It's been a while...

It's been over a month since I have updated my blog about my artboard. Since then we have had holidays and have entered the final term of the school year, this week is the last week left for the term before study leave. During the holidays I was able to come in 3 of 4 days so I could begin a new series with a new art style as well. I have created more than eight pieces that are all connected with the subject of the Black-eyed Susan flower, fractures, and eyes. I used sketchy and untidy lines (no matter how much it annoyed me in the beginning) because of the rough sketch that I originally used when I sketched the ideas out during class and did not have access to the actual application I use. From this sketch, my teacher gave me the advice to use this as my art style and continue to build off of that with my given subject matter. The next few pictures are a few of the pieces from this that will be going onto my board. 

This was the first piece I sketched and coloured with the new art style. You can see later how I have changed the colouration of the flowers to better suit the actual flower and how I've changed how I highlight the eyes.

This is the second piece done in the art style I changed to for the series. It lacks the fracture, which is one of my board's subject matters, but it shows the development of the flower with highlights and shadows. Additionally, there is a rough sketch line then a thicker baseline with all parts of the piece unlike before.

This piece was done much later on as I moved onto shifting from one set of art pieces to another. Again, this does not include the fracture subject. For this piece, I wanted to focus on the asymmetrical face with two matching eyes. As well, I wanted to experiment with a new form of background which I would use later on to make a singular eye based piece. I found that the purple contrasted well with yellow in the petals and eyes.

These next two pieces were ones I worked on for my first board that were not part of the subject matters including the Black-eyed Susan flower, fractures and eyes. These were made to continue with the subject matter of the feathers used in earlier pieces. I like working on these two since I was able to experiment with how to create the texture of the feather. The idea of white ink near the end of the quill was a result of me experimenting with the invert filter on the background.

Art Board Update

In the last week, we have continued to work on the artboards and developing the pieces. While I have not done much physical art, I have come up with ideas on what my next pieces may be. The first idea I had in mind was something I sketched earlier in the year and recently looked over again. It was a sketch of a pear, and while it was not detailed the description showed that the pear had a wedge cut out of it and laid beside it. The wedge is clean and fresh, it looks like a normal cut of a pear. However, inside of the pear, it has been cut out of it is rotted and brown in comparison. This is the idea that something can still be taken out of perspective as positive when it comes from something negative and rotted.

The second idea was given to me by my teacher, this was to expand upon the linocuts I previously did with the cameras and pastel colours. The idea is that I will cut more from the lino piece and reprint over these pieces so that the pieces each contain more colours in their composition. 

The third piece I had the idea of doing was parallel to the piece I had previously created of the girl with the feather behind her ear. This would be somewhat inverse as the colouration of the piece will be held inside the black line and the monotone colouration will be outside. So far, this piece is more of a cartoon-like style and shows no colour at this point. The piece shows a younger person with a short haircut that sweeps over. It shows a side view of the person's face, it faces the opposite direction to the previous piece that it somewhat alludes to. The picture shows the original sketch. 

Art Board and Art Technique Progress

Since the last blog post, I have worked on one piece in particular. This is the charcoal sketch that I have since updated to show a black outline and a colourful background. The progress shown below is what I had done before the beginning of this term. The feather was incomplete and the picture had no background.

The picture has since been improved upon and shows a completed feather, a colourful background, and a solid black outline that separates the charcoal sketch from the coloured rainbow background. This finished piece relates quite well to the kaupapa I have of hidden or obscured truth. This piece shows a girl completely separated from the colour and brightness of the world around her. The quill she wears behind her ear represents old fashioned ways and how they keep her from this colour and the beautiful surrounding world. These old-fashioned ways and this knowledge obscures her from the truth and colour and keeps her in a bubble with only this old and unreliable knowledge. 

This set of pencil drawings was a piece I recently rediscovered. I worked on it before quarantine while still considering my kaupapa and subject matter. While the camera drawing doesn't fit into my kaupapa as I originally thought it would, it started a good process for me to eventually develop my kaupapa. The apple doesn't hold much meaning as a drawing in relevance to my kaupapa, but it did make for some good work to look into toning and shading with real objects. 

This is another pencil drawing that I recently rediscovered. It was a still-life that I worked on during the quarantine period. This helped me with drawing realistically with proportions. 

This recordation shows my progress with art technique. The internal contains the task of creating media (wet and dry) that shows still life subject matters. The progress I have made so far is to begin the process with mainly dry media drawings. This can include everything I have worked on that shows tonal differences throughout the piece. I have started the wet media, but at this point have less subject material for it. 

The second internal which is to demonstrate an understanding of artworks from a Māori and another cultural context using art terminology. This internal is one that I have already completed with Excellence.

Artwork Progress

 

Since my last update, I have mainly worked on the professional of my physical artwork. Since quarantine has ended, I have worked on basic forms in different forms of mediums, including charcoal, pencil and watercolour, I have printed four separate pieces as a series through lino printing, I've completed a sketch and am currently working with charcoal to produce a portrait.

The basic forms were done to teach us how to create different shapes with different media. When drawing, we can apply these shapes to the image and have a proper idea of size and shading.

The next piece was lino work that had three separate drafts before I printed. The idea behind the initial drawing was to depict a broken camera. In the pictures, we can see how I changed where I put the colour due to stylistic preference. The idea of different colours based on the broken piece was a result of wanting to have more variety and interesting points to the art. I believe that had I printed based on my first draft it would not look as good. 

The next part of lino printing, besides cutting, was the printing part. This managed to confuse me very much as lino printing does not require a press, but wood printing does. The last time I did any form of printing, it was wood printing where we used the press. At first, I only planned to use one colour but have multiple prints to choose from to find the best one. However, my teacher instead suggested that I use multiple colours which resulted in the next three variants being yellow, blue and pink. I chose these colours after it was suggested I use pastel colours.

