Alison

Deadline #3

For this third set of three, I continued with watercolors and I also introduced new types of media in my final piece of the set. My least successful piece was definitely the colored pencil/paint piece with the boom box. With this piece I had trouble creaking movement with the words while at the same time balancing an interesting focal point with the movement the lines created in the piece. In the end, the text ended up getting lost, and my piece looks cluttered and messy. With the other two pieces, I feel that I've created interesting movement without overdoing the piece. I feel that my tree piece was particuarly sucessfuly because after doing a few pieces with watercolors, I now have a better understanding of how to use the materiel sucessfully. I also think my frog piece was sucessful in that I introduced new elements to my pieces to make the layers and movement more interesting. I think using the magazines is a resourceful way to make my pieces more interesting that create an easier access to lots of colors and patterns. Hopefully, in this final set of 3, I can integrate different types of materials into my composition. I would like to make these different elements more hidden and a part of the piece rather than extra layers on top of a painting or drawing.

Deadline #2

In this second period of work, I've been more conscious of the words that I use and their placement. I've planned the pieces around the text and the movement of the text instead of blindly using the text as a base layer. I've also chosen to take the element of the gesture drawing out of my concentration. Now, I would say that my concentration focuses on giving these static words "life" by integrating them into the movement of the piece; these words are given life through their motion and actions in real life rather than being static elements on a page. In this set of three, I also feel like I've been more deliberate in my mark making and instead of adding colors and new elements to the piece, I've planned my pieces and used the medium and mark making to better illustrate the the type and energy of the movement I'm trying to convey. In my final piece focusing on the flowers, I feel like the watercolor and transparent layers adds to the delicate, cascading feel of the water and flowers. I used the qualities of the watercolors to help me create movement while in the piece with the gun, I didn't really use the watercolors to their greatest potential. While I've refocused my concentration, I also feel that I've been open to different types of mediums because in my first set of pieces I just assumed that I would work with paint in every piece because that's what I was comfortable with.

Concentration

My concentration originally focused on movement and ways of illustrating movement through gesture drawings and text. As I have worked through my three pieces, I realized that my concentration is not as focused on the gesture drawings as I had originally planned. Now, I feel like my pieces are about taking verbs and nouns and making these isolated, static words and making them move throughout my piece. Originally, I had the text as a base layer of my piece, as if it was a part of the surface that I had chosen to work on. Now I realize that the text is an integral part of the piece and the way in which I add text can better illustrate the movement and energy of the piece. In my next series, I plan to be more deliberate in where I put the text and how I make it a part of the composition. Originally, I had the text simply as another layer and element of the composition, but as I move forward, I hope to make it more of the focus and use the text to better illustrate the different types of movement I choose to focus on. In first piece, I blindly added text and chose colors, and as a result, I had trouble unifying the piece and directing the eye through the piece to accurately portray the lines of movement I wanted to focus on. Moving forward, I plan to be more deliberate in my planning, so that the color and text become a more central tool to portray movement rather than the gesture drawing.

Digital Submission



I struggled a lot with this assignment because for some reason, I could not translate the design elements and principles to photoshop. My pieces often got cluttered with different layers and colors, and there was a lack of movement and focus in my piece. Even in my final sumbission, the triangular colors do not work very well with the base layer. I think the shoes are sucessful in their repitition, but there is still disconnect between the solid colors and the doll images.

Embracing Chaos!!



As I worked through this piece I began to realize that even with flat colors, the shapes create different layers and planes. Initially I was unsure how to make the piece interesting with only two flat colors and solid shapes, but as I worked, I learned that the shapes I painted were not just outlines of the given object; the shapes are meant to create interesting positive and negative shapes to move the eye throughout the piece. It took me awhile to understand that I shouldn't just paint the outlines of shapes; I had to paint what I needed to make the composition successful through variation in line and opacity.

After I painted the two objects, I worked towards unifying the sandpaper and the purple splatters with the two objects; I tried to make each element on it's own plane but at the same time, interact with one another. In addition, I had to tone down certain elements in the background and block out larger shapes of color in order to emphasize the parts of the piece that I felt were most important.

I think this assignment allows art to be flat shapes without losing interest or thought. Through this piece, I learned that not having a 3-D object in my piece does not take away from any of the design elements; instead, it allows for the piece to be driven by shape and the large shapes of color.

Object Still-life!!



As the piece progressed I found that the ridiculous objects played less and less of a role in the overall effect of the piece. In the end, i feel like the still-life set up made the piece more serious, and the objects did not add humor to the piece. Instead they were just objects that were chosen to create a composition. I wasn't able to move past the traditional understanding of a charcoal still-life to make the objects drawn more humorous and prominent in the overall effect and focus of the piece.

I'm still struggling to uderstand how these objects affect the message of the piece because once again, they became elements of my composition; their "humor" did not play a large role in how I approached the piece. But I think that if I had made the objects and presenting them in an concious, artistic way, then I would say that the message would be that art is not always serious. We can find beauty and interesting qualities in anything that we encounter in our life...the "deep " and "pensive" landscapes and portraits are not the only form of art...anything can become art depending on the way we approach and present it.

Self Portrait!!



If light was a metaphor for this piece, I think that it would represent seeing and understanding myself, and letting other people see this version of myself, in my truest form without changing myself for others based on their expectations and perceptions of who I am. The close angle and drastic values of my face give a sense of intimacy to the drawing, and I feel like my facial expression shows me at my happiest. I have created a persona where I am happy and in the moment and the environment that I have created in the piece is one where I am comfortable and at ease. I think that If I was to start a body of work with this piece, I would try to capture other people when they feel most comfortable and happy, and I would try to help the content fit the form through a proximity of the photograph just like our self portraits, and I would also consider using color as a way to convey the emotions of my subject.

Project 2!!!



This project focused on taking an ordinary object and making it interesting through the composition and creative use of the elements and principals of design. I chose to use snakes as my focus, and from the beginning, I knew that I didn't want to use truly representational images in my work; instead, i wanted to flatten the shape and focus on the emphasis o​f shape through color, pattern, and line.

Initially I had planned my piece to be one large tessalation of snakes using everything but paint as my medium. Having this set plan in my sketchbook made me hesitant to put paint on my piece, but in order to achieve the bold affect that I wanted, the paint was necessary. Basically, all of the planning pages that we worked on hindered me because I was so hesitant to do something outside of these initial drawings. In the later stages of the piece, I looked at Basquiat's work where he blocked out large portions with solid, opaque colors to help me balance the vibrant colors that covered the entire piece.

In the end, I learned more about the effects of color and shape in a piece, and if this piece was to be a part of a concentration, I would focus on how the color palette affects the emotion of the piece. My pieces would be on a larger scale to truly see how color moves the eye through a piece and affects the overall feeling evoked, and each piece would use a different color scheme but with the same type of approach to the composition. In addition, I would continue to look at Basquiat's works to better understand how color affects the shapes and movement of the piece.