Alternative Methods

This piece had me genuinely surprised at my abilities to not only use unconventional materials to create art, but I also discovered my ability to add emotional weight to a piece. My journey in this artistic endeavour began on a day when I experienced an incredibly overwhelming shift in perspective. I basically went through a day of wandering around town alone to unfamiliar locations, seeking clarity and peace, and new scenery to connect these foreign sensations to. But to contrast, I spent a lot of time unexpectedly running into many of my close friends. Over the course of that day, I gathered a collection of materials that were either symbolic of a moment or feeling, or were artifacts found at each location. When I had overcome my intense experience, I decided to channel it into my artwork, and utilized all of the pieces i had subconsciously been gathering all day. My creative process began with carefully laying out all of the items in an observable display, and beginning with one piece at a time, consciously and thoughtfully placing it within the piece. I made sure to spend just enough time meditating on the incorporation of each element, but also relied on an unfamiliar decisiveness that i had gained from my experience. I taught myself to go with my natural instinct and not spend all my time dwelling upon every possible option, but just enough to be confident in my decision. This was a technique that i have always struggled with in art, I spend too much time thinking and not enough time executing, and I have a hard time trusting my own judgment with fear of ruining something. This was a huge personal hurdle that i find is reflected in this piece, perhaps not to the viewer, but to myself. The concept of this piece essentially was to capture the self defining experience I had, through material significance and collage, to give myself an illustrative account of that day. It was also a way for me to immortalize the things that held a deep weight, things that I wouldn’t want to keep in their individual states, but was willing to discard into a trash art piece.

The materials of this piece include; an old record case and its own record (post-mortem), cigarette butts, two dead hibiscus flowers, also dead sour grass stems, a purple gel, bandages in an ‘x’, a cut of pink cloth, an excerpt from a journal (of that day), a leftover note, and an addition of paint. All of the materials were compiled throughout the day, and each one holds symbolic meaning, but that which can’t be interpreted upon initial perception.

I find my pieces to have the most resemblance to the collages of Ray Johnson, because of the composition, the content, and the construction. He used commonplace materials, but ones with an unknown yet evident symbolic intention, something the viewer may never understand, but Ray will always hold the answers to. And that is something understood within the relationship of the viewer and the artist, that the viewer is left in mystery and curiosity. I also found parallels in the composition of the work, a time intensive layering of the materials, each one meticulously and carefully placed in chaotic harmony.

http://www.rayjohnsonestate.com/art/collages/

Self Generated

This was a completely unique approach to a drawing project for me, and i ended up finding a great satisfaction in it. I began with making the first object that I felt I could create when I picked up the clay, so I made bread. But after the bread left me just hungry and uninspired, I decided to try the alternative approach and start with a drawing, create it in clay, and draw it again. This way I could redefine a piece of art that I felt deserved more attention, and a new interpretation. I took one of my beloved doodle figures that I made a while back and created him out of clay. I chose him, “Jazz Man”, because he is my most iconic doodle and I have envisioned him in larger, more indepth form. First I made him into a two dimensional clay sculpture, and painted on his colored features as in the drawing, but he begged for some more life and dimension. I expanded the paper-restricted form of his being and created a fully dimensional little abstract statue. I left him in his tan state and used colored lights to define his figure and add tinted shadows. I left him tan because I noticed his figure resembled something of a religious prayer statue, in my opinion, he would be the god of dance. I also thought it reflected his rudimentary components, because he is composed of basic shapes and a simple line form.

I drew him in charcoal, which I felt was the medium that reflected his physical form best. I found it successful when blending his tan but tonal base. And when adding layers of colored tints for highlights and shadows. I kept the background simple but responsive to the pale colors of the figure. I framed him with slightly less headroom than footroom, and had his form take up the full center of the page. I set him at a slightly low angle so it feels as if you’re looking a bit up at him, to further the feeling of his divinity. The background is a simple pale blue and dark purple halo around him, with a sunset colored cloud abstraction. My process with actually drawing him began with choosing the mid tone colored pastel of his base and executing it as a figure drawing, scribbling the form and movement of his shapes. From there I did layers and layers of colors, for shading and definition, until the pastel wouldn’t stick to the paper anymore, and then he was complete. As for the background I began with the lavender aura because I felt he needed to be radiating a purple energy, expressive of mystery and wisdom. Over that I layered paler tones to create clouds and add a natural element.

