Communication Project

The original painting

Being a perfectionist, I've always tried to tell myself that the amount of effort I've put in is enough, and that I should stop trying so hard. Yet, as my frustration grows with the task at hand, I only try harder. I hate this, and wish I could tell myself to stop being a perfectionist. For this project, I wanted to communicate this idea through my art work. My initial idea was to quickly paint a couple of paintings, instead of spending all the time for this project painting one meticulously (remember the ship?) I imagined that the paintings would turn out to be amazing, and that they would be done in a fraction of the time (what a perfectionist thought, right?)

With this mindset, I started on my first painting, one of pears. I had found a similar painting done on Pinterest and o wanted to recreate it. But I was tied to idea of creating the pears exactly like the reference picture. My frustration grew as I couldn't capture all those highlights of yellow and white and the dark values with brown and blue. I finally realized that I had to let go of my ideals and just paint in my own style. I got rid of the yellow on the surface where the pears sit, and blended the blue shadow under the pears with the red background. I also invluede D more green on the pears than the original painting had.

My version

This painting took the entire duration of the project to complete. I had hoped to complete this painting quickly yet perfectly, and it was disappointing when that wasn't the result. I felt like I succumbed to the perfectionism streak all over again. But I now realize that you can't plan everything out like I had initially hoped too. You end up fighting your flaws in the place you least expect to, and for me that was deciding to toss the picture of the original painting in the trash, and paint with the color scheme  and style I wanted, even if it didn't look perfect.

NC Museum Of Art

At the NC Museum of Art, the piece I liked the best was The Eruption of Mt.Vesuvius by Pierre Volaire. The painting beautifully captures the eruption if the volcano, and by including Italian civilians clustered around the bridge and ships in the background, you can perfectly visualize how this event interrupted the lives of those around it. I also like he portrays this event at night. The dark sky is illuminated in a bright yellow and orange, and makes it awe-inspiring to look at it. The realistic effect, and European style painting techniques come together nicely!

Orange Outline by Franz Kline kind of fell in the middle for me. I'm not a huge fan of abstract art, so I had to look closer and let it slowly appeal to me. I like how he used brown, yellow and orange, to take a simple black-and-white painting further, while still maintaining the overall minimalistic effect. I like how his strong brush strokes are evident in the painting, because the texture is interesting to look at.









One of the pieces that I didn't like was titled Winter 1946. The artist uses a dull green color that dominates the painting. I would have liked it better if he used more colors for a fuller overall
effect. I also don't like how this scene is captured from a bird's eye view at an uncommon angle, because it makes it awkward to look at. However, I must admit the shadow in painting falls in a way that I would have found hard to capture through paint, so good job there.