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.