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AS ART JouRnals...BEGIN!
Visual Journal Reflection Topic: I Reflect
Q1: When did you step back and analyze your work during this journal page? A1: I stepped back and analyzed my work multiple times during this piece of artwork. I first stepped back after I finalized my pencil sketch of it, as I wanted to get an overall view of how my drawing was going to look. Overall, I was happy with it, although I did go back and make some slight changes to parts of the leg and jacket in order to make it flow better with the drawing. The next time I checked over it was when I had finalized my painting on the top and my shading within the main part of the drawing. This was because I wanted to make sure my painting was blending well with my shading, and that it didn't take too much away from it or make it look strange. Finally, I checked over it at the end once I was finished with the background and the re-addition of more colors. This was helpful, as it let me do some final implementations that allowed for me to add more onto the drawing overall, and it gave me an observation over my final creation to see if it was adequate enough. Furthermore, it also helped me determine the difference between the white area and the orange background, in order to hold with the negative space realism. Q2: Did you consider how ideas would work before you tried them? A2: I definitely made sure to consider my idea before I try them, because otherwise, I would definitely have destroyed my project a while ago. First of all, I knew my color set would look slightly off due to my decision of not using a lighter color at the top and instead using blue, but I believed that even though the blue would slightly draw away from the darker pencil shadings at the top, it would put more emphasis on the lower part of the drawing as well. Furthermore, I considered the background color of this as well, as I wanted something that would pair with the main other color presented in the image (blue) while also not having to draw away from the center focus of a negative drawing. My idea to use a style of older parchment for part of the lyrics was a little rough, due to the brown paint being a little darker than normal, but my main drawing and the shading aspects within it were very favorable to me. Overall, I believe that my decisions and considerations made a huge impact on making this drawing coming out like I wanted it to.
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Visual Journal Reflection Prompt: We Collaborate
Question 1: Did you ask another student for feedback during your work process? Answer 1: During my work process, I asked a few students about my work process and I actually collaborated with another student for my original composition. First of all, I spoke with Emily about my composition, as due to the theme being "swapping bodies", we believed that we could not only perform a body swap with a character that we appreciated and/or liked, but we could make the body swap relate to each other's characters. This was done with me having Marth as my main body swap character, and her having Lucina as hers. Both of our characters made "cameo appearances" in each other's drawings, and put our collaboration into effect. I also asked some others about the proportionality of my artwork, whether it be with the head, the legs, or the arms of my character. This allowed me to gain some insights that I was most likely still overlooking or simply struggling with in my creation process, and helped me sort out the various issues that I have overall with my art. Question 2: Did someone help you understand important information or inspire you? Answer 2: As in my previous answer, I took inspiration from Emily and her artwork, and I was helped by other people with showing me issues with proportionality. This inspiration has consistently taken place in many of my pieces of work, as I have looked to multiple other people and artists in general to draw ideas and concepts from them. The assistance that was given to me in terms of media usage and time management helped as well, as I discussed with classmates about specific parts on the drawing in relation for whether I should use paint or colored pencil, or even a different form of media altogether. While this can be a struggle sometimes as I want to use different forms than what they may suggest, I can get a general idea of why they suggest so and contemplate it when going over my decisions. Furthermore, the proportion issue of my artwork that I was able to address will very much help me in future forms of work. Drawing the body is extremely difficult, and with help from others, I can make it much better than my normal tendencies. The collaboration processes that I have taken with my fellow artists is always very beneficial to my end products, and future ideas that I may gain as well. Topic: I Create Original Art
