Critical Feedback

I did not receive much feedback on my drawing. My classmates were a bit hesitant and I found myself having to ask the questions about my own drawing and then they would come out of their shell. Although I did this, I still did not receive much feedback about other things I could do to my drawing other than the, "Oh yeah I like that," or, "I totally agree that looks good." But nothing substantial about different ways to enhance my work. I feel as though if we were to have another feedback time on Thursday, more of our work will be done on paper and more concrete that way our peers have more feedback to give us.

What If Concept Development

I am trying to communicate that if we just left the world, perhaps animals would become the new humans and start to do the things that we as humans do right now. But I'm also showing that if we left the world alone, maybe the natural world would have room to take over and become central once again. I am going to draw a train coming forwards with 3 animals popping out of the door onto the terminal. I will then draw the train terminal sort of decayed and with trees growing from the inside. Maybe a hole at the top of the terminal that lets sunlight in. That would be the only source of color. The rest of my picture will be in the gray scale probably made of the different shades of pencil and maybe some charcoal. If I do the sun idea then I will use colored pencil to make it look accurate but mainly just regular pencils.

What If Source Images

What If Project Brainstorming

Coral Reefs Deteriorating...

Over Consumption & Waste...

What if we continue to dump waste into the ocean?

What if we no longer have fish?

What if the 25% of underwater species just die?

What if we continue over using what is not ours to take?

What if our resources are completely depleted in 2 years?

There are many different ways to make positive impacts on the deteriorating state of the worlds environment. As a group, the most important thing we can do are to use only what we truly need. As guidance, we can take and interpret Thoreau’s mantra of “simplifying our lives and get down to the bare necessities.” Mainly, this means DO NOT WASTE! A modern version of this saying is, “Reduce, reuse, recycle.” There should also be an implemented class throughout high school that teaches teens how to take environmental initiative in order to make a difference and progress in the everlasting effort to conserve the environment. Once our generation graduates from high school, we will need to begin cleaning up the tragic mess that the environment is, but unfortunately, we are very unprepared to do so. Another huge issue that must be resolved is that the world in general is simply uneducated about how degraded the environment is. The world needs a public service announcement of some sort that does not sugarcoat any of the cold hard facts; we need to know what is really happening. It would also be crucial to set up available recycling bins throughout large cities and towns that way people are not as likely to just throw out a bottle or can and have the opportunity to recycle. Furthermore, if the government would stop subsidizing fossil fuel consumption and would lower the price of manufacturing alternative energy sources then homes and businesses could afford to convert to solar or wind power. Pressure needs to be put on our government to enact regulations and policies friendly to environmental health.

I am stuck between my first what if question and my last one. I have two ideas that can work. For my first question I would draw the ocean with a huge cruise ship perusing deadly over the water. Then I would draw waste dumped into the ocean and a coral reef underneath with happy fish swimming, but then to the side in all black and white, what the coral reefs will look like if the waste disposal into the ocean continues at this rapid pace. For my last what if question, I would draw a city with savages living in it, having to sacrifice townspeople for food. I would draw a city filled with disaster and death with no escape. I could also draw just one person affected by the depletion and show different stages. For instance, day 1 vs month 7 and so on and so forth. But that could also be a separate part of the same drawing.

Proportion & Perspective

The first drawing I made was much easier. Although there were more things occupying the space we drew, it was a larger space with larger objects, which made capturing them easier. Todays drawing was very difficult. In the beginning when I had to draw the table at the correct angle almost failed but after a few tries, I got it almost right. Then the most challenging part was how to lay out all the small objects on a small surface that did not look exactly right. It was difficult because once you put one object down, it affected where the rest of the objects went. So basically if I drew a triangle in the absolutely wrong place then my entire drawing was off. But yesterdays drawing really showed personal improvement for me because drawing from observation for me last year was very difficult but it really looked real for one of the first times. I really hit the nail on the head with the drawing yesterday and if I had some more time today, I could have made it better.

Marks Made Drawing

I first had to find 2 pieces of collage that I thought I could use to make a bigger picture. After that, I had to lay them on my page and see what sort of image I could come up with. After I had my idea, I had to paste the two original pieces on to my paper and see where they got me. I ended up making a drawing that I never would have created on my own, and that was very exciting. I sometimes use a gray scale but rarely all of the shades included in my final outcome. It was hard to scale the first drawing down to the second one and have everything look proportional and have the colors coordinate. I was surprised that my end picture really did resemble the first one so clearly, as I thought it would not.

