Amelia House
Portfolio
Mia House “Collin’s Bowl”
14” x 11” Canvas, acrylic 2020
The idea just came to me as I was sketching. I don’t know why, but it seemed just so childish and playful, I felt I had to do it. The tiny penguin heads were something I just came up with, they were cute and small and simple to do. When I started creating it, all I did was the background and the table. I tried to create a bunch of contrasting colors to make more things pop, like the bowl and penguins. I drew probably over 100 penguins to create this painting
The painting Collin’s Bowl is based on nothing. It didn’t really have a meaning. The name is just a name, something that just popped into my head throughout the creation process. I didn’t want anything to change on it, truly. The only thing I would change is the background color, making it softer. But since it’s so hard, I would consider this piece a surreal piece. The shadows and depth are realistic, but the centerpiece, it so cartoony and odd that I wouldn’t consider it realistic. Which is why I love it so much.
Mia House “Peaceful Swamp”
14” x 11” acrylic, watercolor paper 2020
If I’m honest, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do for awhile. I started drawing and I then it came to me. I based it off a location from Minecraft, because I was bored, I guess. It’s basically a minecraft swamp from a witch’s hut. I enjoyed painting the view swamp part the most, because I could play around with textures and colors. I had done the water, and then the tree in the front next. The ground with probably the last thing.
I spent a while trying to figure out what colors to use in the painting. The idea to use green shades for almost everything was probably from how much green I’d need to do. The colors were fun to make and mix, and seeing how they dried with the water was really nice.
Mia House “Words Bruise”
16” x 20” canvas, acrylic 2020
This was a remake of something I made when I was younger, and I changed it quite a bit. The first change was the fact I actually added a neck to the painting. I made more realistic proportions to everything and made it look like it was somewhat human. It was pretty easy to sketch a better one because anything would be better than the original.
I started with the background first before doing the sketch. After that, I spent over 3 hours on the skin tone and I barely made enough of it. After the skin tone, I did the nose and then the duct tape, which took more time than I expected. The last thing I did was the hair because I didn’t know what I wanted to do with it until the end. The meaning behind the painting is simple, “Words hurt a person to the point the bruise.” The original meaning was simply, “Words hurt,” but I changed it because I changed different parts of the painting. It was really difficult to draw realistic tears, so I went with a bruise on the neck instead. I felt like it gave the same meaning but in a different way.
The painting itself is realistic because, well, it’s realistic. My favorite part of the piece is actually the note because I think it looks like a really good nose.
Mia House “Understanding the World’s Wrongs”
-- x -- acrylic, newspaper, cardboard, magazine 2020
The painting was one of those things I knew wouldn’t cover everywhere. I figured out the title and what I wanted for a theme by just doing the project. In the end, the theme was death.
While painting this, I struggled to get the colors for the newspapers on. I wanted to make them match the actual newspaper of magazine the clipping came from. I painted them myself, thinking about the colors and the look I wanted. I thought it felt empty at the top, so I added the car crash, and the man and woman. I wasn’t sure why, but I am leaving it up to the people viewing the work to figure out what the things all mean.
The newspapers have meanings to them. Reading the works actually spelled out, you should get an idea of what the articles could be about.