Q1: How do you use your own ideas in your work? A1: In my work, I consistently used my own ideas throughout coloration and spacing in relation to where the placement of most of my objects were. Although I didn't necessarily have all the different styles of color that I wanted in order to make the composition that I was going for, I attempted to blend and/or combine multiple different shades of colors with each other (normally with blues) in order to create this idea. Furthermore, I wanted to develop at least a slight foreground and mid-ground (with a sky as a slight background) in order to further add depth to the picture. However, I ran into many problems with this, as the aspect of shading was a major issue as I wasn't sure on how to portray such a thing with areas like caves, and some of the coloration that I used was simply not as visible as I liked it to be (such as the top right hand corner of the drawing). Nevertheless, I feel that if I was genuinely able to redo this composition with a wider variety of colors and a little more experimentation with my artwork, then I could shape this into a much more creative piece of work. Q2: Did you use a source for inspiration, then combine it with your own ideas to make it original? A2: I originally used a digital painting by artist Emmanuel Shiu for inspiration, a concept artist who has had his artwork featured for films such as Harry Potter and After Earth. When I first came across one of his designs, I had originally intended to use a land above the clouds, displaying the growth of an unknown planet and shaping a completely different style of world from the one we know today. However, after exploring around his artwork more, I found an icy style land that I thought would work extremely well for my style of a new world, as I love the cold and I love intricate designs that can bring out the sharpness in a creation. However, as I began my design, I realized that there was a lot more that I wanted to add to the idea that he presented me with. This led me to changing different shapes, placements, and much more on my composition, and although I feel like his style may have fit much better for some parts that I did change, I also believe that my additions to various parts of his were intriguing enough to make a lasting impact as well. I hope to use more of his artwork in the future for the inspiration of more ideas, and I plan on continuing to experiment with more tools that can create the effects that he has presented me with. Visual Journal Reflection Topic: I Communicate Through My Work
Q1: What is this artwork intended to say? A1: This artwork, as specifically prompted by Mrs. Nelson, is supposed to be the display of my greatest fear. However, I don't honestly think I can pick out one particular greatest fear, so I developed my composition into a few of my more imposing fears. The first of this, death and loneliness, is represented by the lightbulb (and partially represented by the shadowy death-like figure on the side).The lightbulb is supposed to represent the light of life and the light of the people who make your day better around you, and as it eventually dims, it seems as if both death and loneliness are paired together into the same methodology as one ages. As someone eventually gets more lonely with age, their light slowly dims, and eventually, it seems like it is so small that death might honestly be a better option than living alone, which is the representation of the shadowy character. Although the shadowy character isn't always present in the front of someone's mind, it often comes with depression and anxiety, and seems to draw the light out of the lightbulb and send it spiraling further down towards darkness, drawing the happiness and life out of life itself. Furthermore, a lightbulb can never go on forever, and it has to fade away eventually. Along with the fragility of possibly breaking even with one person being careless with handling one, I feel like this represents the lightbulb perfectly. Furthermore, I also attribute schizophrenic tendencies and societal perception towards the shadowy figure, the eye in the center of the bulb, and the slash marks in the upper left hand corner. Society is vicious and ruthless, and more often than not, people will jump at the opportunity to put their ideas forward without truly opening up to other people and identifying if their needs would be hurt with the position is in, simply because human nature is inherently selfish. While I do not have a direct fear of society, I do have many fears about backlash from society due to who I am as a person, and I feel that there's always a risk of being put down for just about anything that someone can say. I do understand that I can't honestly do much to protect myself from this and that it is just a likely thing that happens to everyone, but at the same time, I can't just avoid it or pretend like I'm okay with it. On the other hand, schizophrenic tendencies isn't something that I actually have, but I have experienced small envisions of it in the past. While I don't believe that it was truly something like that (most likely I was just extremely tired and my imagination was running wild), I still fear it now, as I believe that it would cause me to have a never-ending sense of anxiety, and if I can't appreciate and understand the real world from what my imagination tells me, I would be devastated. The words in the collage are supposed to represent feelings of anxiety that I've begun to understand throughout the pressure placed on my within school and with friends and family, and although they only cover a few small areas of attitude, there are plenty more that I can attribute exactly like that. Finally, the idea of a flipping dimensional spectrum (depending on how you see the artwork, you can look at the walls as the inside of a cube or