This week is exam week so we aren't required to blog this week. We are supposed to finish our last piece of the semester. It is the final propaganda piece. My piece is pretty self-explanatory displaying the idea that many tax dollars we pay are possibly being used for things of little to no purpose. The top of the Capitol building is meant to be a trash can. I originally was about to submit it, then I realized it needed a border. I added a simple black border and it looks much more balanced. Stay tuned for some more work in the next few weeks.

For this week I just continued to work on my bear painting. I finished it up and created my own texture brushes and added fur to the bear and bark to the tree. I also downloaded a cloud brush from the internet and painted a cloud in the background. To add depth to the tree I put a gradient overlay to add shape. Stay tuned for more art!

This week's assignment was another portfolio piece meaning that I can make whatever I would like. I decided to paint again. As you can see is I am currently painting a grizzly bear cub. My color palette is sitting in the top right so you can see the color combinations I'm using. I am trying to decide what I would like to do for the background. Check back soon for my final piece. Stay tuned!

This week's assignment was to create a piece using propaganda again. Our theme this week was to make one on something relating to school. My idea, which is pretty self-explanatory, is that it is tough to balance between academics and athletics. There is a a scale with the books weighing down the sports equipment to show how much stress schoolwork can add to a person's life. There is also a silhouette of a stressed boy in the background. Stay tuned for more art.

This weeks piece is a portfolio piece from a worth1000 contest. It was where you pick a celebrity or celebrities and do something funny to them. I chose to mess with Tom Brady and his wife Giselle. I made it Tom Braidy and Gazelle. I obviously gave Tom braided hair. And I gave Giselle gazelle horns. Stay tuned for more art next week.

This week we were assigned another artist review. My artist of choice this week is Mike Chan. He is from Hong Kong. I combined different styles from one of his pieces. It showed a rainbow colored beam holding a bottle. I replaced the colors with the colors of the U.S. flag and the bottle with an NFL football being a football fan. The background I made with a brush that I particularly liked, and I thought the light blue color was nice and subtle.

This week we were assigned to make another propaganda piece. We were supposed to base the style off of some old Chinese propaganda posters. I used a similar color style as the Chinese ones. We were supposed to pick a point our poster would make, and a target audience for the poster. Obviously my point is to use nice, kind acts instead of violence. The target audience is bullies. Stay tuned for more art.

This week we are supposed to make a piece showing propaganda. Given that my name is Sam, I thought it would be fun to put my face on Uncle Sam's poster. I'm still working on it currently. I still have to touch it up a little bit and decide what I want the slogan to be. Stay tuned for more art.

My piece this week is my final football painting. I free hand painted the entire thing. I used the grass brush shape combined with many different colors of the mixer brush to make the football and the grass. Below is a piece I made for my metamorphosis piece.

As you can see the sun is reflecting down onto the water. My idea was to make the sun turn into the moon in the reflection on the water. Stay tuned for more art.

This week we have the option to make a piece on whatever we would like to. I know this looks like nothing because, right now, it basically is. I'm painting a football sitting on a football field. I will be using the mixer brush tool a lot and maybe add some textures to make the grass look more realistic. Stay tuned for more art.

This is the updated version of my piece. I decided that it needed a shadow. So I gave the chest and the cup shadows. Lucky for you all! You guys get two blog posts from me this week.

This piece I created was based off of Sarolta Ban's artwork. A lot of her artwork contains droughts and water less earth. To be ironic I put the water less soil in a glass of water. She also uses keys in many of her pieces. I buried it under the dirt. One piece she makes shows a flock of birds, but instead of birds she replaced them with flying hats. I decided to put a flock of birds in to add to the piece. Stay tuned for more art.

This piece was based off of a tutorial from psdtuts.com. It was a simple effect, where you make a car seem like it is going very fast. The tutorial provided a picture of the car I could use. I decided to use an Audi R8 because it is my dream car. I added lens flares on the headlights to make it seem more futuristic. Stay tuned for more art.

