Figure Drawing Intentions

My Intentions

In this project I have really enjoyed getting to fully understand the figure and play with line and shadows to create a figure.  Through this process I have really enjoyed working with hands and trying to draw hands in their relaxed positions, but really focusing on the shape and shadows within the hand.  I have really enjoyed playing with lines and the effect of building up lines, making them thicker and opposing that with thin light lines.  I have done a little with the face and features of the face, but I would like to study that further as the project progresses.  I have also really enjoyed looking at different people and doing quick sketches because it forces me to look at the overall figure and bang out the general form before turning to small details which is opposite what I usually do in my process.  I would like to also really try and get the whole figure on my paper, for some reason I keep enlarging my image making it hard for me to fit it on the page.  I really like my work with vine charcoal, I did a little work with ink, but I like how fluidly I am able to work with charcoal and how loose I can be with my hand, but also meticulous with details.  The drawing of Kennedy where I focused on her facial details I feel really needs to be worked on more.  I feel that the face needs some added details and shading to look more humanistic and to tone down the eyes, because the eyes seem to be very strong in this picture.  I really like the picture I drew of Gustavo sitting down as I feel it ended up very proportional and looking as I wanted it to.  I really like how his back turned out with the ruffles in the shirt showing him sitting leaning up against something.  I see myself continuing to delve deeper into the figure and continuing to work with charcoal to see where that takes me. 

I was really impressed with the stop action film made by William Kentridge.  The was he was able to create a picture and then through little changes create a movie was incredible.  While I don't think this will be part of my process it was a really inspiring and interesting process that I learned a lot from.  I also really enjoyed the work done by Kara Walker with her figures.  I thought it was really cool that without any shadows or lines she was still able to create such an incredible figure.

William Kentridge

His use of line and shadow here is really exemplary especially in the face reflected in the mirror.

Kara Walker

Poem Illumination- Walking Across the Atlantic by Billy Collins

Reflection

My intentions for this project from the last blog post have not changed dramatically.  I have stayed on the same path of going with my instincts to create my final piece.  For the final my first instinct was to draw the water from the fishes point of view looking upwards.  After successfully creating this piece I decided that I wanted to incorporate some part of the fish into my final as I had spent a lot of time understanding the different aspects of the fish and I wanted to include these findings in my final.  That is when I decided to include the fish tail and part of the fish body with the scales.  I decided not to put the fish on the same piece of paper as the water because I wanted the fish to really stand out so I created the fish on  a different sheet of paper and then pasted it on top of the water.  I though about doing two fish, but decided against it because I thought it would look like the fish were swimming away from something as oppose to just swimming in a natural direction.  Through my use of line and direction I tried to create movement on the page which was further created with the addition of the fish tail to show movement across the page.  The other formal element I used a lot was color and using different colors to create a very vibrant scene.  All together I think this project was a really amazing experience for me because I had a really in depth process that went all different places which was really interesting.  I enjoyed just going with my initial instincts and not being so worried about what I was going to end up doing in the end, but instead just following my instincts and seeing where those ended up taking me.

Poem Intentions

My Intentions

So far I have gone with my instincts on each of my works.  I started out with a focus on fish looking up at boots.  From there I focused on fish and how to make them as realistic as possible.  At the same time I focused in on boots and tried to draw detailed and realistic boots.  The fish led me to bubbles.  I created a few small bubbles with fish and boots inside and then got into an idea of a larger bubble with the other images around the bubble.  The spherical shape of the bubble led me to the idea of earth because of the shape but also because of the water on earth.  Then I started thinking about eyes and went a little rogue with the idea of an eye ball.  I decided that wasn't exactly what my intentions were, but it did help me with my next impulse, which was to think of the water from the eyes of a fish.  That is where I am now with the image in the middle of the picture above which is suppose to be the water looking up at it as a fish.  I am not really sure where this might take me, but for right now I am planning on finishing this image and then deciding if that is the path I want to take for my final, or if I want to go back to some of my previous instincts and expand on those for my final.

Project 2: Artist Emulation

Van Gogh Emulation

I really enjoyed this project for many different reasons.  First of all this project helped to give me a new understanding of the challenge it takes not only to copy an artists painting, but to go further and really understand an artists style.  The ability to understand their tendencies and then to actually take that knowledge and apply it to your own work was an incredibly interesting experience for me. It really helped me to understand just how challenging painting can be especially if you do not get to fully rely on your own styles and intuitions, but instead have to think, what would your artist do.  Van Gogh was very surprising in that most of his paintings were inspired by personal events in his own life as oppose to movements in the art world.  Van Gogh focused on short strokes of color that when seen together created one object, but separately were just strokes of color. Van Gogh didn’t necessarily mix colors, but instead just put two different colors next to each other so when seen together they looked like the color Van Gogh wanted.  He did many different studies of different scenes, but I always think of him as being best know for his landscapes so that is what I decided to focus on for my final.  I really enjoyed the short lines in different parts of my final piece, because I felt it did a really good job of coming together to create the final scene and it gave it more of an interesting point to draw your eye to. This is a style that I might try and bring into my works, not for the whole piece but for different parts of it.  While I tried my best to incorporate the idea of not mixing and just putting two colors next to each other to create one color it just doesn’t fit my style.  I like to mix my colors and work to get as close to the color as I can and this style of Van Gogh’s didn’t work for me.  I still like putting different colors nest to each other I just like it better when they are a little more neutral so there is only a slight difference between the two colors. Overall this project taught me how to take another artists style create your own study in the artists style.

Project 1: Representing the Still Life

My Intentions

Originally when looking at the still life I was really inspired by the hook hanging from the rope.  The texture of the rope intrigued me, and something about the hook hanging there from mid air caught my attention.  As I continued to study the still life the chain caught my attention and much later I noticed the wheel.  I decided to use ink as my medium because in one of the first quick contours we did as a class I used ink and loved the way I was able to create the objects on the page.  I started with the chain because I liked the way the chain could carry some of the weight of the page.  Having it start on the page but fall off the page created an interesting composition, because the object had a starting point but no ending point.  Then to offset the chain I added the rope and hook that had originally intrigued me.  When I had successfully created these two pieces on the page I realized I needed something light in the background to help offset the darker two objects and also to help draw the eye away from the lower left hand corner where the hook and the bottom of the chain met.  Once I added a portion of the wheel to the lower part of the composition the overall composition entirely improved.  As a last impulse I decided to add the splats of light ink in the background so that the white wasn’t quite so bright and helped soften the eye to the rest of the image.  The formal decisions I made were the use of a completely black and white scale.  I focused a lot of my energy in this piece on the texture, by creating tiny brush strokes that came together to help form the final object.  I also played a lot with light and dark on my page, with parts of the piece very white like the background, while other parts were very dark like the highlights in the chain or hook.

On my second piece I didn’t really have any intentions.  I had a couple extra days and wanted to just do a fun quick piece with the free time.  I used ink and created the bolts, the jar, and another triangular object.  I didn’t really like the outcome of the ink so I decided I would try using pen, which I had never used before.  I used different thicknesses to outline different shadows in the three objects which really helped to make them stand out and look unique.  I focused mainly on the pen and how to use different amounts of pressure on the pen to outline different values.  The formal decisions I made were to stay in the black and white scale and to play with the lights and darks.   I continued to study texture just instead of small lines to create texture I outlined values.