Gabija Markuzaite Art Portfolio

This was made using gouache and acrylic, and I did paint a larger version as a personal project. Gouache is a medium I like to use as I can mould the work better. 

I was experimenting with line and pen. Working from observation, i drew multiple objects in different points of view

I started to experiment with different mediums, such as ink and pen. I did an observational drawing of a pepper and garlic, experimenting with tone.

Since I started to move towards more still life fruit art , I wanted to explore the Vanitas movement within art and learn about the movement itself.

I started to use different and unique mediums, such as coffee and tea, which is a medium I quite like as I can work with tone quite well. I really like working with objects such as skulls as the tonal values are quite easy and fun to achieve. 

I like to time myself when painting and see how much I can do in a certain amount of time. Here I gave myself around 3 minutes to draw a skull in pen, and I enjoyed this as I think I achieved the different tonal values in the skull. 

Experimenting with different grounds and mediums is interesting for me. Here I observationally drew a birds claw with ink on top of multiple grounds. 

I had a personal project of painting a large rainbow skull. Even though this project is outside of college learning, I learnt more about colours and blending techniques. 

I used charcoal on this pomegranate drawing. Working with charcoal here worked really well, and I really like the outcome as the tones are varied. 

I used red and sepia ink to paint this. Using different tones of both, I painted the cut pomegranate and I really enjoyed using the inks as I could make it blend really well. I used a white paint pen to add the highlights but I wanted to leave some gaps for the highlights instead of using paint.

I painted a pomegranate using red ink, water soluble pen and wax. The wax was used for the highlights and it came out quite good as it did resemble a pomegranate. I did a large painting of a cut pomegranate, and then i did a more sensitive painting of a section of seeds within the painting. 

I used pen for this and i really enjoyed using pen. Using pen felt freeing as I didn’t need to precisely draw things out, and it was quite scary. I think I achieved good tonal values even though it was a biro pen. 

Line drawing with flowers but in two different ways, one was made using a single line and was a drawing of live flowers, but the other one was a drawing of dead flowers and i used black ink to emphasise the death by the way it was dripping down the dead leaves. 

Van gogh has a really unique texture technique, and so I looked at his sunflower painting and I wanted to recreate it and achieve a similar texture. The movement of the paint is something that I learnt can affect how a whole painting is perceived. 

I used charcoal on this dead sunflower. Using a black and gritty medium makes the flower look more dead, having no life or colour to it. I really like the outcome of this as I don’t normally work so rough. 

I used black ink on this and I separated it into 3 different tones- light medium and neat. I really enjoyed working with ink here and I could really enhance the shadows and make it seem more dead. 

I used a fine permanent marker to freehand draw dead flowers. I think the sketch like look makes the flowers look even more dead and dry. 

I took photos of a flower while it was dying over a couple days, and I drew it with graphite on white paper then stuck it on black paper for a more dramatic effect. 

I used graphite to make this flower, and I think it looks very realistic and has a lot of detail

I did an observational drawing of a still life set up, and then I focused down to a certain part of it, and then I focused even more on a certain part. I was fascinated by how every little square in the glass bottle had different shadows and highlights forming different shapes.

I looked at the symbolism of glass in Vanitas, and then I was fascinated by how the shadows and highlights in glass are always different. 

I used charcoal and white chalk to add only highlights and shadows on mid tone paper.

I then used white chalk on black paper, and charcoal on white paper to only do highlights or shadows, which I quite enjoyed as I had to focus more on just one aspect of the glass bottles. 

I used a kneadable rubber on graphite and used the subtractive drawing method to achieve the highlights in the bottle.

I did a line drawing of the silhouettes of the glass bottles. This reminded me of a city scape drawing, and I had to focus on the shapes of the bottles. 

I did a set up with a couple glass bottles and drew them, I then cut out the bottles and left their shape in the paper and then made a set up with these shapes. 

I used multiple strengths of coffee to achieve different tones. I really like this painting as the blueberry seems so large yet it was actually very small. 

Using acrylic paint, I painted two bananas and I used different brush sizes to achieve the different details on one banana. Doing these bananas actually taught me more about colour as I needed to add purple to make the yellow more of a banana colour. 

I drew a line drawing of the inside of a lemon, and I wanted to mostly achieve the shape and the main details of the lemon. 

Looking at personal objects within still life, I used my friends and family and objects that are close to them. I painted these earrings with acrylic paint and I really like how realistic they look and the reflections in them. 

I used charcoal on a still life set up of more personal objects, and it was quite a rough outcome but I still like the effect of the charcoal. 

I used white chalk and charcoal to get this dramatic effect. I really like the outcome of this as I think the direction of light is clear and the tonal values are very good. 

I used lino to try and achieve the shape and juiciness of the seeds. I quite like this as they don’t seem like pomegranate seeds, but the colours are very vibrant and I like the look of it.   

I used charcoal and white chalk to draw this apple. I was trying to achieve the same as the pomegranate and make it look dramatic. 

I did some small composition drawings of apples with charcoal. 

Using black ink, I wanted to go more into depth of the seeds and do another se stover painting. 

I drew another sensitive study of some pomegranate seeds in charcoal and white chalk. 

I used charcoal to do some studies from primary source images and I do like how the texture looks. 

Using acrylic paint, I did a zoom in painting of pomegranate seeds on a small canvas. I like how this turned out as It’s quite detailed but not too detailed. 

Using white chalk and charcoal on black paper, I drew this orange and lime. I didn’t achieve the right texture on the lime but I really enjoy the outcome of the texture of the orange.

I used graphite on tea stained paper and spent 2 hours on this. I really like how realistic it looks and how much detail I included. 

Using charcoal, I drew some blueberries from a primary source image. I really liked this as it was quite rough and gritty looking but still accurate.

I used both orange ink and black ink for this orange as I changed my mind halfway through painting it, but I really enjoyed the outcome. 

I used oil paints to recreate Cezannes painting of “Still Life with Jar, Cup and Apples”