Art I
"I dream my painting, and then I paint my dream." -Vincent Van Gogh
5/23/2017 0 Comments Finished Final ProjectThis is my progress on the background of my final project. It was a little difficult to get the shade of green that I wanted. I wasn't sure how it would look with the gold, but I think it turned out really well. The piece just needed a green to go with the other complementary colors. This is my finished final project, after I finished adding black stripes in the background. I wasn't sure how these stripes would go with the stripes of the shirt, but I am happy with how it turned out and I think it ended up complementing the subject a lot. I am really happy with how this turned out, and overall I am satisfied with the finished product. If I had to redo this, I would definitely pay more attention to the highlights in the face and in the hair, as well as the details in the features of the face.
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5/20/2017 0 Comments Questionnaire, 1) It's hard to pick a favorite project out of everything we did this year, but if I have to, I think it would be the observational piece or our final projects. My art is very much based around observation, so the observational piece allowed me to incorporate a lot of detail into the drawing. I drew a woman refugee with a head covering, using lots of color and detail from the photo I was observing, and I really enjoyed that. I also have enjoyed the final projects because I got to do mine based on an artist who really inspires me, Kehinde Wiley. I am able to incorporate both observational and detail skills, as well a using a sort of pop-art style for the background.
2) The most inspiring artist I learned about this year was not one that was used on an art history day, but was one I did my research blog on. I also saw one of his pieces at the art museum when we went, and was completely blown away by his work. His name is Kehinde Wiley. He is inspiring to me because in his artwork, he paints African-American people in their every-day clothing. But he models them in a stance of power and prestige, many of the paintings based on European paintings from an earlier time period. Through this, he advocates for the African American culture, empowering them and capturing people's attention with striking detail in every piece. I aspire to create art as meaningful as this. 3) I also can't say that I really had a project this year that I disliked. So I will talk about the one I struggled with the most. I struggled the most with the recycled materials project because I have never worked with that kind of material before, and trying to manipulate it to do what I was difficult and frustrating. I worked with a group to create a butterfly out of blue and black trash bags and colorful fabric. I don't think we had an understanding of how to pull a piece together to make it look unified rather than scattered and unfinished, so the end result was not at all what I expected. But I think that it helped me learn that practice really is important, and I can't expect to be good at everything the first time. 4) All of the artists we discussed in class were incredibly inspiring, so I will discuss the artist I had trouble relating to the most. Franz Kline is an abstract artist that we talked about, and although her pictures really made you think and wonder about what you were seeing, her art style is not as inspiring to me as artists who focus on detail and color are. 5/19/2017 0 Comments Final Project ProgressThis week I have made a lot of progress on my final project. Pictured above is my progress on the jeans that I completed Monday. The denim was challenging, and I had trouble getting the light and dark of the creases just right. This is my progress from Tuesday, after I finished the jeans. My favorite part about the jeans was doing the rips in the material and creating all the small details that bring the piece together. In this step, I started on the background, filling in the flowers with a gold color. The paint was fairly thin, which was frustrating because I had to go over it several times. But I managed to fill in all the flowers after a decent amount of time. On Thursday, I began to outline the flowers with a metallic copper color for detail. This allowed the flowers to shimmer, an affect I think really adds to the piece.
5/12/2017 0 Comments Positive-Negative PieceI forgot to take a picture of my finished Positive-Negative piece, but it is complete. I finished coloring the entire tiny world map and framed it. I painted the small frame black and hung it in the gallery on the Positive side.
5/12/2017 0 Comments Final Project ProgressThis first photo is the original sketch I made onto the 22x28 canvas. I tried to get as much detail into the sketch as possible, mostly so that I would not have to rely so much on going back and forth between my photo and the actual piece while painting. This step just allowed me to get an idea of where everything needed to be. The first step in the painting process was to get the skin finished. I got the right color for her skin mixed up, but I struggled to get the highlights the right color and I think the skin still needs a little warmth. I also completed her hair, using a mix of black and brown paint to create this color. In the next step, I made a lot of progress with her face and even started her face. But I still didn't feel like I had gotten her face right, so I went back to that in the next step. Today, I worked more on the face, trying to keep everything symmetrical and add some highlight. But that didn't seem to help much, so left it how it was and decided to move onto her clothes. I finished the shirt today, but I still want to go back later on and perfect all of the stripes and details of the fabric.
