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.