I was inspired by the work of Allison Schulnik, because she created her own abstract and whimsical figures from her own creative realm, and brought them to life with dynamic qualities. She created figures that could only be spawned from her own imagination, which is why I’m so attached and proud of Jazz Man, because he is my own original creation. https://vimeo.com/31110838

http://www.allisonschulnik.com

Self Generated Project

This self generated drawing project was interesting because I have never created something and then drawn it, usually the other way around- drawing something and then creating it. At first, I had a difficult time trying to think of what to form from the paper clay. The clay was drying quickly, making it hard to knead. When doodling, I always seem to draw flowers and that's what I started to make. I made a rose, and found some dried leaves and twigs around where I was sitting. I stuck them into the flower to add a second element. This created an almost prickly, dangerous appearance to my rose. This made me think about the duality of the delicate, tenderness of rose petals with the sharp, threatening points of thorns on rose stems. Nature is a large part of my inspiration in my art work. I love to be surrounded by nature, as it's rejuvenating and full of beauty. For my project, I considered texture and use of materials to be important factors. I also like to reuse material that would normally get thrown away or is "scrap". Looking through my stuff, I found sandpaper, sheets of paper between duralar, and newsprint that would be effective for my project. I cut out petals from the thin sheets of white paper that was separating the duralar, and arranged them into a flat rose on the newsprint. I shaded them individually with graphite pencils and then used black ink on top for stronger lines. The outer edges of the paper petals curled up to create a 3D look. I cut out twig-like forms from the sandpaper and glued them coming out from the rose. Around the rose, I put dots of ink, as if the pollen was dispersed into the air. I decided to keep the theme simple and practically colorless, which is out of the ordinary for me. This piece is minimalist, without narrative. I actually really liked the end appearance and am willing to create more pieces like it. Cy Twombly has related works, especially his work "Untitled (Roses)". He experiments with a simplified form of abstraction. His work is very gestural, and I like his use of minimal color.

Self-Generated Subject

The self-generated subject project reversed the usual approach to drawing because it involved the application of our imagination to a greater extent right off the bat. Instead of simply drawing what we see, we took a step back and created and made our subject, thus rendering a work that is uniquely personal.

When molding my creature, I had originally wanted it to look like a fox. I drew inspiration from my dog, whom my sister and I often say looks like a mix between a fox and a weasel. Of this initial concept, only one thing made it through the trial and error phase of molding: the ears. The creature’s ears are about the size of its head, a trait it shares with my dog. When trying to make the body, I was applying my high school Ceramics I knowledge. I used a cognac cup as a mold in order to get the rounded shape and I liked how the bottom of the creature seemed to flow off like cloth, so I decided to make it a ghost. . I knew I wanted something to ooze out of the ghost’s eyes, and in the end I decided to make flowers grow out of the holes and out from under it. The concept behind this decision was the resilience of nature in that it ultimately defeats the test of times and is able to grow, adapting to its surroundings along the way, in this case, growing around and finding a way out. In a sense, I see my ghost as a defender of nature.      

 

One of the artists whose work I looked at closely for this project was Allison Schulnik. After having seen her videos in class, I was moved by her claymations because the creatures she makes are not particularly “cute” or “pretty”, but they have a strong presence to the point that the viewer can sympathize as they melt into nothing. I was mostly inspired by her ability to give each creature a personality despite the simplicity of its form. I have attached a link to one of her videos. The creature in the picture is one of her creations. As you can see, it looks like it’s up to something, almost mischievous, and yet it looks like it is surprised to be seen.

https://vimeo.com/10459766

For the drawing, I decided to work with soft pastels because they would allow me to get the range of value and color that I wanted. I typically work very rigidly with pastels, blending to the point of no return, that is, muddiness. However, recently I have had this new found appreciation and fascination for chaos and messiness (I have my room to prove it). So, I used a combination of blending and overlapping of color. A closer look at the drawing will show that most of the image is made by a blend of different colored scribbles, which give the 2D image a sense of movement. The background was achieved by a more decisive mark making, in which the lines were made with both hands and involved a full body motion to make. It was the most liberating section and the one in which I had less control. The foreground, mainly the table was colored by using the run off, the dust that had collected on the ground below me.

Overall, this project pushed my concept of drawing to a new level where I have to think about the drawing even before I know what my subject will be. It is definitely something that I will continue to explore in the future.  

Self Generated Project!