5/5/2017 0 Comments Final Project IdeasFor my project, I picked up a 22x28 canvas for the piece. The photo I am basing my artwork after has been printed out, and the only decision I need to make before beginning is to figure out a background. Kehinde uses African-American textiles for his backgrounds, and I want to do the same with mine. Below are some ideas for textiles and other backgrounds. I want to do the colors of my background black and white, representing both races and the unity of all people, and I may add some color into the details of the background.
5/5/2017 0 Comments Positive/Negative ProgressThis is my progress on my positive/negative piece. I finished filling in the parts of the world with color, expanding on the idea of unity and hope for the world. To finish this piece, all I need to do is create a frame for the project and hang it in the mini gallery.
5/4/2017 0 Comments Art Final ProjectLydia Gunn
Mrs. Whitney Art 1 (Yearlong) Final Art Project Based on Kehinde Wiley Passion, color, history, and beauty are intricately woven into each of Kehinde Wiley’s life-sized paintings. His art inspires and intrigues, depicting the beauty of African- American culture. Born in South Central Los Angeles in 1977, Kehinde first attended art school at age 11. In LA, he was involved in the environment that was driven by hip-hop culture: violence, anger, and antisocial behavior. His mother worked hard to get him and his siblings out of the hood. He would attend art school on the weekends, and there he most enjoyed trying to make one piece of art look like something completely different. This made him feel important and allowed him to think outside the box. Sometimes he would start with drawings of shadowed fruit, and then he would turn it into a human head and add the body. As an undergrad at the San Francisco Art Institute, he really focused on learning how to become a masterful painter, grasping all the aspects of the skill. And then at Yale University, he became much more focused on bringing out social issues like identity, sexuality and gender, politics, and other topics in his paintings, which is why his work is so important to art history. He currently lives in Brooklyn, New York, and focuses on painting everyday African-American men and women, celebrating their culture through them. He once said, "I think there's something important in going against the grain, and perhaps finding value in things that necessarily institutionally recognized." He has many different collections of paintings from different places and of different people. Categories of these collections include the World Stage, in which Kehinde explores the socio-economic status of a nation through the everyday lives of people he meets on the street, and Selected Works, in which he chooses a specific topic or a group of people to focus his paintings on. "He has made an enormous name for himself in a very short period of time and established a very significant reputation," says Sean Kelly, owner of the Sean Kelly Gallery. Kehinde paints from pictures of real people. To find his models, he simply goes out into the streets wherever he may be, whether that's New York, or Brazil, China, India, Israel, or Tunisia, and talks to people who he thinks are interesting. Those people become his models, and Kehinde organizes photo shoots with them. After the photoshoot, he will have hundreds and hundreds of pictures that he narrows down to a about 15. Then he comes up with backgrounds, like wallpapers or textiles from historical periods, for those pictures. Those pictures and backgrounds then become life-size paintings full of beauty and passion. He uses oil paints to create these large paintings, but he has also explored the use of stained glass and sculpture. His paintings are typically colorful and heroic, inspired by old paintings from the High Renaissance, the late French Rococo, or the 19th century. He's also spent a lot of time looking at paintings in museums and replicating old paintings and incorporating African-American culture. I really enjoyed researching Kehinde and his work during the year and I love his ideas and the meanings behind his pieces. His empowerment of the African American race and the promotion of their culture and equality is very inspiring to me. He depicts the subjects of his paintings with such such perfect detail, an artstyle that is very attractive to me. I want to attempt to capture this same kind of beauty in my final project. My plan is to paint my friend Hannah in the stance of empowerment that is common in all of Kehinde’s pieces. My friend’s race is mixed with African American and Caucasian, and I chose her as the subject because I want my piece to be a representation of equality and empowerment for both races. I want to use Acrylic paint for this project. Kehinde usually uses oil paints for his projects, but that medium would be unsafe to use in a classroom setting. The toxins from the oil paint require more ventilation than the school art studio can provide, so I will settle for Acrylic paint. I plan to sketch the piece out with pencil on canvas before beginning, and then going back in with the acrylic to add details. I will need to utilize small brushes in order to achieve Kehinde’s level of detail I am hoping to imitate. I want to do this piece on a canvas the size of either 24x30, 20x24, or 18x24. Kehinde usually does his projects of large dimensions. His paintings are essentially lifesized, the huge canvas covered with color and details. These massive painting are modeled after the early European portraits, which are also very large in dimension. I am not planning on doing my piece quite as large, but I want it to be big enough to accentuate the details of the piece. 5/4/2017 0 Comments Finished Memory PieceThis is my finished memory piece. I completed making the skirt out of rose petals. I used the pigment from crushed petals mixed with water to do the trees and the landscape in the background, and attempted to add some pigment to the skin. I was kind of frustrated because I was unsure what aspect of the roses to use for skin. I left the background white in order to keep the focus on the subject of the piece.