This week I was given to make a piece on whatever I wanted. I chose to make a gif animation because they are fun to me. I decided to make a bowling gif. The ball goes down the lane and nails a perfect strike. Then the sweeper proceeds and cleans up the pins. Stay tuned for another post next week.

This piece I made is based off of the same artist I just blogged about Tang Yau Hoong. As you have seen the simplicity of his artwork and the consistent theme of water. My idea was to use the lights of the car to put out the fire in the burning building. The lights represent hoses of water putting out the fire. I made this entire piece using the pen tool. Stay tuned for another post next week.

http://shop.tangyauhoong.com/product/eye-on-the-city

These five pieces in my blog this week are all from the surreal artist Tang Yau Hoong. All of his pieces are very simplistic and don't show very much meaning. He uses these designs to make T-Shirts. I like how creative he is with the same basic ideas. This image is an eye that also looks like a window with the sun as the pupil.

 http://www.demilked.com/negative-space-art-tang-yau-hoong/

This piece shows a flashlight creating the city. To me this means that cities are completely run and reliant on electricity. As you can see he uses the city image in many of his pieces. I like how he uses depth with the flashlight. It appears way closer than the city is.

http://www.cuded.com/2013/01/minimalist-illustrations-by-tang-yau-hoong/

This image shows a group of bicyclists powering a light bulb. I thought this was funny because it reminds me of mice running through a wheel to power a cage. It makes me think of how difficult it used to be to attain energy.

http://emorfes.com/2011/07/21/creative-illustrations-by-tang-yau-hoong/

I liked this piece because it would make for a great teacher. The little boy is swinging from the light like it is a swing. I'm not really sure what this means, but I like this piece. As you can see he uses the idea of light a lot along with city images.

http://ajklijs.wordpress.com/2013/01/20/tang-yau-hoong/

This image shows a man that is painting the light from the street light in. This tells me that all late is created somehow. It also tells me that energy is limited because it is artificial. Once again you can see the consistent theme of light that is present in almost all of his pieces.

http://www.tuttartpitturasculturapoesiamusica.com/2011/12/catrin-arno-german-surreal-graphic.html

For this week's blog we were required to choose five surreal artists and show a piece from each one. This is from an artist named Catrin Arno. A surreal artist from Germany. Something that I like about this piece is the fact that aside from a flying fish, the fish is substantially bigger than the whale. I also find it funny how the girl in the front is looking at a flying fish blimp sort of thing like it is not even out of the ordinary.

http://psd.tutsplus.com/articles/inspiration/the-artwork-of-anton-semenov/

This image was made by the surreal artist Anton Semenov from Russia. Every piece he makes is supposed to be creepy. This one is meant to display the love people have for their parental figures regardless of how messed up they are. The flower on the top left is meant to show the sense of happiness and luck.

http://l-art-a-layers.blogspot.com/2012/12/there-i-fixed-it.html

This piece was created by Sarolta Ban. She is a surreal artist from Hungary. A lot of her pieces are based on animals but especially dogs. This shows a reverse picture where the hats represent a swarm of crows and the bird represents the hat. Sarolta Ban originally started as a jeweler but then developed into a surreal graphic artist.

http://suliman-almawash.deviantart.com/art/Telephone-man-141513717

This image is from the surreal artist Suliman Al-Mawash from Kuwait. I found this piece interesting because it reminds me of the SAW movies. Most of her pieces involve some type of head gear. There's another one that I saw showing a rope going through a man's eyes. He also makes a lot of pieces showing animals in different habitats. There's one with a horse in a city, and one with and elephant on a beach.


http://artistguide.wordpress.com/wojciech-toast/

This is from the surreal artist Wojciech Toast from Poland. Almost all his pieces show some type of body part being cut. There is also a common idea of the KKK being rebelled against and taken over. There's one I saw that had a person dressed like a KKK member being hanged by a person dressed like  a KKK member but dressed in black.

