Response to Olivia Gude

Olivia Gude accurately comments on how art teaching strategies have become redundant, repetitive and even meaningless. As a professor she was able to see how art students at universities and grade school all had to do "insignificant exercises" on line shape, color, etc. As an art student, I have done many of these and although I can see the importance of learning new skills, I wish moat teachers let us take a fresh and new approach in exploring the elements and methods. Instead of having to draw spheres with pastels and learn how to implement highlights and dark values as a warmup, maybe we could turn this into a "morning project". Every morning we could work on our project and inculcate the same art  methods, but we could choose the idea and make it personal and meaningful.
Taking creative approaches and exploring post modern principles can expose us to new ideas and techniques that we might not be able to observe in old classical paintings such as that of Van Gogh or Kandinsky. This will teach us to be independent and set a trend that defines 21st century art instead of merely copying  the older art styles.

Essential question: What is small?

the first attempt

What is small? What makes an object small? Its size? Its characteristics? The environment it's in? I decided to explore these questions in a painting of a ship in the sea. Large, powerful and strong, a ship is the last thing you would label as small.  
Yet, the ship's size is only relative to the situation and environment it's in. Out in a storm, with waves crashing down and tossing the small wooden box around, the ship is small and powerless. It is at the mercy of the environment. In my painting, I presented this idea, by showing dark stormy skies, and strong powerful waves. The size of the ship is small in comparison to the nature surrounding it.

The painting is done in acrylics. To make the clouds in the sky, I made swirly motions with white paint, and then brushed over it with a huge dry brush. For the waves (and this took forever!), I used a dry brush to stroke the paint upward. At the tip of the waves, I used the bristles of the brush to add the "spray effects" with white paint. for the sky I used the dry brush to apply different shades of blue in a gradient.

What about the end? Well, it took a lot of effort to avoid painting the ship, but now I'm on it. I'll post a picture of it soon!

Going back to fix the waves

Is art without meaning decoration?

Most time we get so hung up on pleasing a teacher or just completing a project to get a grade, that we miss the most essential part of our artworks : the meaning behind it. The predicament that Mr. Sands described in his article is one that I can easily relate. All throughout Art 1 and for a good bit of Art 2 as well, most of the art assignments I did were were done to follow a teacher's directions to learn a new skill. For example when my Art 1 class was introduced to oil pastels, we did assignments where we drew a circle and used oil pastel to add values and make the end result look like a sphere. Although they looked good, the task was tedious and didn't allow for a whole lot of creativity. I have a few oil pastel spheres hanging on my wall, but when I go to college I probably won't take them because they hold no value to me. Another tedious aspect of art is when teachers give you the instructions for an assignment and you have limited options. In my opinion, this doesn't allow for creativity. One such assignment I did was back in art 2, when we had to recreate the style of a famous artists. The artist I ended up with was an abstract artist, and since I didn't relate to this style of art I found the project very limiting. Even though the end result imitated the style, I am not very proud of the piece of art. Art without meaning, is not appealing to the one who has to create it as there is a clear lack of inspiration and worth attached to the goal. This is why i like open ended assignments

art 3:

Done first with prisma colors

For this project I chose to explore the element of color. I wanted the color of the flowers to be bright and vibrant as it stood out against the plain cardboard background. My top choices for the medium were acrylic paint and prisma-colors as they would have a vibrant appearance on the cardboard. I decided to go with prisma-colors because it blends easily, and you keep layering it to get the right values.

Waiting for the background to dry

In the background, I applied layers of blue, turquoise and red water color paint to get a subtle yet interesting background. The water colors didn't over power the flowers and my background didn't look empty anymore!

All done!

 I chose this subject because I wanted to go for a landscape/nature theme, which would be common for everybody. By focusing on color, I could give a unique aspect to common everyday flowers, by letting its natural colors stand out.

