Silhouette Project

In this project we had to fine a magazine add that was able to transform into an appealing silhouette. On Adobe Illustrator we had tree final projects to make out of it. The first one was this ad in its simplest form, using all organic shapes like circles, ovals etc. The second one was the actual silhouette of the image. The third was an elaborate image using the silhouette from before.
I really liked tracing the silhouette of the image using the pen tool. The best part was the girls hair, she had this wild crazy curly hair. Her form was really cool to do, in the end I was really satisfied. Making the silhouette into organic shapes and simplifying it was the hardest part for me, I couldn't figure out what shapes would go with the body parts. I think that part turned out just o.k. the elaborate section was really cool. I copied her image in two lines descending from tallest to shortest, it reminded me of a line of show girls. I liked it allot. Overall, I thought the project was a good one, some of it was really tedious but it was good.

Conceptual class activity

This project in class was based off of the artist LeWitt. Each of us were given three pieces of bristol and a bowl of line drawings were passed around. In the order we were sitting one piece at a time we would pick out a drawing from the bowl and replicate it on our paper. Then we would (in the order we were sitting) post our drawing in columns of four on the wall. When it was complete the 24 pictures formed this abstract picture. The lines were all connected, and it looked like a grid. The point of this piece is, it is what it is. There isn't any deep meaning, what you see is what the picture is. Every time this project is done it is different. I think that also plays a key point in the message LeWitt is trying to get out.

Activities

My activity was to have two people get together, one stands in front of the other with their back towards their partner. That person standing in front will then fall back into their partners arms staying completely straight. Each time, moving farther apart from each other. Jake and Chul were partners for this activity, Chul went first. He stood in front of Jake with his back facing towards him and fell back into his arm starting at a foot distance. He said he was nervous but he kept falling back into Jake each time until Jake was on the floor waiting for Chul to fall back. They switched and Jake went. Chul told him to trust him which is the concept for this project, to be able to trust your partner. They repeated the same steps until Jake went as far as he could. The activity went exactly how I wanted it to go, for the partners to be nervous about letting their bodies fall and then relying on their partner to catch them.
The first activity I was in was Saraswati's. Four people had to write their names on a piece of paper and mix them around in a pile, each person grabbed a paper and who's ever name they got they had to act out that person for 1 minute. I had to play out Thiana. It was really tough to decide how to act her out for an entire minute with 30 seconds to prepare. It was cool because I acted out my interpretation of her, and she had to watch thinking "This is how these people see me as." Jill my roommate had to act out me, that was funny.
The second activity I was in was Sharon's, Chris was my partner. We had to make a conversation alternating our first word with the alphabet. He did A I did B...C, D..It was had at times to think of something that made somewhat sense and started with my letter. Towards the end we said a lot of one word sentences. It was really funny though, we were saying a lot of random stuff.

Dada & Dadaism

Dada was an art movement formed because of the changing social and moral values at the end of World War I. It was formed to prove how artistic expression has faded instead of giving off a style itself. Dada artist produce a lot of ambiguous, unconventional, and risky works that reflect the artists social status towards the world. Popular Dada artist include; Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Man Ray, Author Caravan, Jean Arp, and Francis Picabia.
Marcel Duchamp produced a famous sculpture called Fountain signing it R Mutt, which is actually a urinal. The initial R stood for Richard which was a French slang for moneybag, it also supposedly represents a sewage company (Wikipedia).
Man Ray was a photographer, painter, and sculptor. He was known for taking objects that had a useful purpose and making them useless. For example he took an iron and put spikes on the flat side, so it could no longer be used.
I think the Dada movement was extremely interesting. I love the fact that these artist took things to such a risky level knowing that it would cause controversy. Its amazing to think that these artist did all this in the 1920's and on, when everyone and was so conservative.

Sources: online Wikipedia ( Dada, List of Dadaists, Fountain)

playing with behaviors of everyday life.

This activity was really funny and very spontaneous. When my partner and I faced back to back we lined up our mirrors so we could see each others faces. We looked at one another and smiled and I made the first face and Jill mimicked. We took at step away from each other and continued making different faces. They were really childish and silly. It reminded me times when you and friends sit in front of a camera and take ridiculous pictures with the weirdest faces. Being able to see my partner through a mirror, I could catch the transaction of one facial expression to the next. That made it even more comical because you could see the thought process on her face as if it was saying, "What should my next expression be?" I think this was a cool activity being able to see facial expressions that are made everyday through a different perspective and mimicking them while slowly walking further away until you could no longer make out your partners face.

Marcel Duchamp-, "The Bride"

When i first looked at this piece my eyes were immediately drawn to the top cloud with the three squares. The white squares contrasting the dark cloud drew my attention. To the left it looked like a robotic person holding his robotic dog on a leash. The bottom section looked like a factory to me. I immediately thought of meat factories, especially with the objects hanging on the left side. I also found out that the cracks in the picture are unintentional. It was dropped while being moved.

