So today we went on a walking field trip to the ICA and the task was to find a piece of art that we liked and then to write a list of ten words that described the process that we think they used to make their art. I stumbled upon a work by artist Paul Mpagi Sepaya and was intrigued by the blurred parts of the image. Most photographers want to depict forms clearly or, at the very least, in focus and so to find multiple images where forms were intentionally blurred and shadowed was something I found to be unique. His content as I interpreted it was about how people, of light and dark skin as well as straight and queer sexual orientation, are all essentially the same and shouldn't be typified into race, gender, etc. I really like how he created something so mysterious and hazy with an art form that is usually focused on depicting a form "perfectly" and I want to try and experiment with this style a bit. Here are a few links if you would like to learn more about his art!
https://www.artsy.net/artist/paul-mpagi-sepuya https://www.paulsepuya.com/ www.guggenheim.org/artwork/artist/paul-mpagi-sepuya
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Today, I went on a First Friday art walk around Richmond, VA where I walked to various galleries with a group of friends to discover lesser known artists in the area. I particularly enjoyed seeing work by an artist named Todd Hale as we had actually seen his work at a gallery last year and it was neat to compare how aspects of his work has changed and stayed the same since. Hale's works in the past and present both use color extensively, mainly in bright, highly saturated tones however this time, he seemed to focus on more digital processes. Based on his descriptions and what I could see, he used the movie Alice and Wonderland and altered parts of the film to look unrecognizable. Then it looked like he printed them out and manually cut out and rearranged them on a canvas before pouring epoxy over the piece. I was particularly drawn to these pieces as I am interested in working in a mixture of digital and physical works and it was neat to see a way that both were combined in a single work. I also looked him up and found that he also does photography, another art form in which I am interested. This was a rather neat discovery because he seems be interested in many of the same things I am and while his work is a bit more chaotic ? than I would describe mine, it is neat to see how we both use the same/similar mediums but in different ways. His work has given me more ideas on how I can experiment with mine so I am particularly excited for the upcoming quarter!
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What initially attracted me to Jarek Kubicki was that he deals with both photography and digital art, two fields that I would like to delve into further. However, after researching him, I found that he also works as a creative director for an advertising agency and because I want to go into marketing as a career, it blew my mind that he was doing both at once. I really like the surreal-ness of his work and it has inspired me to try and blend my digital works with my physical. sites
This is his official art website if you would like to check out what he does! www.kubicki.info/ This is his facebook page where you can view more of his art: www.facebook.com/pg/jarek.khaal.kubicki/photos/?tab=album&album_id=181310391888330 This is the piece done by Monet that kinda inspired this lil adventure. It's cool how you can see the same strokes he used when painting in this drawing (more impressionistic and dashy) and is still able to depict a fairly realistic scene. 11/13/19- I got a lot of complements in class today on how I portrayed the water/waves as well as my mark-making for the boomerang-shaped rock formation. I did have some critique that I needed a bit more value so I added more to a couple of the rocks to give them more depth. Overall I am fairly pleased with how it turned out- the water turned out looking rather organic and free so I was happy with that but many of my proportions are off and some of the rocks look like they are at a different angle when compared with others.
