Thursday, March 26, 2015

Rilke



John shared with us some of Rainer Maria Rilke's work in order to discuss the nature of being an artist. The poem at the top comes from Rilke's Possibility of Being. The second photo shows pages four and five from Letters on Cezanne. When discussing "This is the Creature," John said that everyone interprets poetry differently, but he can see this as being a metaphor for the process of an artist. Here are some other thoughts he mentioned while reading the poem to us.
-Creating the possibility to create art
-Making something unmade
-Giving birth to something that the normal paradigm will not care for
-Too much self disclosure scares the unicorn away

See what insights you gain about yourself and the process of making art as you read these sections and create work in the studio.

Pixel Paintings


(photo above)








(photo above)



















These are a few paintings from a project started at the beginning of the semester. The assignment focused on a rigorous process of color mixing. The students were broken into groups of three and had to create an interesting photograph of a member in the group. Next, the students pixelated their photo in Photoshop in order to create a grid system that they could paint from. Each of the three students had to paint the photo in a different way: one in black and white, one in the photo's original colors, and one with a limited palette of their choice, such as a pair of complimentary colors like blue and orange or yellow and purple. Hopefully the others will be finished soon so I can put them up as well.





Recent Work







When in doubt, just do this.



Thursday, March 12, 2015

Mediums and Solvents


Earlier this week in class, some of us were discussing the way in which we like to use solvents and mediums to thin our oil paint. Our discussion led to the stability of paint when only using solvents to thin it. Everyone has their own preference for working with oils, but if you aren't sure how or why to use mediums and solvents, here is a good summary from Greg Kimsey and two videos from Douglas Farrick. Farrick's first video is about mediums and the second one has good safety information on solvents. Last, if you're really geeky and want to know about the molecular activity happening in oil paint and solvents, there is an article from the Smithsonian Libraries titled, "Oil Paints: The Chemistry of Drying Oils and the Potential for Solvent Disruption."

Oil Painting 101: Mediums - ART by Greg Kimsey

How to Create Oil Painting Medium(s) - YouTube

Artists Painting Solvents - YouTube

https://repository.si.edu/bitstream/handle/10088/20489/11.Tumosa.SCMC3.Mecklenburg.Web.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y



Thursday, March 5, 2015

Visual Research


The class is starting to prepare for their final project and these are the steps/requirements that John has outlined for the project.

1. What is your image?
          Find an image that you would like to work from and determine the size of your surface. Each student must have 3 to 4 manipulated versions of their photograph. John suggests altering your photo in photoshop with filters such as the 'artistic cutout' filter or the 'pixilated mosaic' filter to eliminate and simplify information. This will help you deconstruct the images and things you see in a deeper way.

2. Define your palette.
         What is your goal for the final image? What kind of aesthetic do you want to explore? The type of palette you choose can help you reach the aesthetic goal you desire and will help communicate a mood and unify the image. We've discussed the Zorn palette quite a bit, but there are so many out there to choose from or that you can create on your own.

3. The final image must have evidence of your altered photos. 
          The image above shows John's process for creating visual research. He has taken a photo of a baby and then manipulated it in several ways - photoshoping, sketching and printing, drawing over his printouts with charcoal, collaging on the printouts, painting and collaging together. He has placed all the paintings he is working on and all the images he is working from together in a group so that he can analyze the types of visual trends that are occurring. By working on several paintings at once and then bringing them together like this, he is able to recognize a visual language, let each piece inform the other as they are created, and let the altered images inform the final work.

Can't wait to see what everyone develops!