The world out of a child's viewpoint

For my final project, I  painted the world out of a child's viewpoint. We had to create 3 different art works. There were no given medium, so you could thus choose your own. I chose to work with spray paint and acryllics.

If you hear the word "child," the first thing that would probably pop into your head would be toys and large messes. I wanted do to something a little bit different. I wanted to ellaborate three different ways that children processes thoughts.

For my first panel, I ellaborated the way that children process difficult words. They don't just remember it. They break it up into tiny sections. Such simple sections, that it forms a lot of smaller words that they are able to comprehend.

For this panel, I chose to show how a child would, for example, comprehend the word "bloodmoon." They will never just remember it, but they will probably break it up into two sections. "Blood" and "moon." if you look at those two key words, you will easilly think about a moon that has been gashed open and bleeding. This is what I tried to visualise.

For my second pannel, I took the typical scenario of when a child is afraid. If you think about this, you'll easilly come to the thoughts of a child sitting in his/her bed at night and is too afraid to sleep, as "there is something in the closet!"

I took a bed and removed all of the blankets and pillows, as it creates an uncomfortable feeling. The bed is at the bottom of the cananvass and when you view it, it puts you in the scenario that we expect a child to survive in.

The bed is placed inside a room where the walls are right next to it and there is absolutely no doors, windows or any manner of escaping. This gives the viewer a feeling of clostraphobia. 

At the end of the long "hallway," there is a closet. The door is just slightly creeked open and has a hand that is creeping out. This helps to evolve the feeling of being terrified.

For my final pannel, I expressed the imaginetive manner of thinking of a child. They often use their over active imaginations to entertain themselves and they do so by creating fun games to play when they are bored. 

When you walk to a place and it is far, you easilly transform the grout inbetween the tiles that you walk on, into lava. If you touch the lava, you die. The point of the game is to get across as fast as possible without touching any "lava."

The black clouds that is attempting to catch the child, creates the feeling that the child has to rush to get to the end.

The child does not have a head and thus it creates an annonymous character. The point of the character, is so that the viewer can place herself or himself in the feet of the child. You can easilly place your own head onto the child's body.

Graphic Novel

This task was handed to us during the 3rd term of 2014. The theme of it was a normal school day, but with a twist. The twist is that your main character has a superpower that you'll discover later on.

If you hear the word "Superpower," I'm sure that your first thoughts would be of Superman or Batman. I wanted to put a lot of effort into my topic, so I decided to stay away from the common thoughts and spend a long time on coming up with my idea.  

• My first idea was about a girl whom had the ability to teleport, but every time she did, her body got more and more damaged.

• My second idea entailed a guy who was normal in a place where everyone had abilities and if you were in that school, you had to have an ability of at least grade 1. No-one ever sees his ability until the end of the novel, where it is revealed to be something very useless. The ability to prevent heat from descending from an object.

After spending several days scanning through a large variety of ideas, I finally found the one that I was destined to draw. My superhero is going to have the ability to foresee death...

I found it difficult to start with my frames straight away and thus came to the conclusion of putting in an extra speech bubble, that explained the story line, introduces you to the characters and helps you to get into the correct atmosphere. 

The mediums that I used for this art piece was pencil (for the guide lines), pen and a sharpie. I used three different types of pens. The thicker black pen was a gel pen. The fine details were done through the usage of a black Bic pen. The red colouring was also done through the usage of a red Bic pen. 

Ganymede Abducted by the Eagle

Ganymede Abducted by the Eagle was painted by Correggio during 1531-2532. This painting spoke to me in ways that a tiny amount of paintings spoke to me before. 

It basically entails a little boy, called Ganymede, getting abducted by Zeus, a Greek god. He is getting taken away from his earthly needs to gain a higher requirement that he fulfills by going to heaven.The dog that is staring at Ganymede and the eagle in shock, proves that there is some link from Ganymede to earth. It is as if he gets pulled back down to his earthly requirements by the feeling of suspense created by the shocked state by the dog's eyes.

Ganymede seems a little bit afraid as well, due to the fact that his mouth is hanging a little bit open and his eyes does not look relaxed. His body is also tense and it seems as if he is in a state of panic. These signs indicates that Ganymede is afraid of the unknown. He does not seek a change in his life, due to the fact that he knows how to act and react to things on earth, but does not know anything about heaven or if there even is such a place.

I decided to recapture the meaning of this amazing Renaissance. This is how it turned out...

"Ganymede Abducted by the Eagle" - Cari van Niekerk

Naruto staring at the stars

This pictire was painted in March 2014 with Acrylics.

I got the idea of this painting as I was looking at pictures of Naruto on the internet, so I grabbed a brush and began painting.

Naruto (Anime character)