11/12/19- So I'm done for the night. I tried my best with the water but some areas are definitely not quite the same value wise. I'm also not super happy with the proportions of some of the formations because it makes the overall composition more condensed. However, it could, theoretically, be much worse. :) 11/10/19- Ha so it's been a sec since I've last worked on this but I have made progress. I am realizing that I really messed up my perspective somewhere along the way as it looks like I'm looking down on instead of looking across the cliffs. I also messed up on the proportions as some parts of the cliffs are larger and others are smaller but it's a bit late for me to try and fix all of that so it's just going to have to exist. I am overall not mad with how it's turning out but I think I could have planned out the general shapes a bit better so that the overall product had a more accurate result. I also found that my drawing "style" aka drawing with super thick and heavy lines, especially when I mess up, is actually rather advantageous for this particular piece as the shadows of the cliffs require thicker lines to give the impression of depth. I may have procrastinated finishing this piece a little so I'm only about halfway done and it's due in t-minus two days- wish me (and my sleep schedule) luck!! 10/22/19- I like where I am right now. I am able to give the appearance of detail without having to get too too deep into accuracy because after staring at the same clump of rocks for hours, it all kinda starts to look the same. So it isn't going to be exact to the image, but I'm hoping to get some realism out of it. For the critique today in class, Mia suggested using a piece of wood or something to have at an angle above the paper so I can rest my hand without smudging things. I am worried in general with the time line because I think I'm a bit behind but hopefully I can get some work done this week. 10/10/19- I realized that some of my proportions/general arrangement of stuff was inaccurate so I tried to change it and I think it is better? I'm getting a little frustrated with the paper because it is a little too smooth and anytime I touch it, the charcoal lifts from the paper which makes this a tedious process. Overall though, I am happy with how it is turning out. 10/6/19- This marks the start of the first home project of the year! So I am choosing to draw this seascape/landscape in charcoal on a larger than average piece of paper. I actually thought I would originally do this in pen and ink but I was looking online for examples of landscapes and I found a seascape of some cliffs over water done by Monet. This was actually done in charcoal and I liked how the water was done so I'm going to try and use the same material although I doubt mine will be as successful as his. I also made a kinda big mistake where I forgot to mathematically scale the paper up before cutting it so things are automatically not going to be perfect but I'm going to roll with it and hopefully end up with a product close to the actual proportions. Looking at the pic and my first "draft" side by side I'm realizing that there is a lot that I need to change so my plan is to rearrange the stuff next time and then move on from there. 10/28/19- Today in class, I was looking at my work and realized that it seemed just a bit unfinished and so after consulting with some of my peers, we decided that it would be good for me to add black lines around the hair and face to contribute more to the effect that I was going for and it made a HUGE difference! I feel much better about how the piece turned out and while there are some places where the lines are a bit thicker than I would prefer, I am ultimately content with my final product. I like my content where I am trying to point out the hypocrisy with top universities that say that it is ok to be human and that they aren't looking for perfection when in reality, the only way to get in is if you are the perfect student and contributor to society. It puts a lot of stress on students, which as a senior applying to college, is something that I feel on almost a daily basis. I wanted the figures to look 2D because what college admissions counselors see is a sheet of paper with our grades, extra-curriculars, essays, and teacher recommendations that is supposed to try and encompass an entire human being. I intentionally chose the proportions of races that I did because if you look at statistics for Ivy League schools, you see that the Caucasian race makes up the largest percentage of students, then Asians, and then African Americas, Hispanics, and Native Americans make up the very small remainder of the students. The font in the background is also the same font the Common App uses and is what most colleges use to collect the information of applicants.
10/26/19- I spent a LOT of time today painting logos and doing small details here and there. I decided to add a black border around the sweatshirts in order to make them pop a bit more and I think it also helped/contributed to the 2D effect that I was going for. I had some difficulty with the arm contour lines because originally, I had tried to make the sweatshirts look a little bit more realistic and had tried to add value with black- warning: it doesn't work. After I had painted like four of the shirts that way I realized that using simply a darker shade would probably have been the way to go. I ended up just painting over them again because I felt that it ultimately didn't add to my content or general vibe I was going for. 10/25/19- I've finished everyone's base color for their sweatshirts and this actually took a lot longer than expected. I had trouble finding sweatshirts with the logo of the college on it for a few of them and afterwards, it took a bit to match the color as best as I could. 10/23/19- I am making slow, but steady progress. I have done everyone's hair, although I would like to go in a few and add more highlights and I am not happy at ALL with the blond boy's hair but that will be adjusted. Unfortunately, I am still behind and while I'm planning both lunch and part of after school painting, I think I might have to work on it at home for it to be completed by Monday. But overall, I am pleased with hoe it has turned out, even though I really don't know what I'm shooting for as far as a visual aesthetic. 