For my very first body of workI knew I wanted to incorporate buddha as my theme is on Buddhist and Laos art. I came up with an idea of drawing his face to capture the moment of calmness and relaxation. In the Buddhist religion, while we pray our eyes are closed as when we meditate. I also drew a lotus flower to represent my theme of nature and the lotus flower is always seen in Laos art.

I decided to mix two mediums together to create a piece that contrasts each other by using the medium of pen and water colour. I had to paint the background and incorporate the colours I used in the background In the face so it's not just solid by the face being pen and the back being water colour. The reason why I chose to do the water color before the pen is once the water color comes In contact with pen it starts bleeding.

On Buddha's face I used the different techniques and styles with pen such as stippling, scribbling, hatching and etc.

The background of the piece I used a mixture of blue and greens to create a settle tone, so it is not a solid of 2 colors that look like they are not blended well. At the bottom right I painted the lotus flower using the colors; pink, magenta, white and red for the petal, and for the centre of the flower I used two different shades of yellow. For Buddha's face you can see I incorporated the colors of the background into his face in some spots but still having pen on his face and ears to balance the two.

The final piece I wanted to use watercolor which is one of my weakest mediums but I wanted to get well at it so I figure why not try it out. The first step I did was draw out everything before I even go in with with color.

The piece is called interrwined. I started going in with my different colors of paint and slowly started blending variety of colors into the painting. For the background I used the left over paint and dipped it into the water and flicking my brush which created that affect. The colors that we're painted of the girl is the colors I used to flick the paint. The final piece was my favourite piece it took me about the whole day to work on it and a few hours more to really blend the watercolours. To approach and make it a stronger piece I would probably just add more orchids and fill in the white spaces and also blend the harsh lines.

My piece #4 I wanted to really just do acrylic painting on a canvas. I was inspired by how beautiful the lotus flower is because I was researching about it so I decided just to have a painting on nature. I drew a lotus flower with several lily pads in the water. To paint the entire piece I used varieties of colours and did alot of mixing to get different colours. I attempted to add the colour orange which is the color of the lotus flower into the water be because I didn't want it to be one solid colours but to blend so our eyes just doesn't focus on the water. To finish this piece it took quite a long time because i had to ensure it was blended and I switched using many other colors.

My third piece I decided to think of my culture more which is Laos and add the Buddhist religion. In my culture, we usually pray/meditate crossing our legs, placing our hands on top of one another and have our eyes shit. For this on particular I wanted to only really focus on the hands and legs. I drew everything lightly with a pencil because I wanted to make this an acrylic painting, i used a gold acrylic paint because in Laos the statues and sculptures are always plated with gold, or bronze. In the centre of the hands I added the Laos national flower to represent nature and beauty of my culture. I went in with pencil crayon to color the 2 flowers. Around his shoulder is a scarf wrap that we wear in our culture as apart of our culture clothing, and we wear it while praying so that is why I drew it.

The second piece,I was inspired to do a graphite drawing that looks magical, and is unrealistic. Since I really admire butterflies I had an idea of doing a life drawing of myself standing with butterflies flying out of my hands. The 2 mediums I used were graphite and pencil crayon, u used pencil crayon just on the butterflies so it would look like its coming to life in color.

As I started shading and toning the piece I constantly had to stare back at the photo and make sure I get all the features right, that way people can actually know its a drawing of me. To tone the graphite drawing I used a regular hb pencil, and a ebony pencil to get the darker areas.

Shading the hands I found a little more tricker because it had soo many details of all the lines so I had to shade the areas and define the lines just like how it looks in the photo.

As I started shading I'm In the butterflies, I decided to shade them with bright colors so they would contrast on another and really pop from the piece.

This is the finish piece, to make this piece stronger I feel like I should not be afraid and try to hit my darks more. I liked the way it turned out and it actually looks like me. The next time I would do It differently without using pencil crayon and maybe using watercolor cause I didn't like how the pencil crayon and graphite looked together. Overall, I spent a good amount of time working on it but I wish I would spend a little longer to make it look more clean and add touch ups.