Introduction

"If you are a dreamer, come in. If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, a hoper, a prayer, a magic bean buyer, if you're a pretender, come sit by my fire, for i have some flax golden tales to spin. Come in, Come in." -Shel Sylverstien, Where the Sidewalk Ends

Friday, November 15, 2013

None of these things are just like the other, but all of these things really belong!

What do all of these items have in common? They're all blue! That's right, my art class began collecting these blue items in response to being shown pictures of Portia Munson's work. Portia Munson is an artist who makes color coded collections of cool stuff. I personally think the above collection is pretty cool, especially the globe and the hat. This collection really says a lot about our class as a whole. We were asked to bring in blue things and some people really put effort into it while some other people just brought in a pencil they found in their bag the second before class started (and yes, by that comment I do mean myself.) But other than that, this collection really tells a lot about each of us as individuals, what we think of when we hear the color blue, and what things pique our interests. For instance, one person has an amazing blue top hat, which could mean they like cool hats. Another example is the paint bottle, which would lead one to believe that person enjoys painting. This collection not only tells of our interests, but the time period as well. There are things on that table that could only be found in this era, such as the Angry Birds card in the bottom right of the picture. In Portia Munson's work, there were things that mostly consisted of toys from the 90's and earlier, which is a time stamp of when the collection was created. The time stamp on this collection would be in the 2000's just going based on this picture. And so, collections of all types can tell a lot about a person, not just their personality, but their time period as well.






Collecting

Many people have collections. Collections can be large enough to just barely fit in a warehouse, others can be small enough to fit in a purse. They are collections of things that have an intrinsic value to the collector. A few years back, I began collecting business cards. I am not sure why I began doing this, I just thought it was fun. When I would go down to Maryland to visit my grandmother, or when my family would go to the beach, I would go into the shops and take a business card. Even simply walking in downtown Haddonfield, I found both beautiful and fun looking business cards. I would keep this collection in the pockets of my purse. While I was not deeply, deeply attached to this collection, I was very sad when I lost my receptacle of this collection. It has been this was for two years and I have lost hope of retaining my beloved business cards. Because of this unfortunate incident, I am unable to show a picture of my full collection, but I have been able to keep one cards from being lost. The card below is this card, and incidentally my favorite of the collection. It is left over from a store that now goes by a different name. Pretty cool though, right?





Friday, November 1, 2013

The Marking Period

This marking period, my art class has done a total of two drawings, both of which took alot of time and energy but turned out great in the end. The first drawing, the bike, showed me how to vary the darkness of my drawing depending on the darkness of the paper I was drawing on. I also learned much about the composition of a drawing on a page and what it means. In the colorful candy colored pencil drawing, I learned about drawing using almost only colored pencil, with just a light graphite sketch. It was a great expirience doing these drawings, and I hope to do more like these as the year progresses.

Colorful Candy

The next art project I am currently doing is a drawing of candy in colored pencil. I had never really drawn in colored pencil before so I was a tad nervous when we began, but now I am rather enjoying it. It was a new experience for me, and I quikcly became frustrated with the angle and colors of the lid, but after I got used to it, it became really, really fun. The first thing i did was make a blending gradient of the complementary colors which really did help when creating darks and lights in the drawing. The second step I took was to practice the highlights on a piece of tracing paper and then transfer them to the actual paper. I rather like how it turned out, how it really feels glassy and how it looks liek the candy is actually in the jar. My favorite piece however has to be the blue Jolly Rancher in the bottom right corner; not only because its one of my favorite candies, but also because it turned out really well. This drawing, I must say, was a complete sucess.


The Graphite Bicycle

 
The first drawing my art class did this year was a drawing of a bike. Sounds easy right? It really wasnt. I started out with several light sketches on one piece of paper to get a firm standing on the composition of the piece as well as the proportions and mechanics of it. I finally chose to do the seat of the bike and so started the almost life-sized drawing on blue colored paper. It started out well, i drew it to the proportions I needed and everything was gong fine until I realized the drawing was beginning to become lost in the paper. My teacher showed me how to darken the drawing to make the lights lighter and the darks darker. I will admit, I began to get frustrated when things were not going according to plan (i.e. the lines were getting too fuzzy or the shape of the bike was getting warped) but when I got past that part, I actually began enjoying it. When I was finished it, I was quite proud, not only of my drawing but of what I learned while in the process. At the end, I was given a self asessment sheet. I gave myself fair grades on the understanding of composition and value, of technical excellence and attention to detail, and of the use of processes and problem solving according to where i felt my skill level was. This project has reminded me of and taught me skills that I will be able to use in future drawings and to that I say: Horaay!

Tuesday, September 10, 2013

I'm Back!

Here I am for another year of art class. Why might you ask? Because art is an amazing way to express you're feelings, thoughts and ideas of course! My teacher told the class about a cool new project we will be starting, a time capsule. I'm really excited about this because I think it will be cool to open it a few years from now and remember where I was when I made said time capsule. That isn't the only thing I'm excited about, I get to see the friends I made last year and see how they have developed artistically, then compare them to myself. By comparing, I am motivated to get better at something I may not be as good at. So glad to be back!

Friday, June 14, 2013

End of the Year

Well.....I have to say this year has been fun. The projects my art class has done have been so much fun. I have made some close friends and let my creativity grow, not to mention how proud I am of the things i have accomplished. My favorite project we have done definitely has to be the metal work. Though the work to make it was hard it was completely worth it in the end. I am very much looking forward to coming back next year for another great art class, but for now au revoir! 

