For the semester my theme was the eight stages of grief. These stages include shock, denial, grief, pain, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Throughout my pieces I feel that I did a good job of expressing my concept. A problem that I kept dealing with while creating my artwork was dealing with proportions. As I worked more and figured out my style I feel that my art continued to increase in quality.
Benchmark: Grief
The dimensions are 11"x17". The materials used are charcoal and white and blue prisma colored pencils. This is a drawing of a soldier presenting a folded flag to a woman. The woman is shown in three stages of movement: standing upright, mid-fall, and crouched on the floor. The upright position of the woman is the least defined and intense, and as the woman gets closer to her last position she becomes for defined and intense. The majority of the piece is done in black and white with different shades and highlights. The only parts with color are the flag in the soldier's hands and the woman's hair and clothes.
The influential artist for this project was William Kentridge. He lived through the time of Aparthied and produced many famous "erasure drawings".
There are many things that could be improved in this piece. I think that if I were to redo this project I would make the background less distracting and draw the people better. This, in my opinion, is a bad drawing; aside from the concept this was not successful. The experimenting in this drawing was unsuccessful.
Milestone: Anger
The dimensions of this piece are 11"x15". The materials include yellow, red, and white watercolor. This piece is a painting of a yelling woman from the neck up. Her eyes are shut tight and her mouth is open. The hair is being blown in the same direction her face is pointing (right to left) and is red, orange, and yellow. Red, orange, yellow, and white were the only colors used in the piece.
The artist that influenced me during the creation of this piece was Carne Griffiths. He does very experimental watercolor portraitures. His paintings inspired my to use the straw technique to get wilder movement in my painting.
Improvements that could be made in this piece include opening the mouth more widely to really make her look like she is screaming and adding more streaks of hair, especially on the top left side of her face.
This is my turning point piece because I got a feel for watercolor and experimenting and wanted to keep using some of the same ideas and techniques I discovered by doing this piece.
Quintessential: Acceptance
The dimensions of my last are 12"x24". Materials used were charcoal, green, yellow, blue, black, brown, and white water color, and gold and blue interference paint. The subject matter is a man crouching down and a little girl fading away. The girl has her left hand on her father's shoulder whereas the other hand is stretched out and fading away with the rest of her body. In the section where she is being faded there is interference paint.
This piece was inspired by Alex M. and her idea to use watercolor and charcoal. The thing that had the most influence on this piece, however, was not inspired by a particular person but more of an event. A life can be taken away as quickly as it is made, and this horrific truth was demonstrated by the events of Sandy Hook. I take comfort in knowing that the children of Sandy Hook are wrapped in the arms of the Father.
Improvements that could be made are making the woods in the back actually look like woods, making the little girl a little more proportional, and having amore gradual fade in some places.
I feel that this piece defines me most as an artist because it is technical enough to be good but still incorporates a lot of concept and is very dramatic.
In conclusion, watercolor is a medium that I plan to keep using and getting better with, and I also plan to continue making dramatic and experimental pieces.