Reflecting at the end of the course.

I came into this classroom at the beginning of the year, ready. I did not know what to expect besides an amazing space to work and experiment in. I did not know you, or some of my classmates, but here we are, months later, at the end. It SUCKS. This class was my favorite by far. All of the projects we did were interesting to me in some way, if not always challenging, I took my own approach on them and spun them around so I could take more out of it. I am always very eager to learn about things I care about, art being one of these things. I started off thinking that I sucked at drawing because I always thought of drawing as still life's which aren't my favorite, but you let us expand on drawing many other things, still life and pure original thought. I would say that a few of the highlights of my time in this classroom have been, my four hour project, my self portrait, and my light drawing. These projects were right down my alley so to speak. I hate having something plain to do, even in other classes I always somehow make it my own, personal you may say. I always put all my effort into trying new ideas and ways to process information given, such as when doing the block prints. Speaking of which, that might have been the lower point of this class. While my print came out alright, it was not exactly my favorite project to do. I will always remember doing the pour paintings because of the things we found to highlight within the poured images, I will ALWAYS remember that day in drop everything and draw when you took away and added things to the still life and we were all miserable! But it has stuck in my mind for sure. I will remember this class as being an open laid back environment where I could always be who I wanted to be and do what I wanted to do, and have many opportunities. This class ending is something foreign to me as last year classes ran all three terms. There really isn't any other way to put it besides being weird. Not coming up here everyday and enjoying this class to the fullest is going to be odd, and something I will miss dearly. This class ends with me having grown very much into my own artist niche. I know now what types of art I like to make, which I do not, and which I will do and enjoy and try my best on even if it is not what I care to do. I have learned the skills I will need to continue my art education throughout the rest of my life. I know that for the next three years of highschool, you will see a lot of me because art is something I love and will always love to do. I will always be interested in creating stories through drawings and hope to do so more and more as I grow older and grow as an artist. I can tell that with the skills I have been taught and adapted to this year in this class I will remember for the rest of my life. With hands on learning, I do best because it sticks into my brain. I know when I am a senior I will be doing some art project and I will remember sitting with Alex Fissler saying something crazy and doing something you assigned to us with gusto. So now we say goodbye well not really but it is weird and I will miss this class very much! Thank you for a great year :D

I See The Light Drawing

The Road of No Return

I used lights and darks to show the winding road leading to an unknown destination. I used it to show the mountains and the various crevices within it. I had a very difficult time deciding what to draw but after messing around with a few ideas, I let go and just started drawing and it ended up the way it is... somehow. I used the light pencils to draw in the light parts of the mountains and the darker pencils to shade in the darker parts of the mountain. I used the erasers when I wanted to show something as completely white with no smudges around it. I discovered that I needed to use a lot of contrast between light and dark to show what I was trying to express and that for a really dark color, you really need to press down on the paper hard.

Self Portrait as a _________.

This project made you utilize two different parts of your brain, the part that is creative and makes ideas, and the one that isn't afraid to get messy and goes through with the project. You had to use your hands to form shapes with the clay, but you also had to get a creative idea, then execute it. I decided to choose a butterfly on a puzzle board. I am very much like a butterfly because I am a free spirit who likes to flutter around and be adventurous and colorful while I fly all over the place, creating memories. I chose a puzzle board because while the can be messy to begin with, but the end result is always a clean cut picture with no depth, which is VERY unlike me. I am too all over the place to be a puzzle but I am just like a butterfly. In the past, I was no fan of clay after one particularly rowdy experience where my hair got stuck in the wheel... you can imagine the rest! Also clay is very sticky and dry and gets into your pores and under your nails and yuck, not my thing, I like being clean. I made myself as in intricate butterfly with many different textures on the wings. I chose to make patterns because it shows all the loose ends and differences about me and my life. I discovered that it is very hard to put clay together and get it to stick and you MUST slip and score a lot.

Me-scape: A reductive Block Print

At the beginning of the print making project, I was pretty confident with my ability to make a good print. I somehow ended up carving away the wrong sections of my block so my end result was not exactly what I intended it to be...anyhow, I did struggle with this project. It was very hard to work backwards, meaning carving away what you want to stay first, then printing, then repeating the process various times. Starting with a project that is difficult to begin with then making it harder by having to work backwards, conceptually made my brain go WHOAAA! If I were to do this project over again, I would really focus on where I was supposed to be carving away that way my end result ended up being more of what I wanted it to be.

