Monday, October 5, 2015

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.


Sunday, October 4, 2015

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.

Monday, September 28, 2015

McCall: Playing with Photoshop!


So, I played around a little bit with my sibling headshots this afternoon, for fun. Looking forward to continuing to play with these once I learn new techniques. 

In the first mesh, I just took random portions of all of our faces and added them together.
In the second mesh, I aligned it from top to bottom by age.



Sunday, September 27, 2015

McCall: Headshots


In which I show the head shots I took of six of my seven siblings. 
The age range represented here is over 20 years. 
What do you think, do we look related?
I personally think that I look like the odd one out. And not just because I'm on my own line.. Haha.


McCall



For another class, DTC 101, we are going to start a project where we mesh together multiple people's faces, which Sena let us know about ahead of time. So this put an idea in my head!

Over the weekend I saw six of my seven siblings, and I had the idea to take head shots of each of them, as well as myself so I could compile a single photo of all of us put together, just for fun!


It's not for any of my classes, but I'm pretty psyched about it in general, so I thought I'd share it as I work on it! I haven't uploaded the photos to my computer yet, but I'll keep you updated!

It has already been really interesting looking at the photos on my camera and seeing just how different and also how similar we all look from one another!

Friday, September 25, 2015

Kinesthetics


After reading the section of our text on ‘Spacial Dynamics’ and especially pages 100-101, I realize that my mind tends to gravitate almost immediately upon viewing an artwork to attempt to find a sort of movement in the image or other media. I tend to really love movies that have a lot of wide or other interesting angle shots (Mulan—which just so happened to be mentioned on pages 100 and 101, and The Two Towers, and others like that!). I always look for movement. When an image is stagnant, I don’t really like it, usually, but if it has an element of movement to it, that will almost always draw me in! (example of an image that I find really interesting, below.)


 On another note, the idea of the study of movement, or kinesthetics, in general just really excites me. I have always loved noticing peoples little hand movements while they are talking or dancing, or how someone maybe cocks their head while they are thinking, and I feel like how someone moves tells a lot about the beauty of their inner self. 


Sunday, September 20, 2015

Multi-faceted



In my Photo Montage project, I kept with the “selfie” concept, and took it this time as a way to represent the different aspects of my life that I deem important. I am a photographer, a reader, a dancer, a Tolkien junkie, a church-goer, a lover of dresses, a coffee drinker, a plaid fanatic, and much more-- but I also represented myself in my work uniform and my pajamas, and my normal every day clothes. I took photos of all these different personalities by dressing to the character and snapping shots over the course of four different days at multiple times of day, including 7:00 am, 3:00 pm, 5:00 pm, and 8:00 pm.
 I know that if a person was to take this montage out of context they may think “wow, she’s really vain and obsessed with herself” but what I wanted to show was the idea that every person has an un-imaginable amount of facets to their character and personality, and each of those aspects cannot represent the person fully. This montage simply represents a few aspects of who I am right now, and I think it is cool that I can make this and have it to remind myself in the future of what I thought was important or interesting about myself in September of 2015. Maybe some of these things about myself will completely change or develop more fully, and that will make it a really cool experience to look back on this project and see what has changed, when and if the time comes.