Ian Wooster

“Grandfather” - 14" by 18" Oil Painting of my Grandfather that won an honorable mention in the "Island Faces Portrait Contest", sponsored by the Martha's Vineyard Museum. Martha's Vineyard is notorious for it's reputable artists and painters, and the contest mainly consisted of works done by professionals. I had a talk with one of the judges for the top 3 paintings, and she told me mine ranked fifth out of almost 60 works, and I was the youngest participant in the whole contest.. Completed March, 2012.

“The Scientist” - 17" by 20" mixed media/watercolor. The album "Rush of Blood to the Head" by Coldplay is incredibly powerful to me in terms of lyrics, and just the unique sound of the songs in general. The body of the man in my painting is made up of my favorite lyrics from each song on the album, and in my mind, this is what I pictured to be "The Scientist" as depicted in their song. This was for an assignment called "Image and Text" for my AP class in which we had to incorporate some kind of words or numbers into a creative piece. Completed September, 2012.

"Still Life” - 14" by 18" This was for an assignment in 2011 in my first year of AP studio art, in which we had to use oil paint to paint a picture of a still life. This was in fact my first time ever using oil paint, and I painted this from life in the classroom (no pictures). I made up the background and wanted it to contain the light source(the classroom just had windows for light), but in a more epic and mysterious way.. Completed in October, 2011

“River” - 10" by 8 This was my first painting ever using acrylic paint, and I completed it November of Sophmore year. The concept was from a picture.

“Monet’s Garden” - 12" by 9" My Ap Studio Art class and I went to Paris for 9 days in April of 2012, and this sketch was done from life at Claude Monet's Garden(took approximately 10 minutes). Although it was raining when we visited, the whole experience was too inspiring not to do art in the footsteps of where Monet did his famous paintings. Completed 4/17/2012.

"Stairs” - 14" by 14" Unfortunately the camera picked up way too much glare in the photograph, so hopefully you can imagine all of those tones in the middle being significantly darker. The concept was completely from imagination, but my main influence for the piece was the moving staircase in the Harry Potter books. Completed September, 2012.

"Halo” - This was my first time ever using watercolor (other than elementary school projects). I used the game art from the popular series "Halo 3" as a reference; the purpose of this piece was to enhance my portfolio to audition for my AP studio art class. Completed December 2011

“Minas Tirith” - 6" by 3.5" Scratchboard. The Lord of the Rings is one of my favorite movie trilogies, and its epic and enormous landscapes inspired me to recreate one of its scenes. Many of my pieces contain some sort of landscape with extreme depth and fantasy elements, and this piece was created to enhance that concentration part of my portfolio.

“Oil Self Portrait” - 3' by 4' self portrait, done in Oil paint. Although this is probably my most ambitious piece, I am proud of the way the final product came out. The assignment was to paint a 3 by 4 foot self portrait using a medium for your choice. Having a little under a month to complete it, it was important that we take pictures that were truly groundbreaking and inspirational so we had passion to paint the piece. I knew I loved fantasy genres and I found that the best way I could incorporate that into a realistic piece was to create an ambiguous light source. The original picture I took is almost identical to the painting, however I took the liberty of making up the background and adding my style of colors to the realistic elements. My teacher decided to submit a few of our paintings to the Boston Globe Scholastic Art & Writing awards of 2012, and my piece won a Gold Key(Only 30 Golds are given out of a selection of over 5000 works submitted). Completed in December, 2011.

“Birds” - 12" by 10" Pastel and Pen. Although this piece was just a sketch, I wanted to include it to show my interest in adding color to the concepts I conjure up in my head. I love to create pieces with hidden meaning, or even make the piece before looking for possible meanings. However for this one, I experimented with new styles of mark making; for instance the people made out of tiny one-direction pen strokes, and adding specific direction to the oil pastel strokes to create a night sky effect.

“Charcoal Self Portrait” - “11" by 14" This was my first time ever attempting to draw myself (using a reference, I had from life). This was towards the beginning of my realistic style however, so I was still experimenting with how dark and light I could push with different mediums. Completed in November, 2010.

“Crows” - 16" by 12" watercolor and pen. The assignment for this piece was to do anything that involved 50 of something. After much thought I remembered a scene with hundreds of birds on telephone wires, and decided to recreate that in my own composition. I did many sketches in pen before I finally settled on this one, and added the watercolor after to create the fantasy-esqe light source that I love to incorporate.. Completed January, 2012.

“Floating Island” - 16" by 12", made with Watercolor & pen. In this piece I wanted to experiment more with depth and increase my portfolio concentration that included a relatively fantasy genre. I had also only made one other piece with pen and watercolor before (the crows) so I was pleased with the way this turned out. Completed March, 2012.

“Mushrooms” - 10" by 6" Graphite. One day while playing a video game I was inspired by the creative usage of fungi in their environments. I figured that I could incorporate this concept more or less into my concentration of fantasy landscape, so I created some concept art for an environment with massive and looming mushrooms. Completed January, 2012.

“Llamas” - 12" by 9" Oil painting. For this piece the assignment was to use any medium you want, but create an image in an only "high key" color palette. This picture was originally just natural light, where the colors were mostly just greys and shades of tan. However I am very pleased with the way this piece came out, and the usage of purples to add shadow really enhanced my knowledge of color.. Completed October, 2012.

“In Search” – 3 by 4 foot self portrait. Every year students in my AP studio art class paint these big self portraits, and this year (2013) I wanted to challenge myself by utilizing a massive mirror. From past years I saw how difficult it was to draw myself consistently, twice, in the same piece, but I felt up to the challenge. This Piece won a Gold Key in the Boston Globe Scholastic Art & Writing awards of 2013.