Art I
"I dream my painting, and then I paint my dream." -Vincent Van Gogh
10/27/2016 0 Comments Boundary Project ProgessThis is the progress I have made on my boundary piece this week. I painted the rays reaching out from the center yellow, going for a bright look to represent boundaries being helpful to me. Also, today I added yellow to the running girl, painted the hand, and added metallic gold colors to parts of the piece. I will have a completely updated picture up in the beginning of next week.
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10/22/2016 0 Comments Kehinde Wiley Research BlogPassion, 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 anti-social 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 socioeconomic 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 photoshoots 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. Kehinde's Work This particular painting, "The Two Sisters", is from the collection called "An Economy of Grace", which is a group of paintings of African-American women. I love how the black background makes the yellow, green, pink and blue flowers and leaves stand out a lot more. The women's white dresses seem to flow around them as they stand close together. They almost seem to look superior, full of power and beauty with their dark hair twisted into elegant updos. They seem to know that they are powerful, holding themselves with dignity and grace. It makes me feel like I should be in awe of them, or at least respectful of their high position because of the way the seem to peer out of the painting at me. Their eyes are watchful and their faces solemn, as if they know something I don't. The medium used for this project is oil paint, applied very carefully with extreme detail and realism. This painting, in the "Black Light" collection, was modeled after Sir Joshua Reynolds' "Portrait of Samuel Johnson". I love how the teal and pink background works with the colors of the man's attire to make him stand out a little more, even with the pink designs overlapping his torso. Every detail about this painting is so realistic, the oil paint applied masterfully. Even the soft sheen on his jacket, the dots on his tie, and every detail of his skin and face is flawless. His expression seems serious, looking directly at the viewer as if he has some important statement to make. It makes me want to know more about who he is and what he has to say because of the way he looks so solemn. Kehinde's work really inspires me because of the detail he accomplishes, and the way he uses color in the patterned backgrounds of his paintings. All of his pieces seem to have a meaning behind them, and each person he paints has a story. He portrays the beauty of the African-American culture magnificently, expressing emotion, creativity, and incredible talent in every brushstroke. Sources
http://www.pbs.org/video/2365311240/ http://kehindewiley.com/ https://www.google.com/search?site=&tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=1366&bih=662&q=kehinde+Wiley&oq=kehinde+Wiley&gs_l=img.3..0l10.283238.286231.0.286503.15.8.1.6.6.0.236.878.2j4j1.7.0....0...1ac.1.64.img..2.13.712.4as9BDBMJZ8 10/21/2016 0 Comments Boundary Project ProcessI have finished a lot of the painting of my boundary piece, using bright colors to make the guiding hand at the bottom pop out more. I had trouble mixing the mint color with the green because one of them dried before I could mix it with the other, so I will work on that next time. I am thinking about using bright yellow for the cardboard strips that are still unpainted and pink or light red for the running girl.
10/14/2016 0 Comments Boundaries Project ProgressI finished cutting everything out and yesterday I started painting the cardboard. So far all I have done is outlined the edges with cobalt blue to kind of make the rest of it pop. I'm going to add brighter colors in the center of the piece next. (:
10/13/2016 0 Comments Color mixingIn this piece I mixed acrylic paints to create different tints and shades. For the first column to the far left I started with white and slowly mixed blue into it to make it more and more tinted. The second column showed blue becoming darker and darker as I added black, the third column showed a grey tint, and the fourth column shows how I added a blue tint and a grey shade to white.
10/13/2016 0 Comments Color WheelThis is the color wheel I made to represent the relationship between different colors. This is done with acrylic paints. The primary colors are red, yellow, and blue. The secondary colors are orange, purple and green. The tertiary colors are red violet, blue violet, blue green, yellow green, yellow orange, and red orange. The complementary colors are red and green, blue and orange, and yellow and violet.
10/2/2016 0 Comments One-point and Two-point linesIn this projects I focused on learning how to use one-point and two-point lines. On the left is the two-point lines and on the right is the one-point. These methods are used for many different things, including on blueprints, geometry, etc. On the two-point page I used the two points to create cubes, which I turned into houses with doors and windows. The one-point page was just used to practice bringing all points of the different shapes to one spot on the page.
10/2/2016 0 Comments Boundaries Cardboard ModelThis is the cardboard model I used my boundaries sketch to create. I cut out all the shapes from cardboard and hot glued them together. I also used smaller rectangles of cardboard to make some of the pieces stand up like in a pop-up book.
I like how this turned out, but I think I could have done more detail with the hands holding the girl. Can't wait to paint it! |
Lydia GunnGo to the "Side Projects" page to see the artwork I've done outside of school. Archives
May 2017
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