the outside of a cube) is meant to represent my fear of the unknown, or the fear that I won't truly understand anything in general. What if what I believe is false? What if I don't know something or after it all, I truly don't know what is going to happen, say, after death, or without a job, or in a coma or something else horrendous? I don't want to know for a long time, as ironic as that is compared to always trying to figure out the unknown with other things, but I also don't know if I'll truly be ready to accept it after that long wait either. Q2: What issues are you examining through your artwork? A2: I believe that I am examining the issues of society and self-perception and appreciation. Society is an issue that controls the entire world, whether it comes to talking about conflicting ideas, attempting to present yourself to the world, or simply just in a sense of daily life. There's always motivators and passionate people who truly wish to make a change in the world or in lives in general, but what does everybody do? They almost always turn to the cold shoulder, as they get bombarded with murders and sadness, accusatory articles, disgusting and hateful people, and they eventually get absorbed into becoming like everybody else, accusing people and spewing out how everybody else is bad and criticizing people for what they've done instead of seeing the more happier and lovelier things in the world! While this is probably never going to change, it is a real issue and I want people to realize what they're doing and what they could change in this world instead of going on things like social media and making disparaging comments. This also falls under the line with self-perception and appreciation; if you don't understand yourself and learn to appreciate yourself, you won't be able to truly appreciate others. Accepting who you are and what your faults are is important, and although I know that I'm being slightly hypocritical for saying something like this when I honestly haven't figured all of that out myself, I also understand that I have a lot to learn, and by keeping an open mind about fears or anything else you encounter, you'll get much farther in life than you will keeping a closed mind. Q3: How is this artwork about who you are or what you like? A3: This artwork is not about what I like; in fact, it is about what I dislike. This still defines me as a person though, and as stated in my first paragraph, it is about my personal fears. While I do have generic fears like some slight arachnophobia, height, and pain, I also feel like I can better express myself through more representative fears, fears that I believe everyone has but that they shift under their skin or in the back of the mind, hidden away and allowed to build up. I also want to touch upon one more example that I didn't mention in the first paragraph: the open room in the back, and perspective. Earlier, I mentioned that this was a style of a three-dimensional cube, and it all depended on one's perspective. Now, I want to present the idea that this open doorway can be seen as something different than just there in the background, hiding to be just an aesthetic part of the drawing. I want to represent this as a choice in perspective-or rather, MY choice. This singular entrance represents me, as a whole, because much like the artwork, once I start focusing on the entrance to the doorway, it becomes an area to the unknown, an endless hallway that I must focus on, a one-way path that I'm entering, and a closed mind with just one needless goal. However, as soon as I start becoming curious and looking around me at the walls and at the floor, I realize that maybe this isn't an entrance; it is an exit to where I once was, and to where I grew from, and to what I must understand about my challenges in the future. This drawing defines who I am by making me understand that I am not confined to my ideas simply because I see a main goal for myself in the future. This drawing represents me by identifying that there is often a much bigger world out there to me than to what is presented to me, and honestly, I just have to look around to understand this. This drawing tells me to break my barriers and to know that even if I don't understand or appreciate something the first time I see it, that there's a million different perspectives that I can be given instead by just changing my viewpoint, or changing the way I sit, or by even closing my eyes and re-looking at myself for a second. Sometimes, it's better to take life slow and to just acknowledge what you need to change about yourself to make you a better person than to rush into everything and wish for your life to magically be reborn again, because in the end, you are the only person who can truly change yourself, and as long as I'm happy with where I'm going, then I know that I'm going to live my life to the fullest I possibly can every single day. Topic: I Have a Global Awareness of Artmaking