When I first started the self-generated project, I was as per usual, clueless as to what the content should be. Self generated implied that everything regarding subject and content relied on my own imagination. Furthermore, I was stumped by the paper clay material itself, because it dries and cracks as you use it and doesn’t carry it’s own weight. It would topple over if I formed anything too tall, and many of my trial creations were unsuccessful because of this. But after class one day I was milling around the Old Town Orange neighborhood on a skateboard. This is when I saw a snail shell on the ground of an alleyway, and it’s spiral based form caught my eye as a technique that I could mirror in the paperclay. It was a dull shade of brown, lonely and cracked from sitting in the sun. Inspired by what I had seen, I went home shortly after and began to smooth out slabs of the paper clay so that I could roll them into shells.

The shape of the shell is interesting because it feels like the spiral could go on forever. When the shell is standing right-side up, it is not really possible to tell where it starts and begins. I like this idea of permanence being juxtaposed with the snail itself, who gets stomped on, run over, ignored, and lives (generally) a short life. There are many artists who address this fate of the crustacean in their art. An artist named Stefan Siverud (http://www.legalassassin.com/?cat=134) uses snails as a way to insert his art into living forms of nature. He takes their natural design, and modifies it to his liking. These are some of his snails:

His use of color and symbols that carry contemporary value (aka the golden arches and the Louis Vuitton print) work to humanize the snail, which is so often cast off as ugly and unappealing. I was also inspired by another artist who paints snail shells, named Slinkachu. Their art with snails is made specifically so that the snails will be noticed for their vibrancy and color, and as such will hopefully not get stepped on. I thought it was interesting that they physically attached other objects onto the shell as well, as shown in the photos below.

These artists inspired my use of color in my self-generated project. I was weary at the thought of just making a boring pencil drawing, but these artists motivated me to bring color into the mix and not worry about making things hyperrealistic. For the color in my work, I relied heavily on watercolor pencils. They are easy to blend and control on the pencil work that I had already laid down. From this point moving on, I was more interested in creating a personality for the snails than creating accurate physical forms with the paper clay. An artist who is able to mimic life forms while still maintaining a strong tone in their work is Allison Schulnik. While her work is mostly done in claymation, I was able to learn a lot from the imperfections that are present in her characters. This video below is the main source I used as inspiration:  Allison Schulnik Beautiful/Decay Studio Visit

As a result, this is what my snails looked like:

My idea was to make it appear that the snails, who were made from paper clay, had escaped their home inside the bag. They broke free, and are moving up and away from their confines as just paper clay. I spent a lot of time constructing the shell, but the faces were my favorite portion to create because of how weird and expressive they ended up. With mouths gaping wide and eyes poking out in weird directions, they look like cousins of one of Allison Schulnik’s army of clay creatures.

When it came to choosing the colors for the snails, I found myself inclined to NOT limit my palette. Snails come in all different shapes, colors, and sizes, and I thought that I would honor this by choosing a range of colors on their body. Henry Matisse once did a piece in 1953 called Snail and I think it represents the ways in which I color blocked little sections of each snail shell. While this piece of art is more abstracted, it still emulates the spiral form and also uses color to accomplish a snail interpretation.

Self Generated Project

For the self generated project I wanted to combine aspects of deity worship with dolls or figurines.
I enjoyed drawing florals in my last project so that is where I started for this project.
I wanted to incorporate a living aspect in my project, so I chose real plants to be in my model.

Day of the Dead has always been an interesting holiday to me because of the artwork specifically. The bold vibrant colors and pop design intrigued me. This encouraged me to create a work with a similar vibe. Day of the Dead artwork encouraged me to use vibrant pastels with a black background, similar to the pictures below.

Day of the dead also commonly uses flowers because they are left on the graves of passed loved ones. The versatile use and meaning of flowers encouraged me to think about them as more than just a topic for a realistic drawing. The sacred-ness of a burial is a long running tradition, and flowers have been used for a long time in burial services. So, I lined my figure with small flowers, as if to suggest a burial or memorial of some kind.

I wanted my piece to be slightly more mysterious and ambiguous than typical Day of the Dead skulls, so I began to think about voodoo dolls and worship dolls, similar to the pictured below. There is something slightly humorous to me that we can place such deep meaning to something as simple as a doll. A part elephant part god, Ganesha, who was the "remover of obstacles and the deva of intellect and wisdom" can be reduced to a small, easily recognizable doll. While these dolls may be children from a kid's service at a Hindu temple, they stand for the same concept that 20' pure gold statues have stood for. Although they may not have the same impact they are representing the same almighty gods that have existed in Hinduism for thousands of years.

