Olivia Jordan

Traditional art is where my ideas often begin. I love working with pencil, paint, and paper because physical materials let me slow down and focus on detail, texture, and technique. Creating art by hand makes the process feel personal and helps me stay connected to every step of the work.

Traditional mediums also form the foundation of my artistic practice. Through drawing and painting, I develop observation skills, composition, and control of materials that support my growth across all forms of art. The discipline of traditional art has strengthened both my technical ability and my creative focus.

Portrait of My Mom (Watercolor)

This watercolor portrait combines bold color choices with simplified, cartoon like features to capture personality rather than realism. I experimented with expressive color and loose brushwork to create a lively and playful interpretation of my subject. By blending softness with strong visual contrasts, I aimed to reflect warmth, character, and emotional connection while exploring watercolor as a flexible and expressive medium.

Still Life with Chair and Sunflowers (Pastel)

This pastel drawing is a still life created during a classroom drawing lesson, featuring a chair, a blue vase with sunflowers, a black cowgirl boot, pumpkins, and a chain of large, colorful wooden beads draped across the back and front of the chair. I focused on capturing the relationships between the objects, their proportions, and how they interact within the space. Working in pastel allowed me to explore rich color, varied textures, and soft transitions of light and shadow. This piece strengthened my observational skills and deepened my understanding of composition, balance, and color harmony in a complex still life arrangement.

Study of a Nike Shoe (Pencil Drawing)

This pencil drawing is an observational study of one of my Nike shoes. The shoe is positioned with the toe pointing to the right and the heel to the left, with the untied laces resting naturally across the front and side. I focused on accurate proportion, structure, and light shading to create a sense of three dimensional form. Although the shading is subtle, this piece reflects my early attention to observation and spatial understanding, and it helped build the foundation for my later work in more complex compositions.

Portrait with Musical Elements (Watercolor)

This original watercolor painting explores the connection between music and identity through a symbolic portrait. I used a split face composition, integrating the neck and strings of a cello into one side of the figure, while a piano keyboard blends into the hair at the top of the head. A small violin appears in the background, and musical notation wraps around the neck like a collar, surrounding the figure with sound and rhythm.

This piece represents an early exploration of combining concept with traditional media. While the painting could be further refined, it reflects my interest in visual storytelling and my desire to connect different creative disciplines. Creating this work helped me learn how symbolism, composition, and imagery can communicate personal meaning, and it encouraged me to think beyond realistic representation.