Analysation/Inspiration TIME Unit

The piece of art that I'm analysing/ that was my inspiration is the painting "Time Loop" by Blanka Ciok.

I believe this clock shows the background body and the clock face as to entirely different entities. The background is a rough texture; with patches and smudges, darker color, earthy and chaos. Whilst in comparison the clock face has elegant numeral; a smooth border, organized and still in the same borders.

It also went with my ideology of time being a circle; neverending. The time that has past has left the painting; the time that is still to come is far away in the yet uknown and still unsee-able future, but you know it's there. You know time will continue.

The aforementioned rough texture'd background fit perfectly with my own painting quote, "times are rough". However, this artist decided to make the clock face smooth an elegant whilst I made the whole clock rough.

Along with that the numerals are, in my opinion, a bit of a mixture of both Roman Numerals and the Normal Number system; therefore a bit unbiased. If clock can be unbiased.

Image

Excuse the background that is my jeans covered legs.

Update Nr. 2. Time Unit

If gotten the first round of feedback from my art teacher; he thinks it would be a great idea to fill the crack of the numbers and letters with a color; so that they stand out even more. I was thinking about the color gold; as to me, that color represent cleanliness and greatness, almost holy; which when filled roughly into the cracks of the totally unsmooth letters and numbers would show just how rough times are.

How even the gold and holy isn't as smooth and organized as we think it is.

Then there's the fact of supporting the clock.... yeah... don't think so. I think my clock is alright as it is; it's supposed to be wonky and weird and stuff.

Update on Time Unit

We've recently been to Spain for a week-long class trip; there I saw a clock with half of the number written in roman numerals and the other half in usual numerals, (the computer ones, I don't know what they're called).

Then another class was working with lino cut; therefore I came up with the idea of making a lino cut. The clock face would be the dark grey color of the lino cut material; I'll cut out the numbers. 12 1 2 6 7 8 in roman numerals and 3 4 5 9 10 11 in usual numerals. Then the body of the clock; the rest of the lino cut rectangle. Will be unevenly covered in patches, squared and triangles. Then in the two largest; inscribe the quote, "TIMES ARE ROUGH".

Because of the smaller issues the world is now facing; or rather the issues the world has been facing for a long time but that I just now have been made aware of.

Initial Ideas.

When presented with the idea of being able to focus an artwork on the prospect of time; it got me hooked.

"Time is running out!"
"If I could fall into the sky, do you think time would pass me by?"
"History repeats itself."
"Life is a never-ending circle of time."

These quotes were just some of the ideas that I got; some of them are well known quotes, others are pieces of lyrics.

You can say I was a bit bummed out when we were told that the artwork had to be a clock; a clockwork with face, handles and a body. All coming together to your idea of time.

The first ideas I had was

•  a spiral; which would have given me a huge load of technical difficulties as to how to make the hands go smaller and smaller as they came closer to the center. Then there was the issue of not really finding appropriate numerals.
• spider web; a clock; quite old and no longer functioning, covered in spider webs to show that we've stopped moving. To bring across my thought about the human race no longer developing. Yes, we're constantly creating new things; but our mentalities are still the same as back then. We've created a electric car prototype that could be mass-produced, but we wont start using it; mostly because people are to greedy and as long as oil consuming cars are used, countries with oil are still in power. A power they don't want to use. All that would be brought across in one clock.
• hourglass; an hourglass filled with sand; and a small clock swimming on the surface of the sand. Simply because I think it would be awesome. However; my time would limit me and it would be rushed.
• clock; a normal clock with roman numerals

I'll spend some time thinking about it.

What TIME is it? Unit Introduction

Unit 2: TIME Oct.-Nov. MYPD

Unit Question: What Time is it?

AOI: Human Ingenuity: Impact of innovation and creation on society;

Taking Action to think creatively.

You will be assessed through all four criteria:

A.Knowledge and Understanding: (DW blog assignment) Write a 400 word essay on an artwork that interests you in terms of how it expresses Time. (Is its composition moving or still, fast or slow? Is its subject matter fast or slow? When was it made? What idea of time did the artist have when he made it-what notion of time might his culture have had, compared to your culture? How do its materials express time, ie. how much time did it take to make it? How has it changed through time—both physically, and how do we view it now?

B. Application: Develop skills and apply techniques in the making of your own artwork, which has Time as its theme. (Fix a clock movement to this piece of art. The artwork should both tell time and express time.)

C. Reflection and Evaluation:(DW blog entries) Describe your process, evaluate your work; consider feedback. Use design cycle as a way of ordering and developing your ideas, from rough stages to more finished.

D. Personal Engagement: Demonstrate curiosity, self-motivation and willingness to take informed risks. Support and encourage peers.

Objectives: 1. Develop critical thinking.

