Concentration

For this project the goal was to continue our concentration. In my exploration I am exploring social issues relating to gender. I knew I wanted to do something with the idea of Barbies. Personally I believe that Barbies are harmful to young girls because it forces an impossible beauty standard.

To begin I looked up images of Barbies on google (I did not have any Barbies at home). I cut my page to be small, I wanted to focus on detail. I wanted to do something abstract so I took the shapes of her figure and pasted them on different areas of the page. I used a fine point pen to trace over these lines. One shape I found particularly fascinating was her thigh gap. It's a crazy expectation. I had so much negative space so I decided to flip the negative space to positive space and started to color the background black. Once I completed half of the page I decided to leave it like that because I liked the contrast of light and dark. To add selective color I added flowers and vines. Flowers for the idea of delicacy and vines for the idea of restricting. I used the color pink because it is a typical "girl" color.

Overall I am happy with the final product. It is more abstract than my other pieces, but as my concentration develops my pieces should get more abstract and thought provoking. I like this piece because it's small so it forces the viewer to get close. Also the message is not direct so it forces the viewer to think.

This piece is a continuation of my concentration. For this piece I decided to work with "the form of a woman". I used a mannequin as a reference while I was drawing. I set up the body more towards one side purposefully to play with composition. I set the mannequin at a slight tilt and made the head tilted up. I cut her off at the legs because I wanted to focus on her chest and stomach. Often women are sent messages about how their stomachs and breast should look like. I used a "petite" mannequin on purpose to show that these proportions are not at all an accurate representation of all women's body types but yet this form is the one we see the most.

After sketching the form I chose to do stippling. I really like the stippling effect on a previous project and decided to explore the style further. After doing the shading (which took a lot of time) I had to figure out the background. I was flipping through magazines trying to see if there was anything I could use in there (another piece in the concentration has collage aspects). I came across this saying "stop and stare" and that really spoke to me. I think there's some idea that a woman's body is supposed to be exposed and for the public eye but yet when a woman does show her body she is shamed. It's a lose-lose situation. I then used watercolor to paint pink flowers in the background that represent classic femininity.

Overall I am happy with the outcome. I've definitely used successful elements of past projects to develop this piece. I like the composition and the contrast of white, black, and pink.

This piece is titled "Cutting Edge". I originally got inspired by flipping through fashion magazines. What I find fascinating about these magazines are they are plastered with these models who are supposedly "perfect". A really long time ago, I watched a Ted Talk about a supermodel who said that the images from a photoshoot was a "construction". This resonated with me as I remember it to this day. I went with this idea and cut out "constructions" of the women filled in these magazines.

I started my cutting out pieces of this "woman" out off magazines and then did a blind contour drawing of myself. The goal of doing this was to play with the relationship between how you perceive yourself and how the beauty industry perceives you. I glued down the shapes I had cut out. I then went back in and added some dark green and light green shapes to add contrast. For the background, I used purple watercolor to contrast the woman and to also be a softer element of the piece. Not satisfied with just the water color, I used a fine point orange pen to trace around the figure multiple times.

This piece is very abstract compared to what I normally do which actually shows the development of my concentration. I am starting to stray away from direct messages and making the viewer look for the underlying meaning. I think this piece has a nice balance of colors, effectively utilizes multiple media, and has a strong composition.

For this project I again reflected on the way women were portrayed in magazines. Often they are not portrayed as strong but rather as delicate and weak or just "pretty". After flipping through many magazines, I pulled images and text that related to power and strength. I pulled from a magazines about actress, Gina Rodriguez's passion for boxing. I went with this idea and then looked through the company Athleta's catalog whose message is "empower she". I thought this was idea was cool so I began to play around with arrangement of shapes and text.

After setting up the way the images would lay, I knew I had to develop the background. I used black construction paper to cut and paste black triangles in the background. I like the harsh lines of triangles. To add more lines and shapes, I traced the outline of these triangles many times to make them overlap and create intrigue. I then pasted the images and text over them.

This project (like my last one) is more abstract. I like the way the images and text are displayed on the page. I like the way I developed the background to create contrast and intrigue. One thing I would've done differently is add a border. Overall, I am satisfied with this project and will continue to explore my concentration because these abstract drawings help me further develop my message.

To find inspiration for this project I looked through magazines and google searched images of 'women'. This picture of Aly Raisman, olympic gymnast and medalist came up. I was intrigued by her positioning in this photo and I found a whole collection of photos from Sport Illustrated of women with words painted on their bodies that represented them. Aly Raisman was the first gymnast to come forward out of many to accuse Larry Nassar, olympic doctor, of sexual assault. Nassar has been accused of the sexual assault of over 160 women. It goes to show the great lengths people will go to cover these crimes up and also how victims are shamed and silenced.

I chose to use this photo because of the position she was in. It's a very vulnerable but also powerful position to be in. I knew I wanted to work bigger than I have in the past so I chose to use a 22 inch by 18 inch piece of paper. I actually used a projector to get the lines right. I projected the image in the hallway and then traced the lines on the piece of paper. I wanted the proportions to be spot on. I chose to do stippling because I knew I wanted this piece to be intricate and almost delicate. Plus I knew that the stippling would really bring out her muscles and show how strong she is. The stippling took forever!

Overall I am happy with my final product. I don't often work this big with so much detail and I worked really hard on it. There is a lot of negative space. I chose not to do a background to let the image speak for itself. If I were to do this over again, I would make the hair darker, almost as dark as her bikini. Overall I am satisfied with my work.

For this project I reflected on previous works. I was sort of stuck with how to continue my concentration but after looking through old artwork, I came upon a piece I created while at a MECA summer drawing camp. At that camp we worked with live models. Having never worked with live models before this was a completely new experience. Because I often work from reference photos it was really interesting to have the model literally right in front of you. And I think that's often how beauty gets distorted, through photoshopped pictures and retouched images. Having a model right in front of you, you are capturing the model live and there's no question of what's real.

So I drew this image at this camp but decided to add contours and highlights to her body to make her figure stand out. I've worked a lot of with collages and magazine cut-outs so I decided to continue that theme and look through magazines for inspiration. I believe that all bodies, regardless of gender, are art and we should treat them as such. I went with this idea and added the words "Celebrate the Art of Woman". I decided to play with the word women and flip it upside down. I think this causes intrigue and also goes off this idea that women don't have to be what society perceives them to be. I also purposefully left her head blank because society often thinks women are just good for their bodies and I wanted to play with that idea.

I like the contrast of the colors of this piece. I liked working with charcoal and toned paper. The color palette is very neutral. If I were to do this over again, I would pull in more red to the piece.