This aspect took my project in a direction of interpreting my figure into a drawing. I created a slightly more "godlike" figure than just a Day of the Dead skull drawing. The figure is meant to look slightly ghostly, and all-powerful, equipped with a two powerful staves, one of which was a leaf and the other a pine cone.




https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSJJi8WH9EY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Kx_HLwN_Pg

Coop Self Generated Project

I was inspired by the animation characters created by Alison Schulnik and it made me think about cartoon characters. I took an interest in how simple the forms of the characters were. When I started to make my sculptures I cut the clay into equal sized pieces so the sculptures would have an equal presence.

I tried to acquire the mindset I have while I’m doodling  in class when I was making these sculptures. That is to detach myself from making something detailed or realistic and make really simple, mindless shapes. When I added the small eyes and mouths to the shapes they started to look more like cartoon characters or animation. The forms are androgynous but have familiar qualities as cartoon figures. In the drawing the characters are interacting with each other in humorous and friendly ways. I’ve never done a drawing like this before and was focused on maintaining an open attitude through the process.

This piece is also personal because I relied heavily on my own imagination intermixed with images of Dr. Suess characters and cartoon shows like Adventureland. I think these types of shows as well as Dr. Suess are very successful in creating characters that are fantasy-like and unique but also simple and obscure. The characters I made were more simplified then Dr. Suess characters. My sculptures are comparable to the simplest form of a thumbnail for a cartoon drawing. Although the shapes were formed without preplanning, the final shape of the sculpture influenced what type of facial expression the shape would acquire. For example on the round shape in the foreground the eyes are large and round and the mouth is big and smiling. The square has a neutral almost expressionless look.

The sculptures were personified and re-contextualized into a charcoal drawing. It now has a comic book appearance or a rough storyboard slide for a cartoon. I arranged the characters into a hilly landscape so they interact with each other. The sculptures were used to influence the landscape itself and the scene created. One sculpture turned into the indifferent mountain face. Another became the upside down clouds. The others became life forces, walking around the earth in a comedic way. The expressions are also humorous, some are shocked and others happy and droopy eyed.

Self- Generated Project

I have never used paperclay before so it was very fun to play with the new material. As I was sculpting it was hard to get certain shapes due to the nature of the clay, but I really wanted to create whatever came to me in that moment. More recently I have been in a defeated mood. I just don't give a fuck anymore about certain things. Sometimes it's when you stop caring so much and let go that things work out. I feel like that apply to my art as well. I am the type of artist that can get stuck on the details but I have been working a lot on being more lose with my lines.

So for this sculpture I wanted to express this mood i've been in. I just don't care about certain things. Nothing excites me, surprises me, or disappoints me because I just feel so numb to the subject. I felt too strongly about it that it exhausted all the feelings out of me. The character I sculpted has its eyes closed because it just wants to be done with the day. It’s ready for bed and it's trying to clear its head of all the noise. A middle finger is coming out of the head because all it can think about is that it doesn't give a fuck anymore. It can also be interpreted as a “fuck off” or “fuck you” because it is just so done with the day it wants to be left alone. The pipe and smoke signifies that the character it's trying to cope with this feeling. It is as if it is metaphorically blowing out all the negative feelings.

When it came to the drawing aspect to this project I wanted it to be very stylized. I wanted it to be close to my doodling style to represent the “I don't give a fuck” feel to it. When I am doodling I am not worried about creating a perfect piece I am solely just trying to express myself and let my thoughts go. I also wanted to color it with bring stimulating colors so that I could make the background dark and musky. I wanted the colors to give a more playful feel to it so that the artwork does not feel so depressing. This piece is not supposed to feel sad but rather feel hopeful. Even though this character is going through a tough time the colors represent the hope and the coping aspect.

An artist that  inspired me for this project is Cooper Richmond. I love his use of colors and the way he blends them. He has a way of using so much color but applying it in a way that is not overwhelming. So I actually asked him to help pick out my color scheme. I was also inspired by doodles I just found on tumblr and my own doodles of course. I do not have names of the artists that inspired my work due to the fact that I could not find their name on their artworks.

Links: mood board: https://www.pinterest.com/sannnevb/hoeruiktdemaan/?lp=true

          Other doodle art artists: http://www.creativebloq.com/illustration/doodle-art-912775