Our Campus...

Have you ever stopped outside in the early morning and taken a moment to just realize and appreciate how amazing stunning our campus is?

I did yesterday morning on my was to the COMPASS club Bible Study. 

I am so glad I stopped to take a few photos.... I was astounded by the beauty!

All are taken in HDR on my phone with the colors boosted just a bit and a vignette added!

Site Specific

In chapter nine of our text on page 187, Stewart talks about Site-Specific artwork, and after some reading as well as the additional input from my F-A 331 class, I have developed an interest in large-scale site-specific artworks.

Recently online I came across a couple of articles about major art pieces that have really interested me, and this is one of them. I find the whole thing, concept and execution stunningly beautiful. 

The text from the article below:

"“Man and Woman” is a 8 meter (26 foot) tall moving steel sculpture by Georgian sculptor Tamara Kvesitadze. Located in the seaside city of Batumi, Georgia, the two figures represent a Muslim boy, Ali, and a Georgian princess, Nino, from a famous 1937 novel by Azerbaijani author Kurban Said. The tragic story ends with the lovers separated by the invasion of Soviet Russia.

The statues begin to move every day at 7 p.m., merging for a short embrace, before leaving each other behind. After 10 minutes the movement is complete. The statue was designed in 2007 but only installed in 2010; it has since been retitled “Ali and Nino.” You can find and English translation of “Ali and Nino” on Amazon."

Chapter 8: Cliches

     When our text talks about “Cliché’s” in chapter 8 (163 Stewart), they mention the concept of thinking of death when we see skulls or thinking of tranquility when we see seagulls, but I immediately thought of Ads for perfume and cologne. They are always totally cliché images of men and women looking super sexy and like they are about to “get it on” with just about anyone who might look at the picture. 

     

Honestly I find these images sleazy and more of a put off than a turn on, and I wish these companies would find some other way to advertise. I’m not wearing perfume because I want to get it on, I’m buying and wearing perfume because I want to smell pleasant. So the other idea in the text about cliché’s-- that they get “worn out” is definitely true in my mind.  

Join the Movement.

Join the Selfie Life.

You know you want to.

For my Propaganda poster, I again used the idea of the Selfie(fancy that!), and projected it in a way that if you were to simply glance at it, it would appear to be a political poster of some sort. I tried to be slightly humorous in how I presented it, by adding a QR code that links back to a google search for my personal "selfie" hashtag on Instagram. If you follow the QR code, it will take you to loads of pictures of me taking weird selfies, and in my mind, hopefully encourage other people to take some silly selfies and hashtag them in funny ways. 

Editing out the Non-essential

In chapter seven, Stewart talks about critiques and the techniques of critique that help you develop your artworks. About critical thinking.

I really appreciated this chapter and how she brought up the concepts of comparing and contrasting artworks that have similar themes. I also greatly appreciated the small section at the end of the chapter that talked about editing out the non-essential things in an artwork in order to make it better.

I have kind of always been a reverse minimalist when it comes to my art. I tend to overload my art pieces with just...stuff... in hopes of making it better, and in doing so I almost always end up killing the aesthetic of the piece. Time and time again I do it, and seem to never learn, but I am hoping that learning to apply these types of critical thinking will help me to create beautiful and meaningful art and be pleased with it when I originally think it is done and not continue adding more 'filler'. 

"Minimal is good" is probably something I should chant to myself on a daily basis... I need to channel my inner Daria, I think.. Haha.

Variety

When I think about varieties on a theme of an artwork, as Steward touches on on page 134 of our text, I think of fan art. 

I don't know if that is necessarily a "normal" thing to think about in these regards, but I was highly involved in DeviantArt at one time when I was younger, and drew "fan-art" quite a lot.

I always loved seeing different people's renditions of characters from my favorite movies, books, tv shows, and games--and also actors and actresses somewhat as well!! I still enjoy looking at these things occasionally, though I no longer participate in drawing these things any more, and I really appreciate a great fan-art artist!

 One of my favorite artists on DeviantArt is one who draws portraits of famous Asian actors, actresses and singers.

Imuya is their username, and here is some of their work:

And here are some fan-art images by other artists, of Aragorn in different styles, just cause he's my favorite :D

Fun fonts

I'm having quite a bit of fun looking at all the fun fonts I can find online.

Dafont.com is literally the coolest place ever. I've been using their website for a few months now, but I can always find new, cool stuff!

Typography and lettering is something I think I would really enjoy studying.

Not for submission

Here is a second TripTych that I created. 

It is not my submission, but I thought I would share it just for fun!

Triptych

In this Triptych piece, I used my own handwriting using the pencil tool to create the letters for this exercise, rather than using a type from the program. The letters I used are--classic--my own initials, which I know is a little boring, but I happen to like them. For the brush strokes, I used a tapered effect to make the lines look more like calligraphy strokes than the original brush strokes, and then I added backgrounds that I felt would give it a classic Oriental or Japanese Art feel. 

Overall I'm very pleased with this triptych, and I think it is very peaceful in its simplistic nature.

Words

Exploring connections in words in order to gain new ideas for art pieces is something I had't necessarily ever thought of before reading about Strategies in Chapter five of our text. Stewart really shows a huge plethora of different sources for influence and inspiration to artwork. 

I have been learning about Divergent and Convergent boundaries in my Geology class here at WSU, so learning about the artistic approach to Divergent and Convergent thinking was pretty interesting. I feel like I was clearly able to understand what Steward was writing about because of my prior knowledge of the application of those words, and I think I can see why words and being able to link them to other words and thoughts might play a key role in art creation.

Since our minds tend to tie words that we know or think we know to a meaning, we can then utilize those words to tie emotions related to them into our art, and that is pretty freaking cool. 

I once tried to participate in a 100 day drawing challenge where you took 100 subjects/topics based entirely on words or phrases and create a drawing for each. I failed utterly and could only stick to it for about twenty days, but it was really challenging and fun trying to think of original artworks to draw that would go along with the theme but not necessarily be completely obvious. 

Reading through this chapter is almost making me want to try doing that challenge again.