2. Develop composition skills
3. Create a multi-media clock that expresses a unique idea of Time

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Egypt; solid or static, slow?

Myan; They seem to have had a cyclical or circular notion of time, things beginning anew after the end.

Mayan painting; ancient but it seems fluid, compared to the Egyptian style.

My painting, called Artifacts; I'm thinking of fleeting or fugitive light, quick-moving, unsteady.

Gericault: The Raft of the Medusa


Romanticism; human experience and emotion.
You can become shipwrecked, and nature takes over--things get out of control. Think Beethoven.

C. D. Friedrich The Ice Flow
Another view of nature, slowly crushing the ship.
Looks geological, slow--and cold.
(by the way, Norwegian National Romantic painters were very inspired by this painter.)

Rene Magritte, Surrealism.
When talking composition, I mean the forms or shapes and colors. The composition is symmetric, solid, slow moving.
With the odd subject (what is symbolic, or giving the story) makes the painting even more slow--as if time stops.

Georgio DeChirico was known as a painter of themetaphysical school. This movement is an odd one:
it took classical architecture and techniques, which leant order to  the world, but depicted the world as a place where order and the knowable are in short supply. It has a dream quality.

As a general rule paintings seem more "timeless" when they lack human figures. Why would this be, do you think?

Marcel Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase. There's a lot of movement here--or at least we see the traces of movement. Do we see a figure, or do we see the traces of this figure, as it has moved in space?

This is a fun example of Futurism.
compositionally, with all its lines and direction, it is fast.
symbolically it is fast too.

Interesting to think: the Italians who started this art movement around 100 years ago loved speed and machines.

If you were to try to show that you were in love with the future now, how would you show it?

Jackson Pollock, Abstract Expressionism
We see lots of movement here in the composition.
What is the subject?
Perhaps it is the painter's very body, his arms, which we sense have tossed this paint down on the canvas. He must have been dancing almost.

Gerhard Richter.
He uses a squeegy or board-like thing to drag the paint, rather quickly.

Another Richter, the same painter.

*Not mine; retrieved from the school art blog so that I have it at hand and everything is a bit easier to see for me.

Finished

I finished my paitning!!!
So, let's sum it up, it's a quite abstract self-portrait, of an anonymous head, my head-shape though, with the greatest symbols of mine, my glasses and my pony-tail hairstyle.


My camera decided to edit the photo.......
I'll have to take a better one soon, but the anonymous text is as much as I got because the mugshot didn't work, the painting would in my opinion have become way too monotone.

A classmate of mine thinks that, "(i'm) just a lazy arse that doesn't want to draw a face."
That may be what you think, but in my view it's an anonymous drawing because not many people will know me and I'll be an anonymous figure for those that are not close to me, or in my class.

I face the problem of not being able to make the text thinner, as the Anonymous, has the first 4 letters darker than the five last ones, due to my inability of using the brush. The glasses are also a bit chunky, which actually symbolizes the fact that "nobody's perfect". And that everything has it's flaws, especially me.

Progress

In case you can not see what this is, which I wont kill you for, I will try my best to explain it to you. I had made a drawing or sketch of myself on paper, which was the task, but then I realized that we had to paint it on a canvas, so I had to make my own graphite paper, take note my wrist hurts a lot, and I have resolved to typing this out with one hand. Before I then had to re-trace the basic lines so that it printed itself on the canvas.........

Just joking, I knew we had to draw on paper before tracing it with graphite paper, but nonetheless my wrist still hurts, and I am still typing this with only one hand, which would totally not explain why I am rambling and writing much more than necessary etc. etc. etc. etc.

Alright, cutting all of that, I spent most of the double period of art, making graphite paper, and did not really get to much else, which is why I am so extremely happy that we got an extension,  because in reality this painting would have had to be finished at the end of the next lesson which is basically 90 min, but thankfully we got an additional 90min

So, plans for the next lesson, start out with the paint, and follow the techniques we learnt last year, think to thick, light to dark etc.

So that means probably the skin first, in a 'light' tone, then the hair, before doing the shirt, and then the background before finishing of with the strong black glasses and the word 'anonymous' written in the corner.

Inspirational Artistic Styles

Paul Gaugin

Salvador Dali

However, I would like to keep my Self-Portrait Recognizable for the ones that know me but kind of Anonymous for the ones that do not, the style of Salvador Dali spoke to me, his eccentric style is quite stunning and he has a specific trademark, his moustache. He has an self-portrait that is extremely abstract, a mask that is slowly melting together and misforming, but the mask has his trademark, a moustache and for the ones that know him, the link is instantly made.

For the purpose of the Symbolic Self-Portrait I have researched and investigated some Self-Portrait Styles.