This image is a surreal piece from the famous one and only Salvador Dalí. This piece is a portrait of Abraham Lincoln when you look at it from a distance. If you look at it from close up. You see a picture of a woman looking out of a window. Dali made this piece after reading an article about the minimum amount of pixels it takes to create a portrait. He made this portrait of Lincoln while only using 121 pixels. Stay tuned for art every week now that school is back in session.

Now that we're approaching the last couple weeks of school, our teacher gave us the option to make a project on whatever we would like to do. I decided I'm going to make a portrait of myself. I'm having trouble deciding if I want to make a painting similar to my Ray Lewis painting or to make another vexel image. But anyways here is my detailed sketch of it. Stay tuned for a post next week.

My super villain I created is Captain Cauterize. He heals injuries by brutally burning injuries with his hot iron. I used the same concept of a vexel image like the tutorial a few weeks ago. I liked the color red because it looked more evil. Stay tuned for some more art next week.

This is a tutorial that I made in the beginning of my freshman year. I don't have any new work to post at this moment so I'm uploading a flashback image. This 4 step tutorial shows how to use the blur tool, burn tool, and dodge tool. Stay tuned to see my upcoming piece of creating a super hero or villain.

For this project we were supposed to make a piece of a pun. Our teacher said that if we turn it into a gif animation we would earn extra credit. If you pay at least the slightest attention it says that the fish has no eyes, it's a "fsh". Obviously it has no "i" in it. Hahaha pretty punny. Stay tuned for more art.

This piece is from a tutorial our teacher assigned. Click Here for a link to the tutorial. I customized it and made a picture of myself throwing a football. I also used a pattern of grass to add to the theme of football. Stay tuned for more art.

This is my final Gif about speeding that I blogged about last week. As you can see, the Speed Limit sign approaches as the speedometers speed increases. It promotes that speeding is bad. Stay tuned for more art.

This week I don't have an image to upload because I'm currently working on a gif animation in class. I should be uploading the final animation in class next week. I'm making an animation of a car showing the policy of speeding. It is supposed to advertise that speeding is wrong. Stay tuned for the final piece.

This image is an image I made for a contest within our school. We were supposed to make an image using a sunflower that could serve as an invitation to our school's luncheon. I took the sunflower and used multiple lens flares and filters to make this image. I have a few from last year's competition to upload in the future. Stay tuned for more art.

Out new assignment is to make a logo following a text tutorial. I created a company called Strength Studios and I followed a tutorial but deviated from it. I made the text brick instead of grass. I also added a weightlifter in the back. I'm currently working on another logo. Check back next week for the final image of that.

Here is my video tutorial on how to screen capture and how to create a custom brush on photoshop. This is my first video post on my blog ever so hopefully it works well. Stay tuned.

This is my final image for the salopettes piece. We were supposed to make a poster out of it so I added a border and a slogan about "bearing" the weather. Stay tuned for some spectacular art.

Right now I am currently working on a project involving the word "salopettes". The word salopettes are a pair of ski pants that have overall straps on it. I am making a picture of a standing polar bear wearing a pair of salopettes. I will update you with an image when I further on this project.

This piece is for a project where we are supposed to use three different emotions and portray them using color. My emotions are sad, happy, and stressed. Sad being purples and blues, happy being yellows, and red being stressed. Stay tuned.

This piece was for a project that our teacher asked us to do. We were supposed to put two pictures together and make something new. I took a sketch of a subway train and put it onto its tracks. Stay tuned for more art.

This is my final Ulysses S. Grant piece. As you can see I added color to my face and to my body. I actually am going to edit the hand color slightly and that will be my final. Stay tuned for more art.

Here is the image of my self portrait. A powerful leaader who is a gift from God. I made myself into Ullysees S. Grant. It is not complete. I am going to add color to my face. Stay tuned for the final image.

This week I don't have a new piece to post due to just returning from Winter Break. But currently I am working on a self portrait using our name as a guideline. My full name means a powerful leader that is a  gift from God. So I'm trying to come up with a project for an idea using my name.