Still Life

I know you've been dying to see how my still life turned out.  Here it is:

Well, it's done, I'll tell you that.  And it's hanging in the hallway in the art building.  But before you get excited, I'll tell you that everyone's is hanging up.  And this is what's getting me down.

I was actually pretty proud of my work on this still life.  I thought I made some good progress and it definitely ended up better than when I started it.  I was really happy especially with the pitcher on the right side, the one with the handle.  I wasn't in class for the critique, so I didn't get to hear what others had to say about it.  But as I was walking into my painting class on Monday, I saw them hanging in the hall and my heart just sank.

Why does everyone in my class have to be so good??  I'm naturally pretty competitive, so I immediately compare what I do to what everyone else does.  Ugh.  I know I shouldn't look at theirs and compare it to mine since everyone is different and has a different point of view, etc. etc. all that crap to cheer you up.  But I can't help it.  That's just how I'm feeling.

Our next assignment is soooooooo dumb I literally cannot get over it.  We have to make a design using only ten horizontal and vertical lines and one diagonal line, and then use a black Conte crayon to create shading and textures in the different areas.  Conte crayon is kind of like charcoal, only it doesn't smudge, you can't erase it, and it's harder to wash off your hands.  This is our "abstract" assignment.

I HATE abstract art.  Honestly, I just don't get it.  You throw a bunch of slop around on a canvas and I'm supposed to marvel at your artistic genius?  I'm looking at you, Jackson Pollock.  If a seven-year-old could recreate your painting, I'm not impressed.

It's Been A While...

I've been slacking with my posts, I know.  I can't help it!  We were in Virginia all weekend, and I was really busy trying to catch up on the work I missed.  Now we've got a four-day weekend (thanks to the Jewish holidays, something unheard of in Kentucky...), so I'm going to make up all my work and maybe even get ahead in some things!

Well, that's the plan anyway.  We'll see if it works out.

Let me see, where did I leave off?  I guess I'll start with ceramics.

I am REALLY behind in my ceramics class.  Every time I try to make something and I don't like how it's turning out, I just smush it all back together and try to start over.  The problem here is that I don't like anything I'm making!  So I have nothing really to show for my work.  The only thing I have is this, my "manipulated slab:"

  

I do like this one.  I like the texture, how it kind of looks almost rocky.  And I was happy with how the changes in the profile turned out.  My only problem here is that it dried soooo quickly.  When I tried to make a bottom for it, the top part cracked off!  I had to put strips of wet newspaper on it to get it a little damper so I could reconnect the pieces.

Today I caught up on our last project, which was making a piece with slabs again.  We had to cut out a profile and then connect all the pieces so it's like a little box/vase thing.  If I'm gonna be honest, I don't care about this specific project.  I'm just doing it so I don't get an "Incomplete."  Instead, I'll get a check mark.  Hmm...I guess this is one of the reasons why I'm feeling more and more like I'm in elementary school.

Tuesday we're starting on the wheel!  I'm really excited for that.  I used the pottery wheel once in high school but the pot I made just looked like a giant egg, it wasn't nice.  So this time, I'll make it count.

Painting Update

Today in painting class, we started on our second coat of paint.  So now we're having to decide what's going to be our "dominant" color and our "subdominant" color.  I chose blue as my dominant, and so since the subdominant has to be the complement, turns out it's going to be orange.
I just hope people don't confuse me for a Gators fan by the end of this thing.

Here's what my painting looked like after the first coat:

Thrilling, I know.

Now here's what I've got on coat #2 so far:

You can kind of tell which ones I've gone over and which ones I haven't.  I'm not really going in any sort of order.  I end up just mixing some colors together, picking a random shape, and going for it.

Hmm.  Maybe that wasn't such a good idea...

3D Design- Getting Plastered

My 3D Design class only meets once a week, on Fridays from 9AM-12:40PM.  Yeah, that's a long class.  But it ends up working out fine because I get soo much done in class.  I'm missing class this week (because, once again, we'll be in Virginia, taking on ODU...you get the idea), so I had to go into the workshop today to get some things done.

Our first project for this class was to create a 17-sided figure with all planes being parallel or perpendicular and using right angles only.  We had a cube of clay to start with, and this is what I came up with:

My professor somehow counted out 17 sides to this thing.  I don't know if it really is, but whatever.  If it works for him, it works for me.