Paul Gaugin was one of the artist that caught my attention, his style reminded me of picasso, and it showed me that it doesnt necessarily have to be a boring pose Self-Portrait and that the Symbols dont have to be organized to the extreme, since in his case, the symbols look like theyve just been put there to fill the empty spaces.








I asked my fellow classmates what my signature trademarks where, and almost all of them answered my glasses, which are bold and strong, quite in the style of Buddy Holly, another trademark is the fact that my hair is always in a Ponytail, with a few strands hanging loosely framing my face.

In the lesson of 30-8-2012, I have drawn a simple outline of my face, in free-hand, then I decided to trace the shape of my glasses, to have them down as accurate as possible, before adding the strands of loose hair and the rest of the hair slowly falling on my shoulder.

I decided that, due to the fact that I want to remain quite anonymous, and the fact that I am absolute terrible at drawing, noses, faces and mouths, just take a look at the grid drawing I made of Taylor Swift.

I also thought about symbols I could add, I wanted to get across the fact that I was unknown to most of the rest of the school, and due to Anisha continously singing along to Cher Lloyd I googled her and the first shot that came up was a Police Style shot, also referred to as a Mugshot. Holding those black boards with the name and other information, which is a great way to get across the fact that I am anonymous.

Information On the Next Unit

MYPD Self Portrait

cover sheet:

MYP D Art

16 Aug- 13 Sept. 2012, five weeks

Date due: 13 September

SYMBOLIC SELF PORTRAIT

Unit Question: Who Am I?

Area of interaction: Health and Social

Work we will cover in this unit:

• Some history of self portraiture in art history and across cultures
• Anatomy and proportion
• Naturalistic drawing
• Symbols
• Combining symbols with naturalistic (realistic) images

Skills and concepts:

• Using or applying visual arts concepts from earlier in your IST career
• Using your Developmental Workbook to describe your process, updated weekly.
• Using the Creative Cycle (Design Cycle) as a framework for your write up.
• Giving and Using peer feedback (constructive criticism)

Goal: Make a painting that expresses who you are, or how you see yourself.

Describe and evaluate it in your write up.

List two earlier units that might be useful when designing this painting:__________________________________________________________________________

TASK SHEET:

Symbolic Self Portrait

Task Sheet

Painting due: 22 September

Final DW blogpost due: 28 September

Finish portrait/grid drawing to the extent that you can use it for your painting.

• Outlines only are ok.
• It does not need to be shaded.

Finish sketches and mind map of symbols which you combine with your face drawing

• Research one artist from history, which you think shows a self portrait that can be described both in realistic terms (does it look like him/her?) and in symbolic terms (what shapes, things, colors and techniques were used?)
• Can anything that this artist did be applied to the way that you do your painting?
• Include thumbnail sketches of ways of composing your painting.

Begin painting after you have prepared and organized your composition (transferred drawing/s, sketched colors, etc.)

Criteria Key

You will be graded with all criteria.

A. Knowledge and Understanding (1-8)

• Your DW blog should discuss the artist you have picked to research.
• What links can you make between this artwork/s and your own work?
• Any other research or inspiration for your portrait.

B. Application (1-10)

• The finished artwork itself and skills used.
• Preparatory work (sketches, drawings, ideally uploaded to the blog.)

C. Reflection and Evaluation (1-8)

• Following the Creative/Design cycle in your DW blog will help you with this.
• (Cycle: research, design, create, evaluate)
• Feedback (creative criticism from others) should be used and/or evaluated.

D.Artistic Awareness and Personal Engagement (1-8)

• How much enthusiasm you have.
• Risk-taking and creativity, openness.

• Make sure to make entries every week in your DW—what you did during class, and your thought developments.

SLIDE SHOW:

There are as many types of self portrait as there are artists. Here is a selection and recap of the slide show at the beginning of the unit.

This one by Mexican artist Frida Kahlo sets a very high standard.  She has depicted herself in a realistic way. In addition to her accurate features, she has combined several directly symbolic elements: monkey, panther, thorns, etc.

What  symbolic things might you combine with your portrait?

German artist Lovis Corinth has chosen to go more realistic, though his handling of paint is a bit looser perhaps.

It looks as if he has just painted himself in a mirror, using his studio and skeleton as a prop.

I like his double chin and glaring stare.

What makes this painting symbolic?

American artist Chuck Close uses the grid to an even more obsessive degree than I am asking you to do.

Spanish artist Salvador Dali has softened his features, to put it mildly.

Nonetheless, he is recognizable, mainly due to his distinctive mustache, which was his trademark.

Do you have any trademarks that you could use, which would allow others to know whose self portrait they were looking at?

Norwegian artist Odd Nerdrum is known to be fond of painting himself in showy poses. His old-fashioned costume, and old-fashioned way of painting, recall Rembrandt Van Rijn.

Not only the things depicted (old clothes) are symbolic; his very style of painting (Rembrandt's  1600s method) is symbolic. Why would he choose it, do you think?