After discussing, listening to the essay about Duchamp, and looking up him I found that this picture is very sexual and involves a bride and bachelors, it is very erotic. He shows this through geometric and organic shapes on two planes. The bride is supposed to be like a motor which produces this 'love gasoline' that sparks stripping. The figures hanging in the bottom left are the nine bachelors that are suppose to strip this mechanical bride.

I think what makes this art work interesting is the time period it was made in. When Duchamp made this controversial piece, art was very conservative. This piece has such a unique meaning to it and people during his time had to of found it appalling. I thought it was interesting how Duchamp considers this to be his funny piece, I don't think it's funny. If anything I think it is a little weird. I think that this piece has a lot to say, and I like how its meaning isn't direct, it takes a lot of studying to understand. That is what makes him and his art so interesting even today.

Making patterns

Our project making patterns on Adobe Illustrator was a very interesting one. I was a little nervous because I am still getting comfortable with this program. I made this arrow looking positive shape. It has roundness and sharpness to it, I really liked it. I made six different pattern designs for it, looking off the example pattern sheet. Then I printed that out as a reference. I then chose four of the six patterns and blew those up to each squares to the required size and length and printed. It took some time but I thought it was relatively easy.
The next class I thought I was done, so my teacher came over to look at it. She made some suggestions that the positive shape's point should touch the edge of each square. So that when they are put together they positive spaces could create negative spaces. I realized that would look more appealing, so I redid my shapes to touch the squares and reprinted them.
Overall I liked the project, it was a little tedious, everything had to be precise to make it look right. But learning short cuts on Illustrator cut the time down allot.

Islamic art

Islamic art is shown through architecture and applied art. Islamic art tends to use a lot of patterns also. When it comes to Islmaic art things have to be looked at as a hole. For instance, an entire Islamic building would be considered the finished piece of art. Most Islamic art is two dimensional but is seen as three dimensional because they use a lot of shiny materials, glass, patterns, and high contrast. Islamic applied arts is based off of geometry, calligraphy, and floral patterns. Its architecture is based off of the use of arches, repetition and patterns.
I think the Islamic art of patterns has had a huge impact on the world. Pattern is seen everywhere now a days. My purse has pink butterfly patterns on it. My light green carpet has off white patterns similar to the one above, and this is a random apartment complex in D.C. Patterns are used everywhere.
picture from: http://home.earthlink.net/~lazarski/home/detail.jpg

Gestalt

Gestalt is a combination of two different images that are seen as a hole of one single outline.

image source: http://www.uni-ulm.de/uni/intgruppen/memosys/desn00.gif

When I made this picture I started off with the outside line, just getting the shape first. Then with a ruler I made different straight shapes inside the figure, then I drew in a few circles. After that I used a couple different gradation values and colored in the different shapes.

String Project

The best way to describe the string activity is chaotic. At first when I got the yarn my thoughts were to just string things up. I started wrapping around three computer chairs, people, and other random chairs. I almost got entangled with a group of people, but I got out of that fast. I moved to the other side of the room and stringed each computer chair one by one. By that point I was being cautious about were the string went. Then I focused on one chair on top of a table, to make a composition. The chair ended up looking pretty cool. After that I moved to other chairs, and a few minutes later the string was up.
Once I was done I sat there a little overwhelmed with all the string every where and all the tangled knots and people. Other people were still stringing each other, that was funny to watch. Once i started to untangle the string it started off easy because my string was by itself in one section of the room. Once it caught up with the big knot of sting and people it became hard to untangle. There were five people working in one area around one giant mess. Patience was important seen as we couldn't just give up and cut the string. I finally got my string untangled all the way and I was so glad.
In the end it was a chaotic experiment. It was a lot of fun tangling the string everywhere and on everyone. When it was time to untangle it became less fun. The room got pretty quite and everyone was concentrating on just getting done with it.

line or shape?

1) Which of the images a,b,c,d are lines?
All of the images are lines, because lines can be open where they don't meet, or closed where they connect together.

2) Which of the images a,b,c,d are shapes?
All of the images are shapes because they all have a form to them. They are just a flat.

3) What makes a line?
A line can be open where it never meets or ends, or closed, where the lines connect together.

4) What makes a shape?
A shape can be 1-D, 2-d, or 3-D. It has to have an area, and a perimeter. 2-D shapes have volumes and masses. A shape is anything with a closed form.

Critique

In this piece of art you can see a mother holding a naked baby which is the center of the picture. Around the mom and the baby is a woman and a naked child looking directly up to the baby. In the shadow to the right of the baby is a man. The background is a stone area, probably a house. Finally in the upper right corner of the picture is the blue sky with clouds.
I think the tone of the picture is religious. The people in the picture are suppose to represent Marry holing baby Jesus, the woman and boy as followers of them. The shadowed man is Moses, because he is often the forgotten one seen as he isn't the "real" father of Jesus. So he was purposely put in the background because he was still always there.
I think this is an overall good picture. The author gets the point across, showing baby Jesus as the center of the picture. I think the lighting in the picture was done well, it highlights the focus of the picture perfectly. The contrast from the bright baby to the shadowed man was also done well. It creates a balance to the picture. So overall, I do like this picture.