The next step was to create a larger model of the figure using foam board and duct tape.  We had to measure all the sides and multiply them to make it on a larger scale.  So here's the outcome:

This thing gave me hell.  I didn't have an Exacto knife with me, so I was bumming off of the girl next to me.  Only hers was duller than Ben Stein, so my cutting was all whacked.  Plus, trying to make a small cube to tape to the inside of a bigger cube so as to create that hole in the side of the wall was brutal.

As you can see, I've already moved onto the next step, which is cutting a hole out and filling the hollow foam piece with plaster.

It's a messy business.

This plaster better come out of my jeans...

When we were doing the plaster demo, my professor said if there's a high part of the design then you have to cut a little vent in it to allow air to move through it so the plaster will fill it up...yeah I don't know, he went on about the "laws of physics" for about fifteen minutes.  But I did what he said and cut a vent into the little blocks on top so that plaster would fill it up.  For some reason though, it didn't.

Uhh, what the hell?


So I had to make some more plaster, get my clothes even dirtier, and fill up that little section on its own.


I don't really know how it's going to turn out.  Theoretically, it should look just like my little clay mold.  But I had some trouble with the foam board, piecing everything together was a little more complicated than it seems.  Plus, since I had to fill up that block by itself, I don't know if it's going to really mold with the rest of the plaster in the other sections.  I sure hope so, because I'm not trying to go back and re-do the whole foam board thing.

**Added Note:
If you ever work with plaster, make sure to get all the plaster out from under your fingernails BEFORE it dries.  It is NOT fun or pleasant trying to dig that crap out afterward.

Drawing...Again

Well, this is how my second drawing turned out:

I ended up not really spending much time on it, and I couldn't see the shadows and shading from the picture I took.  So, whatever, it was only a one day thing.

Our next project, that we're going to get an actual grade on (ahh!) is another still life.  The thing with still lifes is...they're boring.  I mean, literally, how much more boring can you get than those geometric shapes lined up on a table?  Come on.  But, on the other hand, it's not like I could do anything more exciting at this point.  I wanted to get to drawing people or faces or something this semester, since the "people" I draw have been the same since 6th grade when I copied doodles out of "Amelia's Notebook."

But, anyway, we had a choice between two different little scenes that my professor set up.  I wasn't really up to the task of trying to draw a huge vase full of fake flowers and leaves and stems and petals, so I chose this one.

This is the basic view, but I am doing a vertical drawing so I just narrowed it down to this:

(yup, that's a mobile upload)

The drawing's due on Thursday, but I will be on my way to Virginia with my field hockey team by then (to take on the #1 team in the nation, by the way...).  So I have to turn my drawing in early.  My only problem so far has been that I haven't been able to get into the studio during the same time of day as my class.  The lighting is natural and coming in through the window, so if I go in at a different time all the shadows will be off.

Since we don't have practice tomorrow, and my painting class ends at 11 AM, I'll be able to work on it tomorrow.  But again, the lighting will be off a little bit.  I'll just have to work around it, maybe focus on just getting the shapes of everything down and then work on the shadows in class on Tuesday.

Here's what I've got so far (my view is a little different from the picture.  And yes, I am defending myself here):

My professor said I jumped a little too soon into going really dark with the background and to try to pull it back a little.

But hey, I'm fearless, right?

Ceramics

Now I've realized that I've been focusing so much on my drawing class that I'm forgetting to talk about my other classes.

Ceramics is pretty fun.  The first day we learned how to wedge the clay (getting all the air bubbles out so it won't explode in the kiln) and we made little pinch pots with our fingers (none of which I kept, because let's face it, I made a better one when I was eleven and it's not cute to keep every piece of art you make anymore).  The next class we started on a coil pot, which was just stacking piles of coils on top of each other.  Mine was terrrribleeee.  I hated it.  I wanted it to look like a beehive but it just turned out terrible.

Yesterday we started making pots out of slabs of clay.  You know how some words just sound like exactly what they are?  Like, jelly.  Or fizz.  That's how I think of slab.  There's no other way to describe it than just as a big slab of clay.

So we have a slab of clay that we kind of have to twist together and make a pot, put texture on it, change the profile.  It's kind of hard to describe, but I'll take a picture next week to show it.

