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Hi!
Hi!
My name is Swaha Chakraborty, and I'm a freshman at DHS. My favorite subject in school is Biology, and I love anything creative. When I am not in school, you can find me in clubs, playing tennis, drawing, and hanging out with friends.
“The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.”
– Aristotle
My Project
My Project
Art has always been my passion; a skill that has become more a part of me than a simple hobby. It is my calm, inspiration, and voice. For the last few years I have been practicing realism, learning how to capture the beauty of our world on a canvas. For my project, I will attempt to leave the comfort our world behind, and focus on one, born purely in the mind. In other words, I want to explore surrealism; a genre that thrives on creativity and artistic voice, unbound by the laws of our world. Delving into such an abstract form of expression is both frightening and thrilling, and in the end I hope to have a mini gallery of surrealist pieces.
Surrealism: "a movement in art which sought to release the creative potential of the unconscious mind, by the irrational juxtaposition of images and dreamlike scenes."
My mentor for this project is Mrs. Bosson's sister, Olivia. Being a more expierenced artist, she has helped me find needed materials for paintings, such as which oil paints to use and what thinners and brush cleaners would be best. She has also helped me better understand how oil paints work, and painting techniques that made it easier to work with them.
Final Project
Final Project
Painting One
Painting One
For this painting I decided to explore the 'dreamlike' feeling of Surrealist art. I recorded my dreams, hoping to spark ideas off of them. Finally, I had a nightmare that I used as inspiration for this piece, Found.
Painting Two
Painting Two
For my second painting, I wanted to use the contrast of life and death. For the face, I stuck to muted yellows and blues for the skin, giving her a more lifeless look. However, for the flowers, I used bright pigmented paints to juxtapose the dullness of the face. For the entire painting, I stuck to broad brushstrokes, and avoided fully blending shades together.
painting three
painting three
For my final piece, I wanted to go all out. I decided to do a multi-media painting, using oil paints for the statue and colored pencils for the exposed muscle. However, prior to this painting, I had never worked with oil paints before. For this piece I had to heavily study anatomy and experiment using oils.
Final Reflection
Final Reflection
I am extremely happy with the final collection of paintings, and I am proud of the time and effort I put into each peice. This collection was my first time studying human anatomy, as well as my first time stepping outside of realism. While I wasn't as comfortable with the technique at first, by end of my first painting I realized how much I loved the lack of rules and structure. Suprisingly, I enjoyed studying anatomy, and it wasn't as scary a subject as I previously thought. However, I was suprised by how difficult it was to find inspiration and devolop sketches for each piece. When there isn't a clear picture or refrence I am working off of, it was hard to know how to channel my creativity into creating an end product in my head before starting to paint. However, the lack of a refrence photo forced me to adpat to changing ideas and concepts. If something doesn't work out the way it did in my head, I simply had to paint over it and try something new. While I love the end products now, I had no idea what the painting would look like while I was working. Therefore, finding motivation to paint on days when my pieces didn't look the best was something I stuggled with. But looking back at the paintings, I am extremely happy that I didn't give up and had trust in the process. I am suprised to find that I may enjoy this style of art a lot more than I had intially anticipated, and I will probably create more pieces like this in the future.
Progress Update #4
Progress Update #4
Progress Update #3
Progress Update #3
Progress Update #1
Progress Update #1
To start off my project, I first had to research surrealist artists and their paintings, taking note of any elements that stood out to me. After finding some pieces of inspiration, I realized that I fell in love with the dreamlike feel of the paintings. Hence, I began keeping track of my dreams, looking for inspiration in a subconscious reality. Until I finally had a rather interesting nightmare, now the blueprint of my first piece. I chose to use gouache as the primary medium.
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