Self Portrait

 For this project, I ventured outside of my comfort zone quite a bit. I chose to take a more abstract approach to the self portrait. I worked in part with paint by painting over wood blocks, yet I also worked sculpturally by creating a three dimensional piece with my blocks. Usually I like to work somewhat abstractly, but this project took it to a whole new level. My intentions were very similar throughout the project. I wanted to convey feeling through the contrasting colors, textures and shapes instead of relying on precise and exact drawings. It was hard to challenge myself to come up with formations that really resonated with me. There was originally going to be a second half to my sculpture, but instead of adding a second half that I was not as pleased with, I stuck with the main part which I believed conveyed much more feeling. All the different aspects and details of the sculpture related back to the self portrait theme because it felt as if each part, however small it may be, corresponded to the very different events and important things in my life. They were not specific by any means, but just represented everything as a whole and how different each thing could be. I mostly used Chris Johansson as inspiration for this project because his works conveyed a very similar feeling to what I wanted to express. I really liked how he used lots of different textures and colors while also creating intriguing configurations that added depth to his work.

Intentions for Self Study

I would like to take a more abstract route for my for my self study project. This past week I have worked on both realistic and abstract portraits but I am straying towards abstraction. For inspiration, I began to look through the work of other artists. One artist whose work I found to be very conceptually pleasing was Chris Johansson. I would like to incorporate some of his style into my self portrait. In order to do this, I am going to be using lots of different colors and textures to put across a vibrant feel in my work. My goal for this project is to create a piece that represents me less with physical attributes, but more with emotional feel. I may even attempt to create a series of pieces and form a set that fits together. I plan on mostly using wood on canvas for my piece and this will allow me to work with multiple different textures in order to create the feel I would like. Overall, I would like to challenge myself to create a work that fully expresses myself without actually implementing any realist work.

Here are some of my sketches from this week:

Final Blog Post Of The Year

I believe that my Edward Hopper painting from our artist emulation project was my most successful piece. I was really able to spend a lot of time on it and therefore I had more time to refine and revise my work. In this project I was able to explore my use of color and texture. I used contrasting colors and texture in order to draw the viewers eye around the whole painting. Also details contrasted nicely with the very vague painting. I think that I was able to successfully achieve my goal of creating a quiet, peaceful scene just like Hopper did in Early Sunday Morning. The smooth colors help to relax the whole feel of the painting which is exactly what I was working for.
The most challenging project of the year for me was our final landscape project. I find that I have a harder time trying to represent realistically which is why I lean more towards the abstract or even half-abstract. My final work only somewhat resembles my early sketches. My early sketches were fairly detailed and specific, but when I got to the painting, I found the paint hard to control which led to me using less detail. The whole final work wound up pretty abstract but I was still able to go back to using strong colors and textures as good contrast. Also, the composition wound up a little more "cookie cutter" than I would have liked but I was able to work on that and try to make it less predictable once I had the basics down.
I think that the formal strength I worked on this year the most was balance. This goes for every aspect of my work. Whether it was color, texture, composition or light, I felt that I was always able to find a fairly good balance between what elements were working well.
As a technical strength, I believe that my painting has come a long way. I have painted for most of the year, especially with oil based paints and therefore I have had virtually A whole year to hone in on my skills.  I would still like to master details better though. That was the one thing I had trouble with all year while I was painting. SOme works could have been a little better if I could have added detail. That is what I would really like to work on next year.
Lastly, as a conceptual strength, I believe that I have learned what my favorite style of work is. I like to let my imagination go and while I do try to keep some realism and some basic aspects of realism, I really like to work abstractly.  This will help me a lot going forward because now I know what I do well and also what I can look forward to working on next year!

Landscape Final

Throughout this project while studying and creating my own landscape, I have simplified my definition of landscape. I believe that a landscape could be as basic as a large captured scene. I think this definition relates to my "artistic voice" a lot because I have noticed over the last year that I have found a particular interest in a mix of realism and abstraction when representing landscapes. This mix really showed up in my last work of the year. As I have compared realism and abstraction, I believe that I have also relied a lot on contrasting colors and textures to get across certain emotions in my works.

In terms of feedback, a lot of what my classmates had to say was about my use of strong colors. They said that the harsh difference in the building's color and the background's color really made each aspect of the work "stand out". It was also interesting to see where the viewer was brought into the painting. Everyone had a different place that their eye was drawn to. There were lots of possible "entrances" to the painting. Other comments that were added were: I maintained good brushstrokes throughout the work, I created a peaceful scene and maybe I could have added some more detail to the building. The two comments that stood out to me were about the contrasting colors and how the viewer's eyes navigated through the painting. I feel like those comments show me that I was able to get my intentions across. My whole idea at the beginning of the work was to maintain the contrast and provide an intriguing picture that movers the eyes around a lot.

I do not believe this represents all my knowledge to this point as an artist because this project was shorter and I did not have much time as I had liked. However, I was able to get across some of my development this year using formal techniques such as color, contrast and texture.

I could have pushed myself more if I had had more time. I could have refined my details a lot and worked on my background to make it less regular. I was still able to "stretch and explore" by experimenting with colors and just going for it instead of paying attention to every little detail.

Landscape

My definiton of a landscape would be a captured scene in which lies a foreground, middleground( not always necessary) and a background. To me, this seems like a traditional definition for landscape because it covers all sorts of generic landscapes that have been created throughout the history of art. So far during this project I have been working on the basics when its comes to landscape composition. As seen in my attached painting and sketches, I have tried to create a sense of three-dimentionality as well as clearly illustrate the different plains and sections of the compositions. To conclude this project, I would like to head towards refining my skills by completing either a sketch or painting that stays with the traditional forms of landscape.

Printing Final

My litho print turned out to be much simpler than I initially intended. I found that it was much easier to work and practice with the medium if I used all of my effort on it. I wound up only working with the French and American flags in order to create lots of prints. This multitude of prints offered a wide range of success and provided me with the option of choosing the ones that I liked the most. I was really intrigued at the variety of textures I wound up with after using the pronto plates more of less. No two prints were ever the same even though I kept doing the same process. Also, the red and blue colors would mix differently ever time creating a new visual each time. Overall, I was attracted to this process because if offered a wide degree of experimentation even with a simple subject.

In-process Printmaking

I have had very mixed outcomes with my pronto plate prints. The first few tests prints of the entirely blue french flag and the entirely red american flag came out very nice and clean. Then as I began to use the pronto plates more and more, they accumulated too much ink which resulted in a blurrier image and ink spilling over into the borders. I think that replicating my process numerous times could be interesting if I were to make small changes each time. I have thought about changing the direction of the flags, maybe the color, and even possibly adding another layer (presumably a Basque cross). For my end product I would really like to work on getting better prints like I had been doing at the beginning of this project. Being very precise and paying close attention to the detail I would like in my print will be essential to creating an aesthetically pleasing composition.