art quack

I've been asked for a class to make blog posts about an upcoming art project that has to be completed this semester. So I have to record my thoughts, ideas and influences in a easy access medium. So I'm thinking of doing some pictures based on the techniques that I learnt from these pictures I did last semester.
This one is my favourite, it involves two pieces of paper,charcoal,white conte and a rag. The life model was wrapped up in calico,given a cow's skull and put on a chair. We drew what we wanted,every 30 mins we turned the model and chair around and drew what we say from the 'new view'.
Some details:



These are charcoal,graphite and white conte on ink stained paper and are based on the principal of vanitas


I've been asked to talk/write about the how and why of this upcoming project. So far I think it's a response and a return to my recent education in the human figure.

If you compare these two figure drawings, the top one from last year and the other from a few months ago.



From last year and part of this year, I've learnt I have decent observational skills but a lot of the time,when I do drawing outside a classroom situation, I don't have the same feeling as when I am in a studio. There's something about my class work that I do like and that isn't present in my non-class work.

Here be some observational sketches from last year:



Drawings from last semester:




Compared with these from last year:
This ones don't really feel as well produced as the others but while I was drawing them, I was trying to think outside: "this is a drawing of a person". Unfortunately I can't remember what I was thinking of at the time.




This next set somewhat reflects part of my (old?) approach to drawing the figure and of myself. None of these figures have faces, which is perhaps forcing them to become a bunch of bodies in motion.






With this new project (which will be explained in another entry) I've decided to return to this idea of an unknown human form and the concept/idea of an isolated human, maybe someone who is looking for recognition but who can not get it because they do not pocess a full identity. I'm also playing with the idea of wheter people can react to this unknown form despite not understanding fully who or what they may be doing.

More on these later.

Project Arms2.0 - A discussion on changes in the project
Influences - Project "Arms" influences
Project "Arms" hybrids - variants on Project Arms
Project "Arms" - All about the Project

test

testing click to expand

this piece of code which comes here care of the categories template

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clicking here

to see if this works as well

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Art Dump! - Sculpture Installation

The goal here was to set up an installation of sculpture that had to use its environment as part of the work. Since we had been working on making moulds and cast objects,most of the class decided to work with this approach. Of course this includes me,next time I'm going to try something else. I will be sticking up pictures of how I came to this and pics of the site without any art in it.

Me setting up.

Finished!



Details

After the weekend

This block of pics was taken by my teacher Scott Avery. Thanks Scott!

An October update

Right now I've been trying to juggle assignments so I've been negeleting my art blog. I'll be dumping huge amounts of post come the end of November so look forward to it. This site relates to a colour theory assignment I'm doing which is to do some clothing design based on the work of Issey Miyake who work I do like even if it is fashion design which is something I don't bother about.

What do you get when you mix an a/c unit and a shirt? It may look a little something like this and for the offical documentation on it - The Wind

We're doing some work in drawing class related to pop culture,which I'm excited about but I'm not sure if I want to explore it the way we are in class.

Something exiciting is going on. My sculpture class has a collective sculpture in the end of year show. It's very interesting,so now I have to go to Opening Night.
Edit: This is what it looked like. Typically I am the computer mouse.

A word

I was going though my digital art magazines when I came across this quote. "I paint my own reality. The only thing I know is that I paint because I need to,and I paint whatever passes through my head without any other consideration." Frida Kahlo

I'd really like to use that as a reason as to why I should not explain my art because sometimes I just really can't.

Don't go over my head with this one

Can't belive I forgot to write something about this - Metaphysical painting As liberally poached in the middle of the night from the dark forest itself. And can also be found here.

Actually I should have read this much earlier and then Chirico's paintings would have made much more sense to me.

"Metaphysical Painting sprang from the urge to explore the imagined inner life of familiar objects when represented out of their explanatory contexts..."

I think I was on the right track with my last entry when I tried to explain where my picture was headed. It wouldn't really matter what I said since it was a reality constructed from my own mind or from some other reality.

"...represented a visionary world which engaged most immediately with the unconscious mind..."

According to everyone's favourite internet monkey,Metaphysics deals with explaining the ultimate nature of reality, being, and the world. And asks such questions as:
* What is the meaning of life?
* What is the nature of reality?
* What is mankind's place in the universe?
* Are colors objective or subjective?
* Does the world exist outside the mind?
* What is the nature of objects, events, places?

And blah blah dealing with subjects that beyond the physical world. And now a lot of words from Promethea by Alan Moore and J.H Williams. It has a fair amount of metaphysical theorizing,which is why it is appearing here. This tidbit is from a section that looks at man's journey through history and life. This particular section refers to The Tower tarot card.

Like,Babel,meant to heaven reach,
all towers men build a lesson teach.
Lightning,descending from the sky,
reminds man there's but one most high.

Painting Assignment - Development 2

More of how the painting came to be. This is a progression shot of the picture during my first lesson. I was aiming to get simular colours to the original painting here. As it turned out I had to make the background more interesting later on. I admit it looks pretty flat at this stage.


Adding in the towers,it really annoyed me that I didn't have very good brush control here,but I don't think I've gotten much better since then. I was aiming for some kind of lonely and mysterious place that was errected as something impressive or as a monument to someone. Incidently,the tower ended up looking like a lighthouse. So the picture looks more like a abanndoned sea that dried up eons ago. I did ditch the little shadows that were going to look like gateways. In my original sketch,it was a mysterious set of pillars and towers that had shadowy gates that lead to who knows where. I might do a version of that idea during the holiday.

Now for something vaguely different. I present a tower of another sort. You could go and make your own conclusions here but really I just saw it and said "It's tower-esqe in composition" and took a picture of it. I think the most disturbing thing is,it looks more forlorn than my painting.




This is more or less the final product,I am going to take a better picture of it by the end of the week. But now the tower has a lot better shadows and looks like it's expecting a light from above or falling stars. Go figure. I did learn a lot from painting this,but it seems I forgot most of it when I started my next one. I really don't know where this all ended up,I think I was heading towards a tower in an endless void and it turned into something else. Surprisingly it is somewhat impressionistic which I like.