My professor, though, is a hoot.  She's kind of quirky and I think she thinks that she's really funny and clever, but she's just kind of zany.  She was telling us an idea she had for a party where everyone would hot glue styrofoam to their shoes so all the short people can be the same height as the tall people.
Then she said, "Yeah, but I'd probably get sued if someone tripped."

Yeah, that's the worst part of that idea.

A Little Off Topic

I realize this post is really off the subject of art, but you know what, it's my blog and I'll do what I want.

I play field hockey for Hofstra, and today we beat Siena 10-0.  But more importantly, our first conference game is coming up in a week down in Norfolk, Virginia against Old Dominion University.  ODU has had a really terrific season so far, and they've been ranked #2 in the country.  Tonight, they played the #1 UNC Tarheels, and WON.  They won.  Holy shit, they won.

If everything goes as planned, by the end of the weekend they will have moved up into the top spot in the rankings.  That is, if they beat Duke on Sunday.

Just throwing that out there.  That in one week, we will be playing the #1 team in the country.

Painting Project #1

I originally hadn't signed up for a painting class, but it ended up fitting into my schedule so I figured, why not?

The first day of class we weren't able to do much because we had ordered painting kits from the Utrecht Art Supply store in Carle Place.  But when they were delivered they were mixed up with some kits from the advanced class, so we didn't have the right colors, brushes, etc.  I tried to keep mine because it had a lot more paints, but they caught me.  So sad.

Anyway, the first project we were assigned is a pretty basic one, and, sorry to say, kind of boring.  We divided the canvas into three rows of four, so 12 squares total.  Then we had to divide each square into three geometric shapes.  So there's 36 shapes total on the canvas.  Using only the primary color paints, we have to paint each shape a different color.

Exhilarating.

The primary colors (blue, red, and yellow) will make the secondary colors when mixed together (purple, orange, and green)- you know, just in case you didn't learn that in elementary school.  And we did have three shades of blue, two shades of red, and two shades of yellow.  We could also use white to lighten the shades a bit, since we weren't allowed to use any of the colors straight out of the tube.  But I feel like I just ran out of colors as I got to last few shapes.  Or they were at least starting to look like each other.

The next step is to cover the first layer with a second layer of paint.  Now we have to start picking a "dominant" color that will be repeated throughout the painting.  So if I chose blue to be my dominant color, I'd have lots of shades of blue ranging from blueish-green to blueish-purple.  But then we have to have a "sub-dominant" color also present, which would just be the complementary color.  So blue's complement would be orange.  Then we'll go over it with a third coat of paint so even everything out and make it smooth.

Like I said, not too exciting.  I don't have a picture of it yet, but trust me you aren't missing much.  Let me just say, thank God we have to go over the first layer because mine is uggggglyyyyy.

Drawing Critique

Today was my first critique in drawing class.  I went into the class with high hopes, feeling good about my first attempt at charcoal sketching.

Then I snuck a look at the girl's next to me.

Holy shit!  Did you trace that thing or something?  Look at the folds in the tablecloth!  Look at the shading on the pears!  Look at the texture on the eggplants!  How the hell did you do that??

We all tacked our drawings onto the critique wall and talked about them as a class.  There were a couple other drawings that were equally amazing.

This one:

and this one

were pretty much agreed were the best.  Obviously with any drawing there's going to be some minor issues, but I mean, seriously, how does someone draw this well?  It's so unfair.

When we got to my drawing on the wall, my professor kind of stopped and was like, "This one, well, it's obviously a beginner.  Probably their first time drawing with coal."

Yup.

"Whose is this?"

I reluctantly raised my hand.

"Do you consider yourself fearless?"

Umm....

"Because I like how you seem fearless in your drawing, you kind of just jumped right in there and went for it."

Uh, yeah, sure!  That's right!  I'm fearless!

"It's a really good start, you just need to focus more on proportion and details."

Alright, it's better than nothing.

So our next assignment, just a one day thing, was another still life.  Only this time we had actual objects in front of us.  After the professor made us watch him draw the still life (seriously, it took like 45 minutes just watching it), he set us loose around the room.  This was the view from my spot:

Reeeeeal exciting stuff, huh?

So basically we had to take this 3-dimensional view and flatten it down onto our drawing pad.  You can't really see it from the picture, but the lighting was creating some shadows and shading on the shapes.  The white on white was giving me some issues, but overall it's not too difficult.  Right?
Here's my progress so far:

So, overall, nothing great.  But not too shabby, either.

