Question One: What media did you choose for this artwork and why did you pick it? What did you intend to communicate in this artwork? How does the media you selected help communicate the message you intended? Is the piece successful? Why or why not? My first piece: the "pie of deforestation" was completed using mostly chalk pastels layered on top of colored pencil and sharpie outlines. I was originally going to use colored pencils because I am comfortable using them and they are good for accomplishing detail. Since this was our "worldwide issue" project, it was easy to portray communication of a problem in the world. For me, this communicates literal idea; the problem of deforestation worldwide and how certain countries are using up all the resources. This piece did accomplish its goal of portraying its issue in the way that I hoped; some pieces however, change throughout the time it is made (such as my pie from sculpture). My second piece was a piece made for my parents' anniversary, titled "True Love Lasts Forever". This piece was done with a combination of colored pencils on the figures and chalk pastels on the background. I chose chalk pastels (on both pieces) because they cover a large area well and fairly quickly. The colored pencils on this piece allowed for great detailing and texture, if I do say so myself. This picture is trying to communicate the figurative idea of love, which can be shown through art in many ways. I tried to portray love by the warm colors and actual action of them kissing. (Awww). I think while less obvious, this piece too, displays communication of love. Question Two: What projects or units did you enjoy? What would you add or take away to make the class a better learning experience? I had fun with all these projects, but I liked the units' concepts better than how my most of my projects turned out. I liked the change project the most because I got to use different brands of gummy bears to melt and create my name and a rainbow. These I think turned out well and continue to change and warp as the temperature around them changes. I also had fun with the nontraditional materials unit because we had to think past our normal materials and be more creative. I had fun collecting cans of all kinds and putting them together to create the wind chime (which is still in use in our backyard, f.y.i.). The last project we did that I had a lot of fun with was the piece based on a piece we saw after going to the art museum. There were many pieces I saw that I enjoyed at the museum, but went with the Andrew Wyeth painting of the boy running down the hill. This piece was my inspiration and basis to create my identity piece, seen above. I used his piece as a reference but it did not turn out as how I planned. |
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Reflection:
Part One: "True Love Lasts Forever" I worked hard on this piece, originally planning it to be photorealism (making the art look almost exactly like the reference picture). I began by "tracing" the picture to a piece of paper from the projector, but could not get details. That is when I ran into trouble, and where the piece started to become portraiture, not exactly photorealism (the detailing and features were not 100% proportional, but it is still evident what is trying to be accomplished by the art). Over all, I like the background, title,and texture created by the colored pencils; but could improve on proportion to figures. Fun fact: this was a gift to my parents for their anniversary and when I gave it to them, my dad compared it to Picasso. This is interesting because on one of my parents' first dates, my dad bought my mom a copy of the above piece as a gift! Part Two: "The Boy Who Lived" This piece took a lot of patience and logic, believe it or not! while it did not take too long to create, I wanted to summarize the important parts of "The Sorcerer's Stone" by using actual text, but it proved hard to pick the "correct" events to use. The strong part of this piece if definitely the title "Harry Potter", using a 3-D effect and detailing to make it look like the titles on the books. I do like how the background words turned out, but am more pleased that I decided to add a light coloring (in orange over the red words, since orange goes with blue and red) to make it look more finished. If I were to redo this project, I would have made the words smaller and closer together to make it look more interesting and to fit more into the piece. Overall, while this may not be the most complicated piece, besides the pie I made in sculpture, this is one of the pieces I am most proud of. My topic: I chose deforestation as my issue of concern because it is prevalent and increasing in damage worldwide as time goes on. According to wwf.panda.org, deforestation is :
Planning: (pictures below) I chose mainly sketches for my planning because once I saw the idea on pinterest ( see below) Articles on my issue/question (shown below): http://www.triplepundit.com/2015/02/breaking-ngo-lists-companies-countries-responsible-deforestation/ http://www.treehugger.com/corporate-responsibility/10-countries-with-the-highest-deforestation-rates-in-the-world.html http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/Deforestation/deforestation_update3.php Rough Answer to my Question: What countries are most prominent in the deforestation industry? According to one of my sources, "as a region, Latin America scores relatively high, notably Peru, Colombia and Brazil. Lower scoring countries include Nigeria and Madagascar. China and India, which are huge importers of forest products, also scored low in the survey." (First Source) Pinterest Page: https://www.pinterest.com/lightningred123/current-issue-environment-protection/
A certain piece jumped out to me at the museum when we went; it was called “Winter 1946” by Andrew Newell Wyeth. This is a semi-modern American painting made in the World War Two era. I chose this piece because I thought it would be able to portray my identity because it a) shows an actual person and b) because he is participating in an activity that could represent my identity: running. This may also be a good piece of art to use because it is unique; no one else will probably use this to demonstrate their theme (identity, place, or storytelling). With a similar color pallet (hopefully) and similar detailing and style, I will try to achieve a piece that is obviously be inspired (but not a copy of) by Wyeth’s “Winter 1946”. A last reason I am choosing this painting in particular is because I like Wyeth as a painter in general, so if “Winter 1946” does not work out for me, he may have other pieces at the NCMA that I could be inspired by.
How have your artistic skills grown during the first few weeks of art?
My skills have increased a little bit over the course of these first few weeks in Art 2. One way I have gotten better is more attention to detail; this can be seen between the top two pictures of my portraits. The difference between these two is that the newer one has a more detailed outline, more precise value, and more realistic figure proportions. Over all I have improved a little with hard work, but I hope to learn more and improve my skills even more over this semester. How do you find inspiration and develop your ideas? What resources or strategies do you use? Throughout these first couple projects I used references and other resources such as pictures and ideas to convey my ideas more effectively. For example, on the portrait project, my main project had a real reference image and I was able to trace an outline to create a more proportional looking figure. Another way I used references was on my surrealism poster project. While I did not have a reference image, I had that traditional idea plus magazines to create a unique, colorful, proportional, detailed sideshow poster. What successes or challenges have you experienced so far in art 2? Since art 2 has only recently begun, I have not faced any major challenges, but a few minor problems arose. For example, since it was my first time using materials such as gel medium and wallpaper, I did not know how to use them entirely and did not know what the result would be. Luckily, the gel medium was probably the best option, as it was not as wrinkly as regular glue would have been; also the wallpaper created a unique texture and added dimension to the piece. Another challenge was getting the faces on the portrait to be realistic (proportional), this however was overcome by using the tracing method as well as a reference picture to create detail and value. |
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