First Assignments in Art 1

This week, our exercises for Art 1 have been a written assignment on the Elements and Principles of Design, five thumbnail sketches using a viewfinder, and five photo manipulations to improve an image's composition.

I went to the park to get some lovely fresh air and get some interesting sketches done. I don't particularly like drawing with a viewfinder but it was a good exercise. I find I can only accomplish anything with the viewfinder if I look through it with only one eye. It makes sense because the thing is to help you visualize your subject on a 2D surface. Using only one eye makes you see in 2D.

Here is what I came up with, in the end:

I also did some photo cropping, but I'm not going to upload those because it would take forever and I also don't want to offend any copyrights since I took all the photos right off the internet.

The actual project for the week though is also started. Out of the three project options, I chose a still life project. We have to choose some objects that have some meaning to us and arrange them in a pleasing composition to sketch them in whatever way we see fit. Here are the compositions I'm messing with:

So far I like #6 the most, but both Michael and one of my instructors have said they like #5 better. I'm torn. What do you think? It's due Monday but I wanna get started on it.