Drawing Project #1

The semester started on a Tuesday, so my first classes were Drawing and Beginning Ceramics.  I took a pottery class in high school, so I wasn’t too nervous about that class.  Drawing is another story.  Not even my doodles are cute.  As already evidenced by my very loving brother.

My mom, who happened to major in art in college and is pretty talented herself, tried to be encouraging:  

“Don’t worry honey, you have a great sense of style and color.”

Uh, thanks Mom, but the class only uses charcoal.

Project #1: Cézanne Reproduction

You’d think the first day of class would be somewhat easy, right?

Wrong.  My professor gave us this painting that we have to draw ourselves.  Good introduction, huh?

“Still Life with a Ginger Jar and Eggplants”  by Paul Cézanne

The painting’s in color, but my professor gave us a black and white copy that really just looks like a giant grey blob. 

He said to focus on proportion and to use at least five different shades of grey by combining vine charcoal and compressed charcoal. 

Since I’m a very logical person, I figured the best way to start would be to divide the painting into sections.  That way I’d be able to control the proportion better than just freehanding the whole thing.  So I divided it into four corners.

My mom’s advice was to work from left to right so the charcoal doesn’t smudge all over the paper and onto my arm.  But looking at the painting, and the top left corner, I just couldn’t bring myself to start there.  I mean, literally, it’s just different shades and blobs of grey.  So I started with the wine bottle in the middle and worked my way down to the jugs, pears, and various fabrics.

I wish I had taken pictures of my progress, but I only took one of the finished drawing.  I'm not exactly sure how long it took me, probably between 2-3 hours.  My mom was right, though.  I had charcoal all over my hands and arms, and I ended up smudging the bottom of the picture.  Note to self: follow Mom's advice.

Overall, I'm pleased with the end result.  I am unhappy about the pears on the plate, though.  I couldn't really get the shape and size of them down as accurately as I'd hoped.  I also found it challenging to use a lot of different shades of grey.  The vine charcoal and compressed charcoal were so different to use together.  The vine charcoal I could hold as a pencil, but when I smudged it the shade became much lighter than I planned, so I had to go over it multiple times and couldn't get the result that I really wanted.  The compressed charcoal, on the other hand, applied very dark and was hard to lighten.  I used my kneaded eraser and a crafty little tool called a "tortillon" to spread out the charcoal and lighten it a bit.

        Side note: When I was at the art store getting all my supplies for class, I couldn't find the tortillons.  When I asked the sales lady where they were, she said, "They're right next to the charcoal pencils.  They look like little joints."  And she was right.

Tomorrow we take our drawings into class to be critiqued by the professor and other students.  I'm nervous to see how mine stacks up against everyone else's.  I'm just hoping not to be embarrassed.

The Challenge

I’m not an artist.  I don’t consider myself to be artistic, creative, or crafty.  None of the above.  The one aspect of art that I believe I have any inkling of talent in is photography.  So when I got to college and had to choose a minor to go along with my major in Public Relations, I figured I’d do something kind of fun and different.  I wanted to be a photography minor.

I didn’t know then that only certain photography classes are offered certain semesters, and some not at all.  Ever.  And with my field hockey practice schedule, I wasn’t able to take my first photography class until the spring of my sophomore year.  I did well in the class, and one of my photographs was featured in the student art show.  But the problem still remained that the times of the other photography classes couldn’t fit into my schedule.

Luckily, I realized that I was not actually declared as a “photography” minor, but rather as a “fine arts” minor.   So, really, I could take any art class that I wanted.  And as I entered my junior year and realized that I only had 3 credits toward my minor, I had to get on it.  So I took a graphic design class.  It wasn’t my favorite thing in the world, but it was a nice break from what a normal class consists of (tests, essays, research papers, etc. etc.). 

Going into my senior year, I still only have 6 of 18 credits to go toward my minor.  I was smart and started on all my major classes as a freshman, so I really don't have to worry about that.  So, I've jam-packed my schedule with art classes this semester.  I am currently signed up in Beginning Painting, Drawing & Perception, Beginning Ceramics, and 3-Dimensional Design.  

And, like I said, I am not an artist.  My brother actually caught me doodling once, looked at my notebook, and simply said, "That is the opposite of art."  

Real encouraging, bro.

So...this should be interesting.