10/21/19- I finally have gotten to actually painting the people, getting through almost all of the figure's hair. I need to go through and add more values to some that I have already done and lighten some of the browns because right now, it is all reading very dark. I am rather behind so I will need to spend more time either during lunch or after school in order to finish. 10/18/19- We were able to use the laser cutter in order to make custom stencils! It was really cool actually because instead of spending almost an entire class cutting out letters, I was able to just pop my sheet of plastic in and 14 mins later, it was all done! I am overall pretty pleased with how they turned out, there are a few words that turned out a bit messy and less-than-perfect but in a way, it works with the content. 10/14/19- I wasn't happy with how dark the color of my background turned out and so I decided to repaint the layers with a lighter purple and I'm much happier. However, this did create a chunkier texture on my canvas where you can see some individual paint strokes which is slightly irritating, but if you are far enough away you can't really tell. Coach and I talked again about the stencils and what I'm going to have to do is using either an exacto (?) knife or the laser cutter, cut into a piece of (I forgot but it's a thin sheet of clear plastic) and trace out my letters. I'm fine with this process; however, it means it's going to take a bit longer than expected which could put me behind overall. 9/25/19- I am beginning to plan my first piece of the year! It is going to be commentary on the college application process and the hypocrisy of selective universities. I am still a lil unsure of the composition at this point but I have my basic idea down. 10/9/19- So I have finally put some paint on the canvas! Unfortunately, it's a lil darker than I was going for so I may end up repainting the whole thing. I also talked with Coach and the fancy pen writer we thought we might use isn't large enough for the canvas so I'm probably going to make a stencil and go from there. Meanwhile, I've completely changed the design of my college students. I'm going to make them in color but leave them faceless and more two dimensional to show how colleges don't get to see the entire person, only select bits and pieces here and that that condense a person into a very 2D sheet of paper. 10/7/19- They have hair now !! So I am a lil further behind than I would like. Ideally, I would be painting now but it is what it is. I am second guessing how I want to paint the figures. Before, I was going to go from a mainly black portrait with vague facial characteristics but now, I am wondering if I should emphasize race a bit more because it is an important factor in my content and it would add another aspect to my work. I was planning on doing this by painting the figures in a more two dimensional manner and with brighter colors. I still have to do the background before I get to that though so I will probably plan a bit more with some sketches and work on the background in the meantime. 10/1/19- So I mainly spent class today cutting mats for a figure drawing and an artist statement and then cutting and collecting my materials for my home project. I didn't get a whole lot done on paper today but I talked with Coach about how I should do my letters and turns out, we have a new machine that can trace what is on an online doc onto a new surface, so we might try using that instead of cutting a stencil. I'm going to resize some of my figures because some of the heads are too big/small and not giving the perspective that I am going for. 9/29/19- I have started my basic outlines of the people and am like 90% sure I know what I'm going to do. I think I'm going to have the background like a light purple/purple blue and have the words repeating in the background. I'm not sure if I am going to do counter-change of the text on the people themselves because I think it might get a little too busy and clutter the images. I'm not sure exactly how I am going to get the words in the background. I know I'm going to have to use a stencil to get the uniformity I am looking for, but I'm not sure exactly how to do this. I thought that this would take a lot longer than it did. I really only spent a day working on this and the canvas is more on the smaller side so I guess that helped but anyways I am fairly pleased with how this turned out! It's a little more off centered than I had planned but it doesn't really change anything relating to my content so I can live with it...kinda but all jokes aside I thought I was able to capture the form of the flower pretty accurate to what it actually is and was able to portray the shading of the petals pretty well. I didn't quite now how to portray the little veins in the petals and looking back, I think if I had curved more of the lines I may have been able to give the flower more of a 3D effect as it reads a little flat to me. Overall though, I am happy with the final result, especially considering some of the first sketches I did and one thing that I actually ended up liking a lot is the background. I was kinda nervous to go in with such a dark color but I think that it worked out and made the flower pop more than it would have had I used a lighter tone.
Sorry I have been MIA for a bit! I was making so many posts with so little progress that I didn't feel that it was actually productive so I took pics at more important points and decided to post them all together with briefer commentary because at this point it was all stitching the background. I will say I am happier with the technique I switched to because it is much more uniform than what I was trying to do with the yellow but it also just makes the yellow stitching stand out even more and I am NOT a fan. Unfortunately I'm out of yellow string so I can't fix it at the moment. Also, I realized that my phoenix is reeeaaally like the exact same as my inspiration cough cough copyright/plagiarism issues cough cough so I'm trying to make it at least not as obvious by adding more feathers to the tail, wings, and body. I also have decided against going back into the bird with white string because it is going to be really time consuming and I'm not sure that it will make that significant of a difference. Also I am worried that the black stitching I did would be covered up by white.
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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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