Here's Rembrandt.

What about a costume for yourself--could you think of clothes that would have a significance for yourself?

And the other Dutchman, Vincent VanGogh.

Painted some 200 years after Rembrandt, he made famous a special style painting and color. The method of applying paint, and the bold use of colors could be thought of as symbolic, or expressive.

Despite this, his portrait is quite realistic and recognizable--very exact in a way.

What way of painting best expresses the way you are?

Summer's Over

Alright, the summer holidays are over and it's back to school. Ready to start a new year of art education, having picked up loads of experience over the summer break, visited the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam which was extremely interesting.

Then some relatives went to Australia and saw the phenomenon of staircase to the moon, which is when the reflection of the full moon creates stripes on the water due to the sand banks under the low sea level creating the illusion of steps, therefore named Staircase to the Moon.

So I decided to combine the rough edged painting style of Van Gogh and the moon and the reflection and painted this with oil based paint on canvas.

-M-

Unit: Painting; Work In Progress

The assessment piece for this unit was to make a still-life painting of the image/scene, however there is the fact that we were not told it was assessed until after we'd started sketching and drawn the basic backgrounds. The arguments started with the teacher after this signalled that we were quite reckless when we weren't graded, in this case we didn't really think about details or being careful, so please take that in mind.

I was viewing the image from a scene lower down, as the picture is taken from a slight bird-view and i sat at a normal view. I was also slightly to the left of this view angle. There are no images of my sketches as the first documentation is the image below.

With a slight brown background, which on the image came out green, and the banana a pale yellow and the doll a darker brown. However I made a mistake and made the pear far too green, and that the color green was not allowed too be used just yet.

Next step was filling in the other colors, and since we weren't allowed to use black, therefore I had to substitute it with the darkest color possible, purple. I also added some purple details on the milk carton and even drew the metal stick, however I was regretting this decision, I also darkened the background slightly. I also darkened the doll.

I regretted the darkening of the doll, so I lightened him up, and I also slightly darkened the background and painted over the metal bar. I straightened the edges of the milk carton and now all I have to do is wait for the painting to dry.

The tape on the edges was CAREFULLY removed, as to not rip any of the sides, however some of the color leaked through so the border is not completely straight. The banana is much paler than in real life due to the banana having been replaced later on the model and that banana was so vibrant and yellow, a color which did not fit into my drawing, therefore the pale banana was not edited.

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-M-

Unit: Painting

The Current Unit in Art has the name Painting.
In this unit we are covering the basics of painting.
Therefore:

1. Big to Small 

2. Thin to Thick

3. Light to Dark

4. Warm to Cool

Measure and draw the big shapes first; use a big brush. Save details for later.

Paint thinly first, like watercolor. You can paint over them easier when you are more sure.

Paint light colors first, mixed with white. Dark colors over light work fine, but not the reverse.

Paint warm colors first, then cool. Yellows and oranges are not as powerful as greens and blues. Cool colors over warm work fine, but not the reverse.

Assessment for this Unit

The assessment for this unit was painting the still life that is visible below, take into mind that we see it from a lower perspective, and not from this said angle.

The 1st Lesson we got to work with this task, the class didn't know it was an assesment, which was doen on purpose so that we wouldn't go off and do it our way but would just mess around with the colors and relax a bit more.

This is a picture of my work at the end of that first lesson, i manages to get the background greenish, so I am hoping to be able to get that corrected later on. I made the mistake of thinking that green was a warm color as well. 

Don't ask me how i managed that. 

In addition I also didn't think about using the red anywhere because i thought there was no red in the image but boy was i wrong.

At the end of the second lesson my picture had progressed to what is seen above. The background slightly corrected, but keeping a abstract kind of feel, which i unfortunately later on found out was not the purpose of drawing still life.

Then comes the fact that we are not permitted to use black. NO USE OF BLACK.

So the parts that had to be black would be done in a dark purple something that gave me the reason to use red. I decided to use the red red, instead of the purple red. Which was a mistake because it would have worked better if i'd used purple red, because that one mixed easier and better with the blue.

I hope to start working on more details and shadows next time, and hopefully finish it.

We only have 1 double lesson left. 90 minutes in total.

p.s. I am screwed.

-M-

Unit: Masks Assesment Part 2 - Creating the Actual Mask - 29th of March

 At the start of the lesson I had the mask as the image says below, having followed the steps from the Youtube video.

However I might have used too little silver foil, so the mask was out of shape after having laid with a weigh on top for a whole week. However, I thinking that today was the last lesson I had, didnt re-do it.

Then the next step was that  the mask didnt have the right shape so that i had to re cut it.

Then I painted it and layered it with tissue paper to make a texture a bit more lace like..... I failed at it miserably.

At the end this is what I ended up with