Thinking about the use of light in art.

Light is an eager concept. Light is a noun, light is an adjective, and light is a verb. Tricky tricky. Light is usually portrayed as having a higher meaning, sort of like an angel or heaven shining down the white "light." Light is everywhere, you just have to look for it if it isn't obvious. I mean if you go outside and the sun is shining there is going to be light, but light doesn't have to be as simple as that. Light can be an illusion that makes you truly believe that something is light but really is heavy, or is really dark. Songs that talk about death normally refer to a some sort of light a lot of the time. Light can be misplaced, or it can be found but again, you have to know how to find it. Without the sun, the world would not be able to continue, so in some ways, light is the center of the universe. Without the sun no produce could grow and it is clinically proven that without sunlight people become very depressed. For example places like Alaska where the light never shines, have the highest suicide rates. See the connection between light and life? I do. In musicals, plays, and concerts, lights are used to represent things that are not actually there or to give emphasis or color to certain things that want to be emphasized. I know at concerts there are many bright colorful lights shining on the audience and mainly the artist performing to get you to notice them. In very dramatic scenes in life or in a movie, light shines so that the moment is captured, like a snapshot of a photo; you need just the right amount of light to show what you are trying to tell through the photo. This may sound really corny, but a long time ago I recall watching an episode of a very bad show called, "Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide." In this specific episode, Ned's best friend Moze wants a date with the foreign exchange student. So Ned and his friends decide to make the perfect moment for the guy to ask Moze out. They go into a classroom and set it dark except for a backdrop of a tropical island. The chorus is brought in to sing high "aaaaaaaah," like you always hear in movies when someone see's the 'light.' Then there were doves flying around and a wind maker so Moze's hair is blowing in the wind. The last part was a bright light shining down on Moze, singling her out, so when the exchange student walked in he was drawn to her and asked her out. It is not very hard to guess what the light was trying to represent in this situation, that Moze is 'beautiful' and that the guy should ask her out. Light has the potential to do this because it draws you in, its just captivating. Then you have to look at it, especially for people like me because anything shiny holds interest to my eyes.

I am lively, centered and me.

I am not entirely sure which aspects of my story came through the most because my portrait isn't really a typical story. It really is just a jumble of things that make me, me, coming together as one. My artistic choices that came through the most is where I placed things. I have me centered to show that the portrait is about me, and then if you still couldn't tell, I put the lower and middle halves of my body in tinfoil so they shine. Then I have something else in each corner of the paper. The right hand corner on the top is a heart in hand. This corner was my favorite to do because it showed that I put a lot of heart into everything I do. The bottom right hand corner is the earth and since I am depicted sort of floating above it, that represents that my head is sometimes in the clouds. Before I even started pasting things on to my paper, I gave the placement of my items a good thought so that whatever my story was, could come through in whatever way the person looking at it made of it.

Artist-in-Residence: Alexander DeMaria

In Alex's newer pieces found on the web, they are all found in black and white and involve intricate things that look like part of a fantasy world. I have always been a fan of the musical Suesical which involves the Horton Hears a Who bit. That has a speck of dust in it on which a complex society resides on. This picture, involving a bunch of houses on this floating knoll reminded me a lot of the speck of dust in Suesical. The picture has a bit of white space but it adds to the effect of the intricate drawings shown. It struck me as part of comical that the knoll was floating there on the branch of a tree. Since this reminded me of Horton Hears a Who, it really stuck to me.

A question I have for Mr. DeMaria is where he makes his work, what materials he uses, and where he gets his inspiration from.

Reflecting on self-portrait progress

Today we discussed our self portraits that we have been working on. We discussed in a group and I shared about how I got the ideas for my project and why the items I chose to put in it represented me in an abstract way. My group members asked me questions about my project as to why I used certain things on my paper. They wanted to see the unclear things from my project and be able to understand them. They told me that I should fill up white space on my paper and maybe outline my figure so it is more clear. I need to color in white space for sure and maybe add one more symbol of me to take up more room. I'm not sure exactly how many more classes I will need but however many I can use would be good. I need to brainstorm about what to add in because at the moment I am not entirely sure.