Monday, April 8, 2013

Unicorns for Audrey


Audrey was always a special little girl. Ever since she could remember, she had been able to see things other people couldn’t.  She could see faeries, gnomes, dwarves- you name it! She made friends with most of these creatures, but her absolute favorite and best friend had always been a young unicorn named Arthur. Most other people never seemed to notice Audrey’s friends, which got her in trouble quite often. Something would happen around the house or at school which was so obviously caused by a sprite and Audrey would get blamed for it! Her parents said it was her overactive imagination, her teachers said she was just trouble. The only one who seemed to understand (other than her faerie friends) was here cat Tiffany, and even she ignored the sprites that came to visit unless they were small enough to chase.  Audrey lived in a small cottage in the English countryside adjacent to a rather large pond, where she spent most of her time. This was where she had met the mermaid with whom she had become very good friends. It was also the place where she had first met Arthur. She still remembered how beautiful he had looked, standing at the edge of the pond in all his grace and majesty. Just like out of an Arthurian Tales book.  He was her best friend not only because he was kind and loving, but because he accepted her and all her oddity. And because he let her ride on him every so often but that is beside the point. Her parents tried to be accepting of her friends when she was younger, but when she turned ten they began to grow worried that her imaginary friends would get in the way of her succeeding in life. They even tried sending her to a psychiatrist. So she had no choice but to lie. She said she could no longer see the magical beings, and eventually that came to be. She stopped noticing the little sprites that flitted around her room every now and again, the little faeries that flew with the fireflies on summer nights, she even forgot about the sweet mermaid in her pond. However, even to this day she never forgot Arthur. Not only because he was her best friend growing up, or even the fact that he still visited her and her family, but because he was a piece of her life, and a piece of her. She moved into the same house she grew up in when her parents died along with her husband and son, who she named Arthur. Arthur oddly enough had the same friends she had had, remarking every so often of the new ones he has met. Audrey every so often will see a little flit of light around a flower pot or up a staircase and she will stop and smile at her old dear friends.

Friday, January 18, 2013

The Year So Far...

Greetings once again! I am here to tell you about the wonderful wrold of Art Class! To start off we are doing a really cool thing called Empty Bowls. Baisically, we arfe making bowls to be used on February 9 for a special dinner. It is a benefit for The Food Bank of South Jersey which means all capital that is made goes towards their funding. It really is a great cause and it was a lot of fun making the bowls and plates. We made each one ourselves and hand painted them. These are some finished bowls. The molds we used to make them are the odd, white objects behind the shiny,pretty ones.

The next subject that we did was paper lanterns. We practiced cutting paper into cool shapes. It was really painstaking at times, but all of the lanterns turned out looking really nince. The theme for all of the lanterns was the four seasons. My season was fall. They are made out of a thick paper and could be backed with either a sort of tracing paper or another, softer, more fabric-like paper. Mine was backed with the tracing paper on account of the thin, flimsy shapes.








The latest project i have been working on is a blind contour self-portrait. Basically, a blind contour is when the artist does not look at the paper they are drawing on and only at the object they are drawing, in this case a mirror. The artist is also not supposed to lift the pencil while drawing so as not to loose where the line ended. We were also supposed to answer questions about ourselves such as "I am....." "I dream..." "I like...." and so on so the reciever of the art has an idea of who the artist is. Mine is not quite finished yet but the picture below is how it looks so far.






 

Friday, January 11, 2013

The Great Mary Cassatt

Mary Cassatt was an impressionest paintere of the 1800s into the early 1900s. She was born in Allegheny City, Pennsylvania in 1844. She was first exposed to French artists at the 1855 Pasris World's Fair. She studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, against the wishes of her family, and had her mind set on becoming a professional artist. Her femminest views were shared with such controversial male students such as Thomas Eakins. She later quit the Acadamey because women were looked down upon as artists and were not allowed to use nude or live models. Consequently, they could not learn proper anatomy. Mary Cassatt was highly influenced by Degas on her Impressionism work. She died on June 14, 1926 and is still heralded as one of the greatest woman artists in our time.

My interst in Mary Cassatt started one day in a previous art class a few years back. My interest was captured when I found out about her femminest views towards the Acadamey and how she was a great woman artist. I liked that she was able to make her way as aprofessional artist in a male artist's world. I loved the way she was able to make such beautiful paintings and capture the actions of a model. She painted the


Mother And Child XI - Mary Cassatt - www.marycassatt.orgOne of my favorite paintings is the first one of her's I learned about: Mother and Child XI. As you can see, she painted a LOT of women with children. The woman appears to be tenderly holding the child as they get their portrait painted, but if you look closely at her left hand on the child's thigh, you can see that her grip is a death grip that lets the child know that there will be heck to pay if he acts up during the painting. It appears unfinished, but that is the beauty of it. It makes the observer think.







Title Unknown - Mary Cassatt - www.marycassatt.org









This painting, which apparently was not named, stood out to me because it once again has has a woman with a child, except this one is finished. In it, the woman is washing her child, but still has an almost death grip so the child doesn't move or squirm. I found this one interesting because of the way Cassatt captured the light and the pudgy rolls of skin on the child.


Young Mother Sewing - Mary Cassatt - www.marycassatt.org

This painting, known as Young Mother Sewing, captured my eye because of the simplicity of the figures in the painting. The woman is simply sewing a new dress while her daughter watches Cassatt paint them both. Again, a mother depicted with a child, but the child is old enough that she does not need to be made still. I like this particular piece of hers because the observer, well I can anyway, imagine the warmth and time of that afternoon or morning that this was painted.


As you can see Mary Cassatt is a very notable artist and one I am proud to call one of my favorites. Her paintings are beautiful and she herself was an exquisite person.