Reflecting at the end of the course

This year in art class all started for me when we planted the seeds in our sketch book. To me it symbolized how we will grow as an artist and as we look back it's amazing to see how the earliest seed was not as detailed or all the same color and shade. The ones further in the book were much more meaningful. We took our sketchbooks outside and started drawing different objects that we found interesting. Although mine didn't come out perfectly I really liked how it was my choice to decide what I wanted to draw. That's what is my favorite part of art. The creativity and excitement of never knowing just exactly what will come out. So many times during the course of these two terms did I start out with one idea and it turn into a totally different piece of art all together. For example, our last project with the pencil drawings. My idea from the beginning was to create a dancer who was looking up into the spotlight. As I searched for pictures of a dancer and spotlights the google search showed a picture of car headlights. This image really scared me. The fear and symbolic potential right away changed my idea. In art I have learned that creativity goes much farther beyond just do what you want. It's how one little detail can ruin or make a drawing. It's the passion you put into your work, the excitement, and the care taken. As far as ups and downs go I definitely knew what projects I was better at. I really enjoyed the principles of design projects because I love to create collages and make everything symmetrical and just right. Creating self-portraits was hard for me to do because I could never get my head perfectly right or draw my nose the way I wanted it or my eyes the right length apart. I suppose without these flaws I would never have been able to learn what I really enjoyed about art. I believe that art is always in your life, whether you want it to be or not. Creativity, excitement, passion, textures, and shapes. I truly don't know how it all ends but then again how can you? Art is always in ones life it's just how they use the opportunities set forth to direct someone's journey of life.

I See the Light Drawing

Crashing Cars

My drawing was meant to show two cars crashing into each other. This was meant to symbolize that life is short and the shot of light can make everyone stop thinking and "freak out." My goal in using light and dark was to really emphasize the absolutes of each. The bright white was to show the car lights overlapping as the cars are getting closer to each other. The black is to show the creepy side of the picture and that the scene is taking place late at night. I thought of this idea when I thought of two cars. I right away knew that the absolute opposite colors (darkest black and whitest white) would give this drawing a better meaning. When it came to the windows I had to erase a lot to get a light gray so that it would be lighter than the car but not white. This was a challenge for me and the H pencil was helpful when it came to fulfilling the correct shades. I found it really hard to use the 6B pencil because it was hard to create clean strokes making the background smoothly black.

Self Portrait as a Chipmunk

I chose to create a chipmunk because they are fast, little, energetic, and smart. These all are qualities that describe me as well. I placed the chipmunk in a train station. I did this because train stations are very busy, loud, fast, and exciting. You would never find a chipmunk in a train station, better yet train stations are busy and filled with extreme amounts of people. For the most part chipmunks are the opposites of each other. I have worked with clay a lot in the past. I learned how to take out the extra clay not necessary and create textures. I made the fur on my chipmunk and its tail scruffed up so that it looks like the fur of an actual chipmunk. I learned that the little details strongly help with the final product. Creating little people in the background and a train track and puffy cheeks really helped show what I was trying to emphasize.

Me-scape: A Reductive Block Print

At first I was very confused with the process. I didn't understand how my prints would work if I kept taking out space. Once I got the hang of it it wasn't all that bad. In the end I had two pretty good prints that I was satisfied with. I'm very happy with the colors that I chose because they complement each other well. I think that my color choice really helped create the best prints I could. If I were to re due the prints I probably would have taken more time with measuring the squares so that it would all of landed better on the actual paper. Overall I'm pretty happy with my outcome.

Thinking about the use of light in art

In my dance shows there is a great amount of lighting used. There are spot lights to direct the audiences attention to the dancers. Also, there are colored lights creating the mood of the song and creates the amount of energy that is being preformed in the dance. Another time where light has played a big role is in a play. If you go to plays on Broadway or Boston or even a school play there is at least one thing in common, lighting. Lighting can create a dramatic scene and show the light and darkness on the stage. Light can be symbolic in art. It can create a darkness or lightness or for example in the Charles White painting, there is grief and relief and hope. All of those emotions in one painting was all created just by the lighting. Lighting helps symbolize different extreme emotions to help explain the deepness and real point of the art work.

I am a sister, a dancer, and Jewish

I think that the strengths of my self portrait are that all of the things that I drew represent what I am most passionate about so I could represent them all well. All of the pictures that are cut up show the different pieces of my life. In the pictures are the people I love while doing the things I love most. I don't think there is just one thing that comes through the most because I tried to balance the most important things in my life equally. I did this because there's more then one thing that means the most to me. I created a collage and dividing my head up into four different sections to create four different drawings. Lastly, the contrast in my self portrait creates emphasis because the black and white cut outs stand out.

Artist-in-Residence: Alexander DeMaria

I really like this piece because unlike most of his other drawings this one has color. It is very detailed which goes along with his style and the rest of his work. The light and dark contrast is very effective and in order to really see this drawing you have to look very close so that you can see absolutely everything that is going on. This week I would like to ask Alexander De-Maria how he is so patient with his work and how long it usually takes to complete a single piece of work.