Movie Day

We made a movie today!!! It was so much fun to see the cooperation between everyone and I loved how everyone listened to and accepted other people’s ideas about how the video should be arranged for their animal. We all looked up sounds for our “little guys”. I chose to use Simba’s little roar from the lion king. I thought it fit the cheeky, mischievous swag of my little dinosaur. We held a white back drop in front of the screen and everyone passed their animal in front of the screen one by one, stopped in the middle, turned towards the screen, and made their sound then disappeared off the screen again. Each entrance and exit was different according to the nature of each individual animal. For instance, I had my little dinosaur scurry on, get really close to the screen and roar, then scurry back off. Erin made her mole/octopus curiously come into view, sniff around the screen, then curiously slip out of sight, etc., etc. Unfortunately I was having too much fun to remember to take pictures L

Afterwards we watched video segments about different artist and their style and interests. It was really interesting to watch and I LOVED when the second artist said,

                    “It doesn’t matter how mundane the world is we don’t have to live mundanely in it. We can make beautiful things from mundane objects.”

This quote really stayed with me. It is 100% true. People go through life living like there’s nothing exciting or worth living for out there when there is so much to do that people don’t even realize. They miss out on the world because they’re so incredibly closed minded and blind to all the beautiful things that make this world the incredible place that it is.

Critique Day

It was amazing to see everyone’s final products today. Every time we have a critique it’s so interesting to see and hear what went into the work and how you can easily pick up on what the artist was trying to express through his or her creation just by looking at it. Although many times I won’t realize it at first (or maybe sometimes just being too afraid of being wrong and looking stupid),after waiting a while and hearing what other people saw in the work I realize that I was on the right track as well.

As we went around the table we wrote down three words that best described the animal both physically and symbolically. Afterwards, we sat around the arrangement of animals and discussed the words we all chose, why we chose those particular words and how exactly they fit with the personification and personal expression behind each creature.

What everyone said about my creation was that he was small but quick and mischievous; like a Chihuahua that thinks it’s a German shepherd. My “Thornekasaurus” is the underdog, the underestimated. It’s awesome the way such a simple object can be put to use to make both a visual and symbolic impression on the viewer. All the animals were great and it was so cool to see how everyone took the everyday objects and made something special and meaningful with them.

Day 2..

I love what my little animal is turning into. Watching the tiny pieces that are nothing by themselves transform into something amazing like my little animal is just awesome. I can’t wait to see what the final product ends up looking like. I worked on a frill for the neck to make it look like a frilled neck lizard but when I was done and trying to actually put it behind the head it didn’t end up looking the way I wanted it to so I ended up taking it off and using it as part of the tail.

 

Little Animals!!!

We’re doing the little animals!!! I knew this was going to be fun when I found out what we were doing. We have to make an 8” by 8” animal made of bits and pieces of whatever we want. I am making my little guy out of nuts and bolts and other metal objects.

First we had to look up pictures of various animals to get an idea of what we wanted to make. I had no idea at first so I just started looking up random pictures of whatever animals came to my head and actually (I guess subconsciously) was looking up certain animals and then their opposites in contrast. It wasn’t until I was in class that I even noticed I had done that.

What I settled on making was a little lizard/dragon/dinosaur creature. The animals that led me to make this particular creature, or the other animals that gave the idea were an elephant, a thorny devil (lizard), a frilled neck lizard, and a picture of a course rock of some sort.

After seeing all the materials that would be available to us I decided I wanted my animal to be made off many small pieces like metal nuts and bolts and pieces from mechanical devices that I saw. I made such a mess!!!

This is what I ended up with after our first day:

Unit Measurement

What your eye see’s is much different than what actually is. You may see a car up close and see another car in the distance. Yo know that put side by side the cars are proportionally the same size, but spread out like they are you notice that the car in the distance is only about the height of the license plate of the car right in front of you. This is called proportion. In proportion to the closer car, the car in the distance is the height of the license plate.

When drawing this image you may use the car in the distance to get the proportions right for the car up close. This means you would look at or draw the smaller car first and use the height of that car to get the height of the closer car right. Say you’re trying to find the height of the bigger car..take the height of the smaller car and see how many times you can stack that car on top of itself until you’ve gone from the top of the bigger car to the bottom or visa versa. In the case of this picture, the smaller car fits into the height of the bigger car about 9-10 times. This is using the smaller car as a unit measurement.