Q1: Did you find inspiration from another artist or culture? A1: I draw inspiration from the poem "Before the Internet" by Phil Kaye. In his poem, he expresses the playtime of two boys who draw out their imagination to create interesting and intriguing circumstances, and implies that without the internet, the creative process is allowed to develop further, and there's more of a human connection. While I didn't necessarily go down the human connection route, I wanted to give an idea of imagination and the role it plays on the human mind when it isn't boxed in by something like the internet, and therefore, I began to develop a child's encounter with various objects in his surrounding area to be like running through a cave full of traps, and having to dodge them all. This provides a sense of fun in the child's mind, and therefore, draws into the aspects of creativity. Q2: Did you use technology as a tool? A2: Ironically enough, I did use technology as a tool. I didn't use it to give me exact representations of the things I was drawing (as perceived by my highly questionable bee), but I used it to listen to the poem and to give me general ideas of what I wanted to draw. Although it is pretty humorous that I did use the internet in order to help me grasp a general idea of what I wanted to create to represent everything, it also shows just how much society has changed over the span of 30 years. Q3: Did you participate as an art community member? A3: Although I'm not entirely certain on how I could fully participate as an art community member, I believe my representation of another idea in art in a visual form rather than an auditory form does amount to me participating as an art community member. While there's always further comparisons (or more direct ideas/portrayals) into my artwork that could come from the poem I used, I believe this is far enough for a well-done piece. After all, I did already carry Phil Kaye's idea of an Indiana Jones-esque portrayal in the imagination of a child without the internet, and while it may not have turned out exactly like how he stated that it did in his poem, it still gives the insight and comparisons that allow for more of a fulfillment of the conveyed idea. Visual Journal Reflection: I Create Original Art
Q1: How do you use your own ideas in your support? A1: Originally, I came up with an idea involving a struggle before having my first art class. I had wanted to create something with the line of one of my favorite songs (I'll address this more in the second question), and especially, I wanted it to be along the lines of the struggle of humanity. Everyone in humanity cannot run from their demons; at some point, they have to battle them, and rarely do they overcome them. Instead, I grasped the idea of a struggle between a person's said demon (inner OR outer) and identified one's true self as some sort of "holy figure." This holy figure is supposed to represent one's nature, as it is often the perception that any person's true nature is innocent and free of judgement. However, this free and innocent nature also takes an inhumane positioning while fighting the demon, as no matter whether it's determined that the demon is evil or not, there's undoubtedly still a surrounding mood around conflict and causing harm that proves that all human nature is still, at some point, "evil." This is not only represented by the faded black circle surrounding the "life" of the human spirit, but in the smaller box and the phrases already stated on the paper. While the person believes that they have slayed the demon and that the demon has already passed them by (therefore, why the demon is "old to them"), the blood of the spirit, shown in the bottom right, is simply a visual representation of how no matter how strong a person's will to eliminate their demons may be, there is always an infection placed on the person, in which their demon still exists but is simply muddled with the soul now, willfully being ignored by oneself just to gain the satisfaction of believing that they have bid good riddance to their own deceits. (Note, however, that this is not supposed to simply be an attack on the human soul; it's supposed to be a true representation of how nobody can escape their demons, even if they really want to. It's simply just the undeniable course of humanity.) Edit: I also used the idea of the demon already crossing the bounds into the soul (over the half; its foot and arms are over) to imply that the demon had already began to take its grasp onto the person's true self, and that it had already been manipulating their actions without any displayed resistance until now. Q2: Did you use a source for inspiration, then combine it with your own ideas to make it original? A2: Although I did use some form of source for my inspiration, my sources that I used were simply separate ideas merged together with my own ideas to, in the end, make it original. First of all, I used lyrics from the song "love; not wrong (brave)" by EDEN. These lyrics set up a base understanding for the person viewing the artwork in order to guide their viewing of the work, and allowed for me to create a more original composition with different styles of words and metaphors induced into them. Second, I used an image involving blood to help with font edits and image creation, allowing me to add more detail regarding the fight of the soul. Finally, I used an image of a demon to give me a direct example into how I could draw a demon. However, I did not directly copy it; I merely used it as a based template to grasp how I could form my own demon, in order to help display my artistic work creatively and to pair it with a battle against the soul. |
YeetVisual Journal for my Senior year! Archives
February 2019
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