Reflections on sketchblogging

1. No, I don’t remember keeping anything like that. I’ve had to do some sort of diary thing for an english class…but never a sketchbook of any sort

2. I thought it would be kinda fun and interesting to see what everyone else is doing and what their thoughts on things were.

3. Remembering to blog before Sunday at midnight

4. Looking at everyone else’s ideas-it helped me with my own process sometimes

5. It was easier to share with everyone…instead of having a show and tell each week of class

6. Yes I think it was perfect; I never had any trouble keeping up, except for those times that I totally forgot about an assignment

7. I didn’t like scanning…I ended up taking pictures and transferring them to my computer. Going to find a scanner took up too much time for me…and I’m a bit lazy 🙂

8. I would say I am neutral on the idea…I would say it’s not my thing. I, personally, have never been interested in having a blog or reading other peoples, but this experience wasn’t really bad.

9. Probably not. I won’t remember to keep up with it.

10. I don’t think I have any further suggestions…I do wish we shared more actual artwork or pictures. It seemed to me like a lot of words…and although I know that’s the point of a blog, since this is more of an artistic blog, I would enjoy seeing more art.

Final Project: Revisions and Progress

I seem to have misplaced my packet…so I don’t have the images scanned in, but my original idea was to to a combination of a self portrait in charcoal, and melted crayon art. If anyone doesn’t know what it is…its exactly what it sounds like.

The idea I wanted to portray is the idea of making good things out of bad things.

The layout of the picture was going to be me jumping in the air with an umbrella (in charcoal) and then the melted crayons falling down in different colors like rain, which was really unoriginal.

I have now decided to keep the same idea, but it is going to be done in charcoal and colored pencil. It’s approximately 18-20 or so.

Here it is so far…Still working on the face, umbrella, and making the rain actually look like rain. The rain will turn into colors when it hits my hand.

I haven’t had too much trouble with anything, other than the rain, and of course the smudging of the charcoal. I’m planning on using a fixative once the final is done, but I really hate using working fixatives because it makes it so much harder to erase.

 

 

Cultivating Creativity

When I normally come up with an idea, its a bit of a process. First I’m given the project/problem, and I immediately start brainstorming for ideas. Normally, the idea that makes me want to jump with excitement is the one I go with. Sometimes that idea is first, sometimes it takes a while to get there.

Then I pretty much dive in.

Not the smartest choice all of the time…I run into a lot of complications because I didn’t think things through all the way.

I’m slowly learning to change my process of thinking, especially in my interior design classes. We do so much process and thinking before we are allowed to do an idea, because if you just jump into it, there are so many complications. For our last project, called Einstein’s dreams, we were supposed to make a structure where Einstein could rest and write. But first, we had to pick a chapter from the  book Einstein’s Dreams and write 30 word pairs that described that chapter. Then we narrowed it down to 15, then we wrote 5 more. Then narrowed it down to 10, and made 5 more. Then we mixed all 15 word pairs up, and picked 5. Then out of that 5, we mixed up the words again and found a final pair that best described our chapter. That word pair was the concept statement we based our entire project off of. My professor has helped me to understand that without narrowing it down to a specific concept, you won’t ever be able to complete a project because there are too many options.

I would say my way of thinking is more like what Cleese was describing because of the whole sitting and thinking and then things will just come to you. I do this the most right before I go to bed; I remember things better that way.

Gestalt Corpse

I drew the circles of the composition, just the basic outlines, and created grouping. The other people in my group used containment, repetition, and closure to help bring the piece together as a whole. I think it was very successful, except maybe the bottom right corner doesn’t fit very well with the rest of the piece.

I think that using the gestalt theory would’ve helped me with my 3rd project, the nightmare project in the post below. I think if I would’ve even gone about that project similarly to this little activity, it would’ve turned out more how I wanted it. For example, I tried to use repetition in the shape, size, and colors of the pictures, but perhaps if I tried to group them together in a different way the overall composition would have improved. I also could have used proximity to make some of the scary ideas seem more emphasized than others, which could have improved the “swirling cloud of death” type of idea that I was going for.

Final Collage Piece

My dream was a nightmare that a giant, mean octopus chased after me. I decided to use fear as my theme in my piece, and so I have a large black blog that is hovering over a much smaller, more emphasized person. I chose to incorporate several common fears that people have, and to make the person anonymous, so the viewer could imaging themselves as this person.
While doing this piece, I struggled quite a bit. I ended up starting over twice, and even the final piece was not what I imagined in my head. The final piece is black paint with black and white toner transfers of the different fears on top. Then the person is a toner transfer as well, with the You Are Here sign being just a regular collaged piece of paper. I then painted over the fear pictures to cause them to become more united to each other in the blob instead of being individual pieces.

Living Artist for Presentation

I chose CHUCK CLOSE as my artistI chose Chuck Close because he does a lot of portrait work, and I really like portraits. He also is paralyzed from the neck down, yet he continues to paint by attaching a paintbrush to his writs and making slow movements with his arms (he has limited movement), which I just think is really amazing that he is able to do that. He paints in “low resolution” I guess you can call it, so when you are close up to the painting it looks like shapes but as you back up it creates a portrait. I have actually seen a copy of the above portrait at an art museum, and its really awesome.

Preliminary Work for In Dreams

Dream Doodles

More than meets the Eye: Final Image

I chose to crop my picture this way because I feel like the positioning of the shadow, hat, and the darkness behind the hat balances out nicely. Also, with any other angle I was not able to get the shadow and the hat to correspond well with each other. I really struggled with the highlight on the floor- I put on too much paint unfortunately, and there was no way to take it off. I think that threw the balance in my piece off a little bit, at least from my perspective. I wanted a lighter value in the highlight so it would contrast better with the hat, instead of blending in with it like it seems to do now.

The piece was received fairly well in critique, although judging from people’s opinions, I think if I would’ve used more foam core in the background it would have positively enhanced my piece.

More than Meets the Eye: Progress Shots

I had trouble getting the paint to blend correctly. It was really difficult on the slippery surface; if I used too much water to try to mix the paint together, it would just rub off. I ended up rubbing the paint off of half of my hat out of frustration and just started over. I also went through trouble trying to get the highlights to look more like highlights and less like strips of white. Other than those two issues, I didn’t run into any trouble.