 

With filters :)

Practice for mixed media

too dark too fast

This was one of my first experiences with mixed media art. Before this I had only cutout letters from magazines and glued them onto paper to spell out someone's name. However, I've now learned that layering is crucial in this form of art. It gives your artwork substance and a more developed look. I enjoyed layering different materials (ribbon, crape paper, origami)  because it gave my artwork a 3-D aspect. Through some trial and error I also learned that when layering, its better to layer dark and then work your way up with lighter colors. On my first try, I started layering with white and red, and then tried to put a layer of dark blue on top. The effect of the blue crape paper layer was only noticeable.

When I started the practice, I was flipping through magazine, looking for something pretty or interesting to paste. I had no theme or story that I intended to tell through my work. Since, I was looking at magazines like People and Teen Vogue, I realized how much these magazines focus on beauty. I wanted to take a slightly critical view of that in my practice. So i cut out pictures of pretty women, shoes, and other stuff we tend to regard as beautiful. My favorite picture is of this girl sipping a drink, and layered beneath that is a green eye. I tried to make it seem like its a complete picture and as if they both are meant to go together. when the viewer looks at it, I want him to realize that  when we look at a person we tend to look at the outer beauty only (thus the eye weird but pretty in its own way).

In the third practice I tried to see if could make a picture on the first layer and then layer with black on top of it.It was similar to a pciture of text Id seen that had used to a similar effect to make text stand out. Personally, it was kinda hard to layer black paper so carefully and precisely. I also should have used colors that were more contrasting, it would have made my picture more appreciable to the eye

Mixed Media Card

     Through this artwork I was able to communicate through my work and wish my friend a happy birthday.Like any other birthday card, I wanted it to show that a lot of considerable effort was made and that I had customized it for my friend. In the card  I included a lot of clip outs of jokes that would make her laugh, words cutout from magazines that described her, and on the backside, i wrote my message over white crape paper that I had layered. I tried to give it a girly touch with the butterflies and glitter paper that I glued onto the red crape paper. Through this project, I also got to show my friend what I value about her and our friendship, through my art, and in the end , I believe that it made a personal connection with the viewer (my friend).

This project not only reflect my own ideas, but also that of my peers, who collaborated and gave constructive feedback while i made the card. Emma helped show me that I was solely exploring the crape paper media on the card. She brought over some wrapping paper and reminded me how we had learned to make origami butterflies in Art 1. Not only did this liven up my card, but it also gave it a 3D aspect. I also discussed with her the idea of putting glitter on the front, on top of the solid boring layer of black paint i had applied. when i was finished with the card, I was holding it and considering how I would hand it over to my friend. Sabrina suggested that I should attach a ribbon on the top, so that my friend could hold it less awkwardly, and even hang it up.

For this project my source of inspiration, was from cards i had seen on Pinterest. these cards had cut out letters from the magazine spell out "Happy Birthday". I decided to take this a step further, and customize it more I also wanted the card to have more mixed media on it. since my friend always has an awesome sense of humor, I also chose funny pictures and jokes that would make her laugh.

closeup and clay

For the closeup project I drew pomegranate seeds in a prisma color pencil medium. This was my 2nd experience with this medium, and I developed my layering and burnishing skills. I also learnt how to make highlights prominent, and how they can give the seed a 3-D shape. I also realized that the more layers you put, the more realistic it seems and burnishing becomes easier. I liked working with this medium, but each seed required a lot of work, because you could do so much per seed with these pencils.






For the clay project I made a Panini kind of sandwich. I tried to keep it simple so that i could focus on the details of each item, like that of the avocado and tomato. While I was painting the clay, I got a chance to reflect on my work. I realized that I should not have attached the clay vegetables onto the clay bread because it was difficult and almost impossible to paint all of one vegetable without getting that color paint onto the vegetable attached beneath it. It would've been smarter to paint them separately and then glue them.



When I started thinking about the closeup project, I was sure I wanted to do the pomegranate seeds, because its something that I like alot. Instead of finding pictures of the seeds on Google or Pinterest, I took pictures of the seeds, while I was deseeding them. My unique pictures enabled me to get a unique and personal closeup of the seeds. Instead of the seeds I also thought to include the pith, so that its bland color could contrast with the vibrant color of the seeds. All of theses unique ideas made my art original.