Calisa/Zephyr's Portfolio

Contained in this website is art from my first year at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) and Cleveland Institute of Art (CIA)!

Space Research

A small cardboard house in the shape of a semi-circle. The walls are painted pale yellow and there's fake greenery and moss added. Theres a round door made with sticks and a circular window above.

We were prompted to create a house for a small squisy toy called "our son." I made mine out of cardboard and painted it with acrylic paint. I used real sticks for the door and window frame thing, and a pringles can lid for the window itself.

The side view of a spaceship-looking car. The body, painted yellow, is made out of wood. There's red cardboard wings on each side and blue cardboard boosters on the bottom. Red, orange, and yellow ribbons come out from it. There is a plastic cover, a red band wraps around a glob of hot glue painted blue. The wheels on the bottom are painted red, yellow, and blue.

This was our final project in Space Research. We used the woodshop to create a race car for our squishy son. There were prizes awarded for the safest, fastest, and prettiest cars. I won safest with my latching mechanism using a small RainbowLoom band, a glob of hot glue, clear plastic, and a cardboard hinge.

Drawing

A charcoal drawing of a woman live model.

This was our final project in Drawing. We'd worked with live models throughout the semester, but only in quick increments in order to learn the process, and only using pencil. With this piece, we dedicated weeks of class to this, plus we used charcoal.

A charcoal drawing of a baby head statue.

While this was the first charcoal project in this class, I have used charcoal plenty of times before. We were given a picture of a statue (I was given the baby head) and with the picture placed beside our paper, we redrew it. We learned a specific way of using and layering charcoal in order to get really dark darks and really light lights, as well as techniques in sketching and proportions!

Surface Research

A zine containing a bunch of different made up hybrids, drawn and described as if they were real.

For my surface research class, we were given the option of picking between a list of possibilities for our final. I chose to create hybrid creatures, combining an animal, a plant, and a fungus. It was my choice to do a zine, and also mine to present it as if they were real, living creatures! I chose this because I'm a life science major, and so I wanted to mess around with that!

A bright colored collage with a cat face, flowers, buildings, and eyes. On the left is printed out, on the right the same image is painted onto a wooden panel.

This project was split into two parts. In one part, we made a digital collage (printed out on the left) that represented the city (Richmond). In the other part, we built a wooden panel and painted the collage onto it using gouache (on the right)!

Digital 1

A colorful digital painting with a bunch of hands stretching out from the sides. The figure in the middle has wet hair and glasses.

The only prompting for this piece was that we have to use a limited color scheme in a Photoshop painting. I chose a red, blue, and yellow triadic color scheme! I wanted to show off the skills I know I'm good at, like hands, and profiles, while also expanding my skills by attempting to paint wet hair for the first time.

A mash up with someone peeling the skin of their chest away, exposing his ribs. He is kneeled, resting on his feet.

For our mash-up project, I chose to represent what gender dysphoria feels like to me. I used found images of different foods (mainly fruit) for the flesh peel, guts, cuts, mouth, and eyes. I painted the face, and parts skin. I used Illustrator for the hair, ribs, glasses, teeth, and parts of the skin.