Ewww, what's in that jar?

This piece is kind of special to me because it's not like anything I've ever done in art class before, but it's almost exactly like every single thing I do outside of art class.  I'm a big doodler - I love to draw little people on the sides of my history notes, letters, journal, math homework... basically everywhere.  If they're not acting out whatever I was writing about, these little people are actually me, or like a weird little cartoon version of my inner self that describes how I'm feeling.  Kind of like cartoon-Lizzie from the Lizzie McGuire books and TV show.

Anyways, one day in English class, I was thinking about the "That's Buggy" and "Glassed Over" themes and doodling instead of participating in the discussion.  I came up with this little girl:

Hey, it's a very rough sketch.

It's kind of goofy, but I liked it, so I did a sketch for reals in my sketchbook with color and everything:

Haha that elbow.  If you can call it that.

I hesitate to call it a self portrait, but it kind of is.  Actually, I got my lovely sister Laura to pose for me so I could fix that elbow, etc., so it's kind of a portrait of her...?

My lovely Laura.  She's the best.

The dress in the sketch above is a piece of graph paper I found among the papers I've stuck in the front of my sketchbook (good thing I never got around to cleaning it out, right? ;)) which I had drawn this pattern all over just for funsies because I like patterns.  I made it blue with an acrylic wash and glued it in with a glue stick.  Then, I figured I might as well keep going, so I cut the shape of the jar out of a ziplock bag and glued that on.  You can't tell from the scan but it's all shiny.  It was fun, and I wanted to keep on going, so I decided that's how I would do the final project.  I sketched out the final on a piece of poster board and traced it with tracing paper so I could trace the shapes onto my other papers, which include scrapbook and construction paper, more graph paper, tracing paper, a brown paper bag, tin foil, thread, and another ziplock bag.  (I guess those last three aren't actually paper....)  It was tricky to cut it out and glue it down so it all came together like it should and looked like I meant it to.  As is usual when I work with glue sticks, I was hugely frustrated by my inability to keep the glue from getting graphite and eraser crumbs and other nasty stuff in it and making a sticky, pencil-y mess.  Let's just say that glue is not my favorite thing to work with.  I managed to keep damage to a minimum and my piece emerged from my glue-stick nightmares relatively unscathed.  Yay.
One of my topics for this piece is opacity.  I played around with the plastic from the baggie and the tracing paper to try and make the jar look see-through but also like it was, you know, actually there.  I'm kind of still working on that, actually.
So here it is!

"But only with the lid on"

This actually makes me really happy.  I kind of feel like it's missing something...maybe something to emphasize the three-dimentionalishness of the jar.  I'm workin on it :)
I've just been looking back at my other pieces from this year and I've realized that I'm all over the place!  Like I said before, this piece is more like the stuff I tend to draw everyday.  But the other pieces I've made are some of my favorite things I've ever done ever.  Maybe by the end of the year I'll have a more distinctive style as an artist.  Then again, maybe not.  It's more exciting this way :))