This piece was located outside in the park area of the museum. It is made out of mesh wire, depicting two large heads facing each other. The faces are very unique, especially because you can see through them to the other side, all of the features creating a three-dimensional look. Even the ears, noses, and mouths are depicted with detail, but with the eyes, it is a little harder to see their placement. Although this piece is based upon a mother and daughter relationship, the artist created the heads without specified gender or relationship so that the viewer is able to put themselves in that place. This allows the viewers to develop their own feelings and personal perspectives on the piece, relating to it in any way they want. In my opinion, this is what really makes this piece beautiful. This piece is also located outside the art museum in the park area. Examination of the piece shows that the tree is made of metal, welded together in the middle. This weld is extremely obvious, the metal creating an obvious ring around the tree where the weld job caused the steel to have a smooth texture. This job could have been accomplished with more skill in order to make every aspect of the tree look realistic. Within the metal branches of the man-made tree is nestled a large stone. This piece is very interesting to me because the fact that the tree is made of metal causes the viewer to question whether or not the stone is truly a real stone or not. Perhaps it is made of metal just like the tree is, or maybe it really is a stone held by the steel branches. It all comes down to the personal opinion of what makes art. Does the artist have to create every aspect of the piece, or simply arrange materials? I think that the creator of this piece also could have had other ideas for its meaning. The metal tree looks tired and dead, but is still managing to carry the heavy weight of the stone in its fragile branches. Maybe this tree represents a person, possibly even the artist himself. Perhaps this piece shows that there are people who are weakened or tired by their afflictions, but they stay strong, carrying the burden without relenting. This piece was also outside, three huge rings implanted in the ground in the park area of the art museum. This piece consists of 3 massive rings arching across a pathway outside the museum. The rings are rooted into the ground with cement, strongly supported there. On the last ring you can even see the mark in the ground where the ring piece was constructed. One of my favorite parts about this was that if you stood at one end and looked down the rings looked like they were getting smaller and smaller. It appeared almost as if you were standing in a tunnel. The rings were actually much larger closer than I had thought when I was just looking at them from a distance, and their shape reminded me of the St. Louis Arch that I visited this summer. This painting, located inside the contemporary area of the museum, was done by Kehinde Wiley. It depicts a young African-American man with tattooed skin standing in a powerful stance. The painting is done with oil paints, and just like other projects by Kehinde, the floral background is very detailed. Every inch of the painting is done with extreme care and detail, even the skin and every aspect of his clothing and hair perfectly added. I personally love this piece, not only because I am enthralled by detailed artwork, but because I love the meaning this painting and the rest of Kehinde's collection has. His work discusses the power of the African-American culture, painting them in strong stances modeled after European paintings from an earlier time. When we looked at the paintings of Europeans in the museum, some adjectives that came to mind were powerful, privileged, rich, and superior. But when we looked at Kehinde's painting, our minds instantly thought of a thug, assuming that he was not a person of the best moral character. This is the kind of stereotype that Wiley's work discusses and attacks, showing that these people truly do have power. I love his work because not only is it beautiful but it is meaningful, and I want to create art like that. This piece is known as the silver dendrite, located outside the art museum. At first glance, it appears to be a metal tree. This is a common belief about this piece, especially because it is outside. But in reality, the "tree" actually depicts a blown up version of human veins. The artist took something very small and made it larger, every branch and vessel extremely detailed. This piece has always fascinated me because it shows that even tiny things in our body resemble larger things in nature. This justifies the idea that all things in existence are intertwined, connected in ways that we don't understand.
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Lydia GunnGo to the "Side Projects" page to see the artwork I've done outside of school. Archives
May 2017
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