Final Reflection

I think that my most successful pieces from the year are my artist emulation painting and my landscape drawing, but I am going to talk about my artist emulation.With this assignment I had to learn and develop many new techniques. My favorite of the new techniques was spreading paint across the panel with "drum seats," which are basically blocks of some material that I could spread and scrape paint across my panel with. Also I really liked getting to work with the power tools to build the aforementioned wood panel that I painted on. I think that my final artist emulation painting was very formally beautiful, but I can accept now that there was not much meaning behind the intentions. I did not think about what emotions I wanted to convey to the viewer thoroughly because I was caught up in the action of spreading the paint, and lost some of the meaning that Gerhard Richter probably had in mind behind. Even though I did not have intentions to invoke emotional reactions from a viewer, I think that this is one of my most formally beautiful and grand pieces from the year.  

I think my most challenging project from this year was the printing project because I felt very uncomfortable with the printing process and I did not understand what makes a good print and how to make a good print until the very end of the project. I started out the project with no inspiration and no ideas for what I wanted to print, and began to make random drawings. One of these drawings happened to be of the lorax, and I realized that the lorax is a great subject for a symbolism based project because the lorax is a symbol for environmental protection. From that point, my ideas developed and I experimented with backgrounds and different surroundings that would help me convey a point. One problem that I encountered in this project was that I did not pay attention when we learned how to print and so I had no idea what to do when it came to start the printing process. Luckily, many of my friends were in the same boat as I was and we learned it together through trial and error. 

A formal strength I developed this year is spending lots of time planning out how I was going to approach my work. The first project we did I jumped right into the process, and produced probably a worse painting than I have ever made throughout preschool and elementary. I have learned each project to slow further and plot/plan my projects before I do them. This is most evident with my landscape drawing which I spent a lot of time planning out. 

A technical strength I developed this year is printing on a printing press. As I mentioned before, printing on a press is very unnatural to me and I struggled to figure out how to use the press to print and produce a solid piece of art. Throughout the process with trial and error, I learned what looks good and bad on a final print and I think that a am a competent printer now.

A conceptual strength I developed this year is envisioning a piece. At the beginning of the year I dove into my work without an idea of what I was going to do, which is great in sketching . . . but I produced my worst final projects that way. My last couple projects I really thought about what I wanted them to look like before I began my process and the turned out great. Also my ideas that I envisioned were a lot better towards the end because I have learned a ton about composition, texture, color, and much more throughout the year.

Landscape Reflection

I address the term "landscape" as a broad description that can encompass a wide range of graphic design. For this final drawing I hoped to be very precise in my lines and have a lot of detail, which was successful. I like how my final composition turned out but I wanted to do geometric designs along the bottom of the drawing like I did in my practice drawings. I did not do these designs to save time and also in an effort to not destroy my hard work with errors. I was very scared of going too far and doing more to the drawing than was necessary and destroying the visual appeal. I had to make the artistic decision to not do the designs, but I probably would have made the designs if time allowed. As an artist I tend to the more abstract side of the spectrum. I like conceptual understanding of images and I am not a major fan of color. Even though some find my work as "plain" it is what appeals to me so it is what I do.


Here are a couple of the terms provided to me in the discussion session:
Peaceful
Spaced and laid out well
Natural
Plain

 I think these responses differed from my intentions because I did not include the geometric designs that would contrast the natural lines, and the result seemed very natural and clean. The word "peaceful" resonates with me because the space it is from is one of my most peaceful places to go, and I am happy that I can express the emotion of a view in my drawing.


Throughout the project I definitely improved as an artist. I think that this is one of my most formally appealing pieces and portrays my skills acquired throughout the year. I think that this project differed from my last couple projects because I have been wanting to work with pen on paper all year and I finally got to do it. Had the school year lasted a week or two longer, I would have made geometric designs along the bottom of the paper as I did in my practice drawings. However, there was no time but I still really like my final drawing and how it turned out visually. I really like my drawing and I hope that others do as well.

Interum Landscape Post

Landscape: portrayal of the features of land

My definition of a landscape is very broad because I find that a landscape encompasses a vast range of photographs, paintings, drawings, prints, or any other medium. Landscapes can be a traditional realistic depiction of a sunset or mountains, but the term landscape can be stretched to include a vast variety of media. However, I feel that the bare minimal required for a work to be called a landscape is that it somehow portrays the physical features or the feel of a certain piece of land. 

