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!