Portrait Project

Artists Develop Art Making Skills

     This was the second time I'd used the technique of shading everything in order to produce the contrast of the values on the skin, and I think it went pretty well.  Previously, I've drawn myself in this style, but I think it came out here. I've also experimented with eyes, noses, and lips in this style (all individually, and per the warm-ups done in class), but I've never put it all together, or done the cheeks.

I was drawing my brother, because I haven't made that abundantly clear yet.  Also, this is just the in-progress sketch.  I think I have a better grasp of the proportions on the larger paper, which is backwards for me, but I think it will turn out better than the one featured below.

Artists Create Original Art

      I think I got my basic inspiration from the portraits of Kehinde Wiley.  A normal person against a very striking background.  Though, it doesn't really look like anything Kehinde Wiley would do, because it's just my brother against a red background, not a commentary of the black male put in a backdrop reminiscent of European paintings.  So, it is a very simple representation of Wiley's work, and therefore it is mine.

This is the picture I drew.

This is my reference picture.  I think the camera made it a bit foggy.

Prints

This was the best print.

This one was sort of messy, though it most defiantly wasn't the messiest of the bunch.

Did you use a source for inspiration, then combine it with your own ideas to make it original?
       I combined two sources together, the movie 'Terminator' and the search engine, Google.  In the Terminator, there's this AI computer program that controls all of the robots and starts against a nuclear war against the humans, wiping them out.  That program was called 'Skynet.'  Which, consequently, has the same number of letters as 'Google'!  And, the company Google has been creating self-driving cars, and it's really weird when Youtube videos I watched when I was ten show up on my search browser.  
      In 'Terminator,' the day that the nuclear apocalypse was supposed to happen was August 12, 1998.  That is why I named my print August 12, 2018.  I'm alluding to Google as the modern Skynet.
     Though, I don't know if I should be posting this up on a Google-run website.  They might track me down.

What issues are you examining through your artwork?
      I guess I'm examining the control of the internet over the people, and how people don't seem to mind.  Like, taking a million Snapchat photos a day?  Those photos just don't just disappear from the website, they're all stored in a server somewhere.  And, what people post on social network sites.  Everyone can know everything about everyone. 
     During lunch, too, when I'm trying to talk to people, they'll be playing on their phones.  If Google actually turned out how to be an AI that was plotting the nuclear takeover of the world, I'm betting that most people wouldn't actually mind, as long as they were allowed to keep their Candy Crush.  

I know that I sort of got on a high horse there, but it annoys me. And that's why I made a print of it!

GIF

I really like books (writing them and reading them), so this gif is a representation of my status as a bibliophile.  

Color Project Final

I don't know if I have much to say about the color project anymore, I think I said it all in my last post about the project.
    I think my pieces was pretty successful in the fact that it represented my subject matter pretty well.  I guess that it does look like a sea dragon underwater, to some extent.  Again, I wasn't too happy with the proportions of this final sea dragon, but I do think it's a pretty good considering.  I also like how the large blue sheet of paper sort of balance the top-heaviness of the nose.
     If I could go back and change one thing it would be, of course, the proportions.  I try to copy the second draft more precisely.
    From this project, I learned that shadows can be used in lieu of lines, which was really cool. I tried to do that for the top part of the head, where the eye is sort of set into the thicker head-bone.  Also, to indicate where the cheek muscles are and how the head settles onto the neck.  I think that, overall, I did a pretty good job of indicated elevation changes with value.
 

     (Also, I learned that I really ought to find a smudging tool other than my finger.  I got a blister that pretty much takes up the entire pad of my right pointer finger, while blending in the ocean, which is very annoying.)

Memes, and What is Art?

My first definition of art was:
      Art is the combination of different elements into a whole that had previously not existed. Art is also the perception of the world, viewing things in a way that is unexpected.

This is my dog, who is perpetually hungry.

After the class discussions, my definition of art became:
     Art is your perception of it.  If you think it's art, then it is.

Origami Reflection

This is a literal reflection on my origami project, not origami in a mirror.  ;)
I do not have a phone, so I could not take any pictures of my project while I was working.

3. Artists communicate through their work.

- self-expres

- include personal interests

- examine important issues

What is this artwork intended to say?

What issues are you examining through your artwork?

How is this artwork about who you are or what you like?

I came up with the idea for my project, which is a collection of folded paper, some pointy and some rounded, arranged in such a way as to (hopefully) create a topography of mountains and hills.  I came up with the idea because I wanted to re-create a scene from a book, but I couldn't fold the key element.  As I continued, I felt that I was turning my mountain range into something from where I used to live, Souhegan Valley, where I was always in sight of the mountains.  

    I don't know if this model examines important issues, or says anything poignant about the world, but it's a piece of my past.  It's strange to live down here, in North Carolina, where it's pretty flat.  So, this piece of art is about me, I guess, and how I miss the landscape of New England.

2.  Artists develop art making skills.

- learn techniques and processes

- explore media

Did you learn new techniques or processes as part of the work for this project?

Did you gain skill with familiar materials?

While watching the first video, I noticed that one man made an origami bowl by accordion folding the paper one way, and then another, so it was made up of a lot of squares.  then he folded the paper in a way that created a spherical shape, and the outside of it looked a bit like an armadillo.  I tried to do the same in created my hills, but sadly they came out looking more like armored turtles then armadillo-bowls.  I think that if we'd wet the paper before we'd worked it, like the artists did in the video, we would've have more decisive results.

Color Project -- In Progress

For our Color Project, there were three themes; explore, creature, and disguise.  I combined 'explore' and 'creature,' and have decided to draw a sea monster with a globe in its eye.  Instead of having sea monsters on the map, like 'here thar be monsters,' I have a map on a monster.

     I'm doing this in oil pastel, because I wanted to sea monster to look a little wet and shiny. That's not really happening, though, because I'm smudging the oil pastel to such an extreme degree to blend all the color together.  It does produce a cool effect overall, though.  I'm glad I didn't chose watercolors, because that doesn't really make something look wet, it just makes something look watery.  

     One thing that annoys me is that I like my rough drafts better than I like my final draft.  The proportions of the eye changed in every rendering, so in the first draft the sea monster had a really large eye and looked a bit like Toothless from "How To Train Your Dragon," but in my final the eye is pretty proportionate. Also, my final draft looks a lot like Christopher Paolini's drawing of Firnir on the front of "Inheritance," which sort of annoys me, because I'm supposed to be drawing a sea monster, not a dragon.  But, I used his work as reference.  So, I like my second draft the best of all my drafts.  I think that that's the best one, and I wish that it was big enough to use on my final project.

     I cut out my final sea monster and pasted it onto a light blue piece of construction paper. I'm going to color the blue in with a darker blue oil pastel, and then smudge that, and then add in other colors. So, it will look sort of messy, but hopefully it will communicate the idea that my sea monster is underwater.  I also messed up on the eye.  I didn't want the colors to be too vibrant, sort of brown and yellowed like an old map, but that wasn't really possible with oil pastels, because the pigment is too bright.

This is my first draft.

Halfway through my second draft. 

 I could not get them to flip on their sides, I apologize.

These are pictures of my second draft, colored in.

 So, this is my project so far!  Hopefully, it will only look better as time goes on.