are the same. I tried to keep my edges clean by using the white charcoal pencil or a small brush to go over edges. I have also successfully pulled the front colors to the side of the painting. 2. Where do you think you fall on the rubric for Creative Problem Solving? Why? (3-5 sentences only) I believe that I fall in the meets for the Creative Problem Solving Section rubric. I drew a number of plans before I actually started in order to decide what my final product will look like. I feel that I was successful in showing emphasis in the middle to the uper-right side using warmer colors. I constantly was changing a couple squares because they didn't look right; I repainted, and mixed new colors to draw the eye around the painting. You were asked to consider the following as your painting developed. Please give good thought to your answers and as usual, use only 3-5 sentences to respond (if at all possible): 1. Composition and Chromatic considerations: How does your use of different color intensities, different color values, and/or contrasting "temperatures" (warm/cool) contribute to the movement in your painting? How do you think your color choices direct the viewer's eye around your canvas? I used the warmer colors to move the eye up and to the left, in a diagonal path starting at the central yellow square. I also used warmer colors at the bottom and top-right to draw the eye around the painting. I used a contrast of warms and cools to achieve this. I used the warms as almost a background and the warms as a tool to move the eye around. Finally, The two smaller squares, in the bottom-left, and top-right, also help the move the viewers eyes by contrasting the blues surrounding them. 2. Space: How do changes in the sizes of squares alter the rhythm of your painting? Please address your thought process as you determined, and possibly re-determined, the shapes and sizes of your squares. The changes in the squares effect the painting a lot. As I look at the rhythm of my painting, I notice that it moves in almost a diagonal pattern. The smaller squares in the center of the painting move up and to the right while the squares surrounding them get larger. I feel that the color also impacted this. If I had used a cooler color in the smaller squares, it would have had a much different effect then if I used warm colors. 3. Color and Mood: What is the connection and what do you think the mood of your painting is (please refer to specifics in your painting)? There is a definite connection between the mood and color. Whether you use warm or cool colors can make a huge impact on the mood of your painting. Cool colors can give a feeling of sorrow, sadness, or calmness, while warm colors can do the complete opposite. However, the moods of warms and cools can vary greatly, depending on the painting. I feel that my painting portrays a mood of calmness due to the great amount of contrast between the warms and cools. They almost seem to cancel each other out. 4. The application of paint and where and how you mix your colors: What are some of the conscious choices that one can make and how does one's application of paint affect the overall style of the painting? One must consider how they want their painting to come out. If they want their painting to come out very exact and solid, they must use a single almost flat color and stick to it. However, if you want a "hazy" or almost "unclear" painting, you should try to mix colors more on the painting. This will also cause a greater variety of colors to show up in the painting. 5. Why is the act of painting like putting together an "ever-changing" jig-saw puzzle? When did you experience this in your painting? Painting is like an "ever-changing" jig-saw puzzle because your thoughts and ideas are always changing. Sometimes you think that one thing looks good one day, but the next you really do not like it. When you are painting, you start to see more and more detail and your ideas at what to do with the details. During this painting, I feel that this happened a few times. When I looked back at my painting after a day, there were a few that I felt did not belong and I needed to change them. When this happened, it caused a chain-reaction causing me to change other squares. 6. Why is it or why is it not important to address the edges of the shapes you paint? How did you address this in your painting? It is very important to address the edges. It is a lot easier to keep your edges how you want them to be while you are using that color rather than later. If you do it later, you will have to recreate the color, often coming up with something that you do not like. Even after I carefully went back over the edges, I still used white charcoal to make the edges even shaper. This made the contrast between the warms and cools even greater.