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So today I learned a very important lesson about the importance of lighting! On the left is what I had begun painting without turning off the lights in the room, as we had done during the other painting periods, and on the left, is what I ended up painting after I turned off the lights. Before, I was just kinda guessing what the values were, with little to no success, and only after I had done the entire part like that did I realize that I really, REALLY needed to turn off the lights. So after I was actually able to see the differences in value, I was able to paint a much more realistic version of the spherical part. Throughout this process, I have surprised myself with how much I'm actually enjoying oil painting. Going into it, I was not very excited because I just thought it was going to be tedious and boring, but it turns out that I actually like finding the subtle nuances in the values in the still life and then applying them to my painting. I also mentally have learned that taking it slower is better and I have learned to pay a LOT of attention to what I see and what I paint, almost like playing a "Spot the Difference" game but just in the values of the objects.
So this class period was a little shorter and so I mainly focused on the base/very bottom of the sculpture and getting more detailed with the values. I think it turned out ok? The roundness of the base seems a little off- I think it's because of the darker values that go more in a straight line than mimicking the curve so I'll try and fix that next class. Based on our time constraints I'm going to try and get as much of the grisaille done as possible so that way I can just say I chose to paint in black and white but we'll see how much I am actually able to accomplish...
Today I finished the brunsaille part of my sketch and began the grisaille portion, creating values using shades of gray, of the vase object. I didn't really see the significance to doing the brunsaille process because we had already done the charcoal for our sketch and it's too abstract to really assist with the grisaille part. But other than that, I like how it's turning out so far, I might need to do a few touch ups and blend out some of the value shifts.
Here is a slide show of my final sculpture, Stressed, and other views that I couldn't show in my gallery. I think I am done! After fiddling around with my sculpture for a bit, I have finally decided that I like the, as Coach phrased it, "angsty little balls" without any other embellishments because I found that they distracted from the spheres and I wasn't a huge fan of how the pieces that I worked on and were fairly proud of, sunk into the background to other, machine-made, elements. I don't think my original content fits my design and so I've shifted it a little. While it still deals with people, it focuses more on the pressure students face to do well in school and grow up to become successful individuals in society. I think that this stress really does have a lasting effect on younger minds, leading to mental health issues as they grow up and generally less appreciation for the joy in life. In my piece, which I'm thinking of calling Turbulence or something along those lines, it can either represent one individual as they grow up and yet still live with the effects and pressures that they experienced as a teen or young adult, or to represent members in society who all are under a lot of pressure to do well, either in school or in their jobs. While it is up to each viewer to interpret my piece to their liking, I think that I am going to generally convey the message that this is about one person who is living with the lasting effects of our educational system and industrial society as they grow up because I feel that it has a stronger effect to convey the extent of how much a person can be affected from these factors.
I forgot to get a pic of my painting with just the charcoal sketch but here is where I got last class. I have just started my brunaille under-painting but it's kinda faint and hard to see. I think I will probably go darker with a few of my values the next time I work on it just to give a little more contrast to the objects, but I have to be aware to not go completely overboard too.
We are going ahead and starting with oil painting and will finish up sculpture along in our free time/when paint is drying so this is what I am going to attempt to depict! We wanted to choose a relatively simple/not too fancy still life due to the limited amount of time we have to work on them so these are my objects! I think the conch shell is probably going to be the hardest just because the values all blend together and there aren't really super clear lines between when one end ends and another begins but oh well, we are just gonna have to see how it goes!
This class, I was actually able to construct part of my sculpture! I have attached all of my scribbles with fishing line and threaded them through the pre-drilled holes and attached them with a strip of the same wire across the top to make sure they don't fall through. I was also able to drill my mounts/eye hooks in the top where I plan on using thicker fishing line to still give the appearance of floating but also make sure it is structurally sound. I'm still kind of tinkering with the idea of adding either lights or mirrors because I don't think the lights are long enough to get the effect I would want and I also made a mistake when I chose the color- I chose a more bronzy tone when I should have gone with a silver but that's besides the point. I like the idea of the mirror bits but I would really need to see them interact with what I already have for me to make a final decision. Also, the daily Google Doodle for the day was of an artist named Ruth Asawa and, as both Coach Hall and my dad pointed out, her art has some very similar parallels to my sculpture and I wish I had known about her before I did my artist spotlight but I definitely plan on researching her and her art more !!
So today was about as fun as watching paint dry because that is literally what I ended up doing for about half of class. I spray painted another layer on my black board and had to wait for that to dry before I could really do anything which was slightly frustrating because today was our last official class day to work on our sculptures. However, towards the end of class I was able to make some progress by cutting the lengths of fishing line and attaching them to my scribbles.
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AuthorNatalie Kim is a senior at MLWGS who likes to do art, take pics, and pet puppers. Archives
May 2020
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