For my final, I want to do a pen drawing. I have a vision of doing some mountain-like drawings but with an infusion of geometric shapes and I want to do a somewhat larger drawing, that is short and pretty long. My work will probably develop as I go so we will see! Although I am yet to finalize the composition of my final, I want to make my mark making very tight and thin lines and patterns, also trying to morph nature with the geometric shapes. I am looking forward to working on my drawing and hope it is a success!

Printing Project

Printing is not a medium with which I feel comfortable. This is what made this project fun for me. I came into this project without the slightest idea of what I wanted to print, and looking back it is interesting to see how my intentions developed throughout the span of the project. I think the lorax is a compelling subject to print because there is so much meaning behind all that the lorax stands for, and is almost a universal symbol of environment protection. I think that printing the lorax standing on city streets and begging for money is an obvious statement about environmental protection because soon the lorax will not be able to "speak for the trees" because there will be none left. I printed the street scene on litho paper and I printed the lorax using a plastic card like carving  (cannot remember the name). Even though the printing process definitely felt unnatural to me, I like how my prints turned out in the end.

In Process Print Making Reflection

I have spent most of my time familiarizing myself with the process of print making using a pronto-plate.  My prints have so far turned out fairly sloppy––especially with my black prints. From now I think I need to change colors between my layers (the pronto-plate and the lorax) so I may try to print a white layer or red layer of the lorax over my black prints, and I already drew the lorax onto my red print in black pen because my plexiglass plate was not complete. I hope to make a couple more good pronto-plate prints and then later this week I think that I will print different colors of the lorax on the backgrounds.
My original hope was to portray the lorax, a symbol of protecting the environment in a very urban environment (on a street corner) but in my red print it looks almost as if the lorax is homeless. I think this is interesting because everyone can take their own ideas about what this symbolism means, but it is clearly an environmental statement. I plan on finishing this week, but I may need an extra day or two to refine my work and produce some nice prints.

Gerhard Richter

Here is my final piece:

In relation to the viewer, I intended to manipulate the viewers eye with my composition. I aimed to draw the viewers eye at first glance to the less layered, more washy center in the left central region of my piece. Immediately following the viewers original central movement, I intend to have the viewers eye move away towards the more harsh edges. I intended to make the viewer question and wonder about my process, and to portray a sort of chaos - such as that of television static. I find that the most successful part of my piece is the use of layering and strategic color choice.

I aspired to cover all aspects of Gerhard Richter's work, but I found that this aspiration could not be fulfilled. Gerhard Richter has been creating art for much longer than the the time I had for this project (and much more than I have been alive) and has been in a constant movement between mediums, techniques, and styles. I quickly realize that I could not capture effectively all of what Richter has produced in his life. However, in my sketchbook I attempted to cover his many techniques and styles. I think I thoroughly explored much of his abstract work with paint, but I wish I could have explored more realistic images with paints (although they are very challenging).

The aspect of my final piece that I enjoyed most was the painting process. My process consisted of scraping paint using tools such as drum seats, palette knives, and other scraping tools across my piece in horizontal and lateral lines. I felt comfortable with this technique because I could experiment and master the technique in both my workbook and my early painting layers. I originally learned to use this technique, and used these tools by watching a video of Gerhard Richter working on a massive piece on a wall. He used a scraper similar to that which I used.

I felt that my pen-pal conversations were very insightful, and that I was helped to realize my intentions and helped others realize their intentions through my conversations. I struggled throughout this project in determining when to stop because many others gave me lots of different perspectives on aspects they like and dislike, which ended up being very contradictory. In the end I decided I was content with my piece and would change it no further. Throughout this project I learned lots about Gerhard Richter, myself and what appeals to me aesthetically.

Almost Finished.

Heres my painting in process: 

Project update

Heres how my painting looks at the moment:

My "Final" Composition

I aspire to create a painting that is similar to that of the paintings of Gerhard Richter's series titled "Cage." I plan on working in the manner and using the same techniques of Richter in his abstract works, using a squeegee (or some straight edge for spreading) and a knife to add and subtract paint to create a texture that draws a viewer to my piece. I am looking to build up many layers through non representational painting because through the process of extensive layering I find that I can create the illusion of space.

I find that because of the importance of the colors I will be using, I must create a large palette because of the minimal amount of color I will be using. I am planning on having my lower layers be more colorful, but have these colors layered over by a white/grayish shade. I will then remove some of this layer of shades to show the colors through the shade layer.

Here are some examples of my work using the spreading technique which I plan to use. Of course, I am planning on having many more layers on my "final":

I aspire for my composition to have a very smooth center, and that I want to concentrate most of the color and texture along the edges of my piece. I am also planning on using mostly horizontal and vertical strokes.