 

Blind whaaa??

After the bust project we took a day off from the easels and went into a room with a jumble of items on a table. My eyes went straight to the plate of cookies and Hershey’s kisses spread around the tables. The lesson today was called….

We were doing something called “blind contour”. We would be looking at the jumble of objects set out for us and drawing them without looking at our papers. For me this exercise was just awful..all i could do was think about how my drawing looked and what the final product would be. I knew that it was going to look bad and i did not like that at all. It was so stressful and I was completely exhausted afterwards. This made me think so much i was completely drained. First we drew with our dominant hands, so my left hand first, and then with our non-dominant hands. This just added to the stress at first but in the end i actually found that it was easier to draw with my right hand than with my left.

I am somewhat of a perfectionist and i just didn’t like starting a drawing i knew would look bad when i was done. I just COULD NOT let my mind go and let it take over and just draw. I was always so tempted to look down at my drawing and make corrections. I found that it was easier to draw the foreign objects on the table. Objects that i was not familiar with so did not have a set image in my mind of what the image should look like. These objects were not as frustrating to draw.

 

The Head!

Well we started a new project. I took one look at it and thought, “This is going to be a disaster!”. We were to be drawing a bust sitting on a couple of boxes with milk jugs beside them. After doing the chair that seemed so simple at first glance, how was this going to be? This was more than just  straight lines and a single object. What I was looking at was my doom. The boxes I thought would be easy but the bottles had heaps of different lines and dents going all over the place and the bust had a round head so how was I supposed to make it perfectly proportional?? I couldn’t use my string for that!!

What actually ended up happening was the complete opposite. The first day we started drawing I decided to start with the boxes to get them out of the way because I thought they would be the easiest things to draw out of all the objects. I thought i was being smart knocking them out first so i would have extra time to do what i thought would be the more complicated things. Unfortunately i couldn’t have been more mistaken. I spent the ENTIRE first day….two hours….on those boxes and by the end i still had not finished them. Every time i thought i had them right i would take a step back, look at the page for a minute and see how off they were from the real thing. It turns out the boxes were the most difficult of everything to draw. Because they had to be so precise, it took two or three tries before i got the angles right.

On the second day of the project, we were told to stop what we were doing, go get a scrap piece of paper, and tape it over our drawing. Then we were told we had 1 minute to draw the whole thing. Just let go and draw the whole thing without the string, without precision, just raw eyeballing. Panic ensued..there was no way i could accomplish this no matter how much i let go. It turned out that i was exactly right but i know that i could have done it if i had not have freaked out like i did. Then we were told to get another sheet of paper and do it in 30 seconds….did i learn anything from the first go around? Absolutely not. Of course I just freaked out again and was unable to finish it but surprisingly i got more done than the first time even though i had less time to do it.

Finally we were told to get yet another piece of paper and draw the set of objects in 2 minutes. Although i got the most drawn in this amount of time compared to the other 2, i still was unable to finish the drawing because I let myself relax too much and gave myself too much time to finish the sketch.

1 minute

30 seconds

2 minutes

I think this exercise helped everyone calm down about the apparent complexity of the task at hand. I know it helped me. I personally ended up finding this project a little easier than the last. After i finally got my boxes right, the rest was surprisingly less complicated. I found that because i did not have to use the string with the bottles or the bust they were easier. I could just let my hand flow and put the image in my head on the paper. In the end i was proud of my work.

1st Critique

This critique was really interesting being the first one. It was great to see how everyone interpreted the chair and what all the final results were. Although we were all drawing the same object, the different angles and styles of all the different people made the pictures very diverse in a way. Everyone’s turned out wonderfully. Seeing each individual artistic journey was awesome 🙂

End result!!!

Went in today for a little while to finish up :). Made an adjustment here..fixed a line there..and here’s the end result!!

Proud of it 🙂

Finishing up!

When I came into class I felt like I was going to have to re-do my whole drawing. Luckily the damage was not that bad. I erased some off the top and erased some off the bottom and made adjustments. For the most part, the middle of the chair was fine. I just had to shave some off the top and bottom and redraw those parts. After I did this all I had to do was some refining. There was a little mishap with the seat of the chair but I sorted that out in no time.