Surrealism

My surrealistic painting is really personal. So I wouldn't know where to start. While all of these objects look randomly placed and stuck on a pretty background, that assumption wouldn't even come close to the meaning of this. Honestly when starting this unit, my general conception of surrealism was that it was a bunch of controted pictures of real objects. Even though this can be true, doing a surrealistic painting takes on an emotional toll if you paint from the "heart. I mean, Salvador Dali showed how he made a mockery of serious issues or took people, and objects that meant something to him and then transformed them, not randomly, but the way he saw them. My painting has many objects but I'll start with my landscape. THe base, the background of my painting shows pinks, reds, yellows and oranges, to show that, beyond all objects and aspects of life I know that somewhere that I'm still and calm, like the still ocean and sky. But I'm not that simple, and the vibrant colors show that I overcomplicate and color things in, not necessarily in the lines. THe card says 7 of hearts, shows a hand growing out of it; coincidentally the hand has 7 fingers, with a heart on each fingertip. Youmust think that it's a random freaky thing, but no, that week I went through an experience and through it all 7 people stuck my be. And I'd do anything for those 7 people. The hand reaching out shows that I reach out to these 7 people in their times of need, the bloddy fingerprints show that I leave traces of my lessons learned and who I am all over them. The target on my hand shows that there are outsiders who either get jealous or angry, and while they seem very sweet at first (hence, the flower) along the road, (the stem) the can hurt you and aim at you like you're some target (the target and arrow). I used water colors for the ocean and sky to show that even if I can be wild, it's all in good fun and with good intentions. I used acrylic For the fingerprints and the blood I used acrylic because the positive marks that I leave on people are significant and really stand out, in a way they are what you'd say "permanent". The hand is in black and white because with these 7 people, it's completely two absolutes, I either want to help them, or I don't. And it's always the first option because I love all of them. There aren't any in betweens or "what if's". The ballet shoes represent what I did when I was a child, I took ballet, it shows that inside I'm still a three year old, who doesn't always know what to do, and the right answer to say. I used pastels to show a soft effect, because while I can seem that I'm all tough and don't get hurt, I'm not. And the smoothness of the pink shows that I can be a graceful person sometimes. The ribbon shows that I'm so busy trying to help out my 7 people and care for everything and make everything perfect that I sometimes lose myself, which is why the ribbon is hanging losely. I've nearly lost it's grip and I'm barely trying to hang onto the three year old who had everything so easy.

Popcorn :)

Musical Instruments & Shading :)

To support our theme of shading and form and

shape we did a still life

of an instrument. In this case, I did a still life

of a trumpet :)

It was very challenging, because it was a shiny object, and there was light reflecting

off of all areas. So it's very important to show strong contrast between a dark

and light area in order to give off the effect to the viewers that the instrument drawn was

shiny and metallic.

I can confidently say that I did not do such a great job in this, because I was so busy trying to

make it look shiny that I forgot about texture. This drawing came out very flat because there is

no texture to show the drastic difference between the cloth and the trumpet.

An important aspect I learnt was that, to make something look like light is reflecting off of it, it's

important to put something ranging from off-white to white next to a dark color, so it stands out

showing the clear difference. I forgot to do that, so this painting lacks the point I was trying to make.

But next time, I know I can do much better :)

Abstract & Conflict :)

Recently;

We have learned about colors and techniques to transform them into other colors. We applied this
in an abstract painting we did, but to make it different we decided to add conflict. Conflict as we learned, is when there is a contrast in the painting, whether it's opposite colors, or completely different shapes, and even texture. In my painting, I decided to do straight, and smooth lines that are tints and shades, and even mixtures of the colors blue, light blue, light green, yellow and a little bit of red (to make purple).
This kind of artwork reminds me of a story. While I was painting this I thought about how stories run smoothly, which is why I represented the smoothness and flow of a storybook through my lines. But then every story, (or every GOOD story) must have a conflict. Which is what represents the orange "infinity sign" and the orange circles. I did this because you always expect a story (in this case, a painting) to have a similar theme throughout the canvas, and even though we were assigned to do conflict I still felt the need to add it in. Because having an abstract painting without conflict, for me is like a storybook with no problem and also no happy ending.

Drawing & Painting Self Assessment

^ my black and white lined painting^

So far in drawing & painting we've been studying value. We just

recently put these skills we've learnt to the test in a Vincent Van Gogh drawing. Although instead of

recreating the painting itself, we did a black and white version of it, using

markers and lines. Value, is when you add light to a black and white picture, it's shading and also

giving off the impression of it being three-dimensional. So

needless to say, it was really hard to do this project. The process was a challenging one, that stressed me out at

some points. I remember first starting and thinking that it would be near impossible to use marker and

not make mistakes. But along the way I stopped to realize that this

was just like painting, except we weren't using paint. I began to see slowly how I could imagine Van Gogh

himself painting this and which way the lines would have flowed. And whether I'd use short strokes or long

and elegant ones, looking at this project in a different light really made it easier. And this painting was of

irises, and imagining how the lines in an iris would be wasn't as challenging as the project I thought would.

Van Gogh himself also created his original paintings into black and white lines, imagine how hard it'd be for

him not even knowing how the painting would turn out. But Van Gogh was an

artistic genius, who made everyday things look more complicated with his dynamic

lined strokes. He's well known for his paintings of sunflowers, irises, and vast fields, these original

things were turned into masterpieces because Van Gogh decided to show the way the lines flowed in this

situation. If I was given this assignment again I would probably have paid more attention to

the intricate detail. I am satisfied with the value and the color in my final product, even though the color is

black and white it seems like it would be an easy project. But it's very hard to create value and

add light to the sections that are illuminated. Observation was

key in this project, I observed somewhat, and my observation skills developed even more, because

before all I observed really carefully was those microscopic specimens under a microscope in science ;) it's

amazing how you can connect simple black and white drawings to things like

science. My final results are alright, my other classmates did an amazing

job though, so it's instinct for me to compare mine with theirs :) believe it or not but we didn't just learn

value in this project, life skills and observation skills came with it too.

:)

^ this is the origninal drawing Van Gogh created^

What have we been doing in Drawing & Painting?

In the drawing and painting course, we have been studying value. Value I learnt, is when you use various kinds of shading techniques to create depth in a simple picture. It also can give idea to where the light in the picture is coming from even if it is in black and white. It gives the whole a picture a three-dimensional effect which makes it seem really cool. Even though shading with pencils is easy, Ms.Bammi taught us how to show value even between different markers. I learnt that by spacing out the lines with thinner markers and fatter markers, we are able to achieve a contrast between the various areas in the picture. To add to this, we recreated a Vincent Van Gough painting using only various sized black markers. We were able to re-think in which directions the lines would go, and how their length would vary. This is what we have been doing so far and art,and it's pretty cool because now I know it's not so hard to add depth into a simple black and white drawing/painting.

:)