Shades of Gray

The goals for today's drawing were to make a charcoal drawing of light and dark objects using additive and reductive techniques. We used many different utensils such as black and white charcoal, pencils and erasers to help capture the light in the drawing and utilize 5 different shades of grey to make the drawing includung black and white. I think I did fairly well with this despite the fact that I was sick which slowed down my process and impacted my final product. Challanges I faced were capturing the different shades of grey and capturing the light in the drawing using an eraser. But I found ways to get through these obstacles; one of the ways that I got through these obstacles was I started paying close attention to the still life instead of drawing from what I thought it should look like. Overall I think that this was a tough but useful activity.

1. The painting above is called Nighthawks. The artist who created this painting is Edward Hopper. Edward Hopper is from Nyack, New York The painting "Nighthawks" was made in 1942 ; the medium that was used to make the work was oil on canvas.

2. My first impression of this work of art was that it had a very calm theme; the street was very lonely and it had it had a cafe that wasn't crowded. The first I thing that I noticed in the painting was the empty street; I thought that since it was so early in the day that the streets would be crowded.

3. Edward Hopper was an artist in New York was a prominent American realist painter and print maker but he was most popularly known for his oil paintings. Edward Hopper said that Nighthawks was inspired by "a restaurant on New York's Greenwich Avenue where two streets meet." Although, the diner in which he modeled "Nighthawks" after is gone. The painting reveals three customers lost in their own private thoughts. Although, unknowingly he was painting the loneliness of a large city.

4. Edward Hopper uses various principles of design. First, he used contrast to capture the light and whiteness in the diner with the other colors in the painting. The white really stands out from the other colors, since it is so bright and the other colors are dark and dull it draws all of the attention. Hopper also exibits asymmetrical balance in his painting; there is no balance because on one side there is a diner and on the other is just an empty street. His painting also lacks symmetry because if you cut a line through the middle, nothing would be even on either side.

Finding Images That are Balanced

SYMMETRICAL BALANCE:




ASYMMETRICAL BALANCE:



APPROXIMATELY SYMMETRICAL BALANCE:



RADIAL BALANCE:

Principles of Design

BALACE- is when the visual "weight" of an artwork feels equally distributed

Symmetry- same on the left same on the right

Approximately Symmetrical- almost symmetrical

Asymmetry- opposite of symmetry

Radial- going to be the same where ever the line is drawn

EMPHASIS- when one element in an artwork appears to be more important or attract the most
attention, we say it creates

Placement- where artist put stuff

Contrast- when something is very different to what is around it

Grouping- when artist takes a bunch of elements and put them together around the thing they want people to look at

RHYTHM & MOVEMENT- how the artist guides the viewer through a work of art

Repetition- same elements, altering elements, progression, repeating

Leading Lines- somewhere in the picture there is a line that leads us through

Implied Movement- shows literal movement, looks like moving, body position,

Optical Movement- repeat line or shape makes eye feel like motion is happening in the picture

Actual Movement- art that literally moves

PROPORTION- in art we are talking about the size relationships of the parts to one another or to the whole
Colors-
Shapes
Forms
When thinking about proportion think about how looks and think about a story or emotional component
We might use words like alot, a little, many, few, big, small, similar, etc.

UNITY- is the feeling that all the elements in work belong together

VARIETY- is achieved by introducing some differenced into the picture to increase visual interest

Reflecting at mid-term

I think that I have progressed a lot since the start of the term. at first I didn't really comprehend the true purposes of the projects and activities that we have been doing b/c they were rather awkward and seemed to be obscured. But as we progressed and begun reflecting I started to see the purpose of the activities that we were doing and it started to reflecting in my grade. I also started trying a lot harder during the past week; I put a lot of focus into my work which is evident in my grade and I intend on continuing to try hard.

Wht's in the sack?

Our goal for today was to focus on the drawing and try to really get the lighting and detail of the bags by giving it form and trying to help identify what's in the bag by drawing it. I think I did fairly well with this; the process from start to finish was rather easy but I did face some obstacles during this activity. At first I thought I was done but then Ms.Roberts reminded us we had to try and catch the lighting on the bags in the picture and that was by far the hardest part of this activity because you had to erase and try to find lighting which was hard.

The Changing Still Life

One of the things that we had to do to keep up with the still life so that it always looked like the setting in front of us was to try as much as possible not to talk wjich was one of the hardest things for me. I was always so tempted to express my stress while drawing the still life and at time when I began to talk I often found myself behind. Another thing that you have to do to keep up with the still life so that it always looked like the setting in front of us was to stay true to ourselves because if you didn't look at the still life and just drew everything from head your drawing would come out looking very different from the still life. Lastly, you had to focus on keeping up rather than the look of the drawing because if you focus on what your drawing looks like then you will find yourself behind.

The Potential of Found Objects

The objects or parts of objects can all be put into similar categories of shapes and forms which can help potentially create a sculpture based on what you are trying to make. For instance in the sculptures below one of them happens to be a sculpture of a girl made up of circles, cylinders and other shapes and forms that could have come from anything like a chair or toy. The artist chose the objects he/she did because those objects worked best for the image he/she was trying to create.

Ingrid Calame

The work of Ingrid Calame does seem familiar because it looks similar to the painting we have been doing in class so far. Ingrid Calame is an artist who does her paintings and designs by looking at stains or a clutter of things in the world. She goes out into the real world and looks for stains within that catch her attention. When she sees something she is attracted to, she traces it ,and then bring it back to her officeto work on it. Then she colors in the traces she created with different colored pencils. After starting, she creates a big picture full of all different colors that looks like a map. Ingrid makes her drawings the way they are because when she was a little girl she always wanted to draw maps of the world, and since she has the opportunity to go around and do something different, she chooses to do that. The image that I have chosen got my attention really easily quickly and i really like the colors.

Reflecting on my first critique

Since my painting was very simple and not so confusing I got a lot of good feedback on the story line because the people in my group thought that my collage was funny but still good. The critical feedback that I got was that I could have used the lines more effectively and used them to connect the characters to each other. It felt good to get feedback from my classmates today.

Reflecting on first full week

I feel that these activities are the same in numbers of ways. All of these activities were unusual although they all require key art skills patience and creativity; which are skills we need to develop to become great artists. When we had to help create a description for works of art not being able to name the object was hard and it took creativity and innovation because I needed to think of a different way to characterize objects and patience because the ideas took a while for me to develop.During the creating the collaborative drawings thinking of something to add or take away from the drawing was by far the hardest part of the assignment . When looking at the pour paintings objects look really hard to find pictures . All these activities are helping the class develop as artists.