This helped me find out what I wanted to do with my artboard. This piece (series?) is focussed around broken cameras and impaired vision. This leads me to what I believe my Kaupapa will be. Lying in media. Now more than ever, we see journalists, news industries and photographers taking the situation in front of them and twisting it to their companies beliefs or what will gain them profit. Their businesses profit from the extremities in the lives of celebrities and the accentuation of the worldly situations surrounding us. The media lies and lies again for the entertainment of viewers and the profit of their watchings.

The next piece I did, my sketch, used a camera as its subject. Cameras is something I wanted to incorporate into my artboard before I even knew what my Kaupapa would really be. This shows us woman using a camera, but whos finger is slightly covering the lens. I made one main draft before moving onto the resulting piece as seen. The piece isn't heavily realistic compared to how I would like it to be, however, I'm happy with the outcome as it was one of the first pieces I have done for art and was done before learning about basic form and such. 

One of the most recent pieces I have been working on is one using charcoal. This will be my first solely charcoal piece. This occurred due to the random drawing of a face with long hair and a feather over their ear. I drew this while experimenting as I had no idea what to draw. After my teacher saw it she gave me the idea of expanding upon the premise of the drawing and using one of my own friends as the main subject. From this, I took photographs to base the pictures from and I created a rough draft based on them. I did this in basic pencil in order to not smudge it. The final piece, which I am working on now, is drawn completely in willow charcoal and charcoal pencil. 

The meaning behind the artwork is that the feather represents the past. The feathers references to a quill of sorts. The meaning is that the past clouds the hearing of people in modern times. The ink that I will add soon shows the words of the past leaking onto the face beside the ear. The effects and words of the past cloud what people hear in modern times as they focus too much on the past to see the future.

1.1 Visual Arts Assesment

Due to lockdown, a lot of work has gone off track. So have assessments. I do hope we'll be back soon, but I know that it's only a matter of time until the lockdown is extended.

In the meantime, I've been attempting to complete my work to the best of my ability. This includes the art assessment that we've been working on for some time. Recently, I have been able to complete this, and while I cannot share the final product so I don't get copied, I can share some pieces that I am particularly proud of within the work.

Part of this assessment was describing the artworks of one of the artists we looked into. This is my description of Sofia Minson's 'The Other Sister,' this was the first of the four to be completed.

The painting is displayed as landscape, longer than the typical size, and without colour. The background is shades of gray, white and black, the white shines as if it is light in the upper right corner and it fades into gray and then into black as if it is shadows. A woman’s face is the focal point of the painting, showing from the very top of her eyebrows to the bottom of her chin, she is likely standing sideways and having to turn her head towards the focal point considering the angling of her face. The mentioned light before is shining onto her left cheek and creates shadows across her face, particularly on the opposite side of her face due to her nose and her eyelashes, despite this, light shines onto the left side of her nose, upper lip, bottom lip, her chin and most of the left cheek. She has short hair, that even with the gray scale would likely be graying or a light colour if she was to be shown in colour. The roots of her hair are dark as the light isn’t shining onto them. She has a set of defining wrinkles on her face, a pair that stretches from the bottom of the outside of her nose down towards her mouth, but not connecting, the lines are curved and display the right of her face more prominently as it makes the skin near her cheek where the wrinkle is shown puff out slightly. The woman has a traditional moko on her chin, two images reflecting over the centerline of her face to create a symmetrical image. The reflected image shows two swirls, one stretching from the bottom of her lip and the other stretching from the bottom of her chin, they connect at the center of her chin before splitting off and becoming smaller and smaller. The ink is dark, defining and makes an outstanding image.

In the third Artists picture description, one of the questions we answered for each artwork was 'What particular information can you pick out and explain further to show you understand the meaning of this artwork.' This was my answer about Roy Lichtenstein's Crying Girl (1963 version).

The artwork was created to represent the female identification in the 1950s and 1960s where they were fighting for their rights and against the stereotypical confirmations they were forced into, including how they appeared and spoke and who they were in a relationship with. The crying girl is stressed as seen in her face, she appears to be running from something or someone. This shows us how she can be running from the entrapment of the female identity during those times. She has broken this perfect idealisation of a woman through the outward showing of her emotions, and now is running.






Another question that we answered, for only two of the four artworks, was 'How does the context (time and place) the artwork was made affect your understanding of its meaning?' I answered this question in alignment with the artwork of Lisa Reihana's Mahuika.

The idea behind this artwork and the series it belongs to is to paint the Māori legends in an accurate way while the method creates a way of communicating this across the world. The time in which we do this will always affect the depictions of the people and the legends as time goes by. Years ago, Mori were painted as a dying race and their culture was used as a tourist attraction, but not something they could indulge in otherwise. Now, we see Māori legends and people depicted accurately and without bias, by people who respect the culture and it's ideas.

Visual Arts

This year I will be focussing on cityscape/landscape as my kaupapa (concept). This theme is something I have chosen because I want to expand my artistic views. I usually base my artwork on a sole subject without any more scenery and this is why is have chosen this kaupapa. The media I would like to work with is sketching, photography and (potentially) printing. I may change these over time depending on how I want to focus my subjects and my methods, but these are the ones I am interested in.
The two artists I've chosen from 1.1 list one are Sofia Minson and Robyn Kahukiwa and from list two are Claude Monet and Sheperd Fairey.

The artist I am interested in for my kaupapa is either Photo Roman or Rinko Kawauchi. These are some of my notes to do with our kaupapa and subject matter:

I would like to work with flowers, backgrounds and silhouettes of people as my subject matter. I believe I can create effective meaning through my art with these as my subject of choice.