Friday, January 18, 2013

BLIND CONTOUR

A few weeks ago we started making blind contour self portraits. I haven't finished mine, but you can see the work in progress below. So far, I have dyed the background, outlined the original blind portraits with a different pen, and used a special pencil along with the help of a little water to bring out the lines in the drawings. I haven't decided what to write on it yet and I'm hoping to do something else with it after finishing up with the pencil.


EMPTY BOWLS


I loved getting back into clay and making bowls for the Empty Bowls Dinner. This year I wanted to create special looking bowls as opposed to the usual small bowls that I made last year for the event. I tried a different design for each bowl/tray and experimented with different glazes that I didn't use last year. Below are some pictures of a few bowls that I created and glazed.


PAPER LANTERNS


I really enjoyed making lanterns this marking period. I have completed 3 (two of which I gave to family members for Christmas) so far and I'm currently finishing another one. My main lantern (above) was inspired by the season of fall. The barren trees suggest winter but I was thinking more of the wind and the motions that the trees make when the wind blows against them, especially in the fall season. My original lantern's color was not altered from its original white while my other three lanterns were colored before cutting out each of their respective patterns.


Friday, January 11, 2013

Artist Research Post


- ROY LICHTENSTEIN -

Roy Lichtenstein, born October 27, 1923 in Manhattan, was a pop-artist who, starting in the 60's, transformed people's overall perception of art. Today, Lichtenstein is best known for his blown-up comic book portraits of girls & other cartoon-ish images. Lichtenstein used Ben-Day dots in his art in order to give his pieces a comic book-like feeling. Lichtenstein's new style of pop art was anti-everything, including the previous style he used and the most popular style of the time, Abstract Expressionism. Lichtenstein wanted to see "the difference between commercial drawing and fine art drawing". Lichtenstein differed from the other "king" of pop art, Andy Warhol, in that he had a different style of painting and lacked the celebrity persona that Warhol had. Lichtenstein was against the "pop machine" and opposed to much of what Warhol was doing at the time. Lichtenstein took the concept of commercial art and flipped it upside down. 

I really like Lichtenstein because he proved that he wasn't afraid to mess with what the public felt comfortable with. He turned the art world upside down when he first arrived on the scene and many were wondering if the pieces he was creating were even qualified as works of art. He wasn't afraid to do something that nobody else was doing, and I really respect him for that.

I love this painting a lot because it differs greatly from some of his other earlier paintings which strictly feature the three primary colors and the color black. Girl In Window (above) uses brighter hues of all three primaries plus a dark green for the window. I also love all of the energy that was put into in the painting.
 
I saw this piece, Perforated Seascape #1, when I visited Lichtenstein: A Retrospective in D.C. this past December. I loved how different this one was from all of the other landscape paintings he did. It consisted of two panels (about 8 inches apart) which were either covered in blue dots or red dots. When you got closer or farther away, these giant spots (visible above) would start to form and change shape/disappear.
 
I've always really enjoyed his Brushstroke paintings but the one above has to be my favorite. I love that the brushstrokes are painted to look almost like the hair of the girls he also paints.