Concentration: Word Stories

And the sea roared on.

For my concentration this year, I have chosen to ask people their "word stories" and do a sequential concentration using 1, 2, 3, etc. words. I chose the prompt "And the sea roared on", for this particular project. I was inspired by The Birth of Venus by Botticelli (we were just studying the painting in art history). I looked at some other images of Venus and decided to put her in a different position than Botticelli did. It is similar to the Venus of Urbino actually.

I then developed the rest of the piece after drawing her figure. I had this idea to add an intricate gold frame to give a sense of space. I then put the sea in the background (a common theme in the portrayal of the birth of Venus. I haven't worked with acrylic in a couple of years, but I figured this would be a good piece to work with acrylics to get more movement. I also liked the idea of the colors being more saturated than water color. I did the background first and then the figure and then went back into the background. I then added a thick black border around the whole piece to fill the white space. I also wanted to play with the border.

I've found that I really like to manipulate the borders of my piece, and I think the composition of this piece is strong. I'm not a huge fan of the acrylic and I can't tell if that's because of the material choice itself or the way it was executed. I'm excited to see where this concentration takes me. I'm definitely interested in my art being interactive and personal.

For this project I used the word story "Perfection will never be achieved, yet is seems to hold all happiness." I thought this was an interesting sentence to work with. I instantly thought about how often we look at ourselves in the mirror and want to change things about our body. I went with this idea or mirrors and people looking into them.

I found some photos online of women looking in the mirror. I specifically used women because it is often women who are told their bodies aren't enough from the media. I used the light table to trace these figures with a light pencil. I then went over the pencil lines with a pen making a pure contour drawing. I liked the composition, but there was a lot of empty space. In an artist's block, I leafed through some fashion magazines. I noticed all the ads that were directed at women to "blend, contour, define, hide" and I began to cut them out. I placed them on my paper in no particular order, except I left the words "mirror, mirror" at the bottom to give the piece a resting point for the eye. I then used some colorful pens to create these squiggly shapes in the background. I liked the contrast between the pure contour and the color abstract design. I then created a border around my piece to finish it off.

I'm satisfied with this piece. I definitely liked using magazine cutouts again–a process I used a lot last year. I think the piece is thought-provoking.

For this project, I took the prompt "The raccoon snuck aboard the freight train bound for Canada." I started by looking up pictures of raccoon. I was drawn to three of them, and so I placed them on a document to print them out. This was my reference photo for the drawing.

I decided to use toned paper because I thought it would add something new to my drawing. At first I wasn't sure what material to use, but I thought because raccoons are grey, white, and black that charcoal would lend itself to the piece pretty well. I had the racoons popping out of the border to create a sense of space. I tried to shade the raccoons realistically, so I paid attention to the texture of the fur and the highlights and shadows. I originally turned this piece in with a lot of empty space, but I went and added paw prints (per Ms. Medsker's suggestions) to eliminate some negative space.

Overall, I think this piece is ok. I don't like how how much negative space there is. I do like the shading that I did. I haven't worked with charcoal in awhile, so it was a good challenge!

For this project I was inspired by the word story by best friend sent in: "My centaur is just dying to get out of the house." The phrase is an inside joke between the two of us and I thought it would make for a very intriguing art piece.

I began by splitting toned paper into two even frames. I knew I was going to draw two centaurs and I wanted them to be facing each other. I looked up some photos online to get an idea of what exactly a centaur looks like–they're very weird looking. I traced the figures and added a background in each to give them some sense of space. This piece is not realistic, so I went with simple lines. I didn't intend to use cut up magazines, but I liked the look of the color on the toned paper. I started clipping phrases and images that reminded me of my friend. Next, I pasted all the paper onto the piece. It was time-consuming to figure out how they would all fit together!

Overall, this is an odd piece. I don't think I've created something like this before. I like the composition quite a bit with the use of color and text.

I never expected to be so confused

For this project I was inspired by "I never expected to be so confused." I immediately thought of the college process. I began flipping through magazines to find words that described things I thought of or were said to be throughout the process. I thought of envelopes because of the most waited for "letters of admission" or "letters of rejection."

I pasted all the text horizontally straight across the page to get clean, precise lines. I placed the envelopes a little crooked to break up the clean lines. I used markers in primary colors to trace the outline of the envelope. I used an envelope template to create the envelopes myself.

Overall, I like this piece. I think the envelopes could've been placed with more. I actually want to explore with making envelopes–it was really fun. I like working with text and collaging.