In chronological order.
Already less than one hundred days away from the IB exam for art, I have come a long way since I first walked through the classroom doors in 2009 for my first year of IB Art. A wide variety of projects (both at home and in class) were completed and gave me the chance to explore my interests and create an artistic foundation to smooth out my previously at-home-artist habits.
A brief train of thoughts has been explained below each work.
River Forte. 18x24 inches, acrylics on canvas.
This was the first project of IB Art year one. River Forte was a painting inspired by a nature video watched in class, and various thumbnail sketches were made. Mine was specifically inspired by a river flowing between a canyon, represented by the contrasting warm and cool colors. The lines, musical-note inspired, and blending colors were designd to imitate the style of russian abstract artist Kandinsky. Though the paint was layered very thin, this was my first completed painting on canvas in any art class and still remains as one of my favorites. What does a river have in common with music? What emotion does it appear to be painted with?
Also, I had never heard of Kandinsky before this class. He is now my favorite artist.
The Airman Artist. 18x24 inches, acrylics on canvas.
This was the first assigned at home project, and my second painting. The idea behind the project was to paint three objects that represent me as a person in a still-life type of style. My three objects were a wing rib (that I built myself, it is used to construct the wing structure for a plane) which represented my love for aviation, colored pencils that represented my love for drawing, and my Civil Air Patrol battle dress uniform (also known as ulities) as CAP was a large part of the first semester of school last year. Camouflage was a challenge for my first still life painting, and the shading on the wing rib and colored pencils is simply non-existent. At this point there is quite a list of improvements to make on my painting techniques, though I couldn't expect to be an expert by my second painting.
Challenge Coin 18x24 inches, charcoal drawing.
An addition to the object project series that began in the winter of 2009. My choosen object had been a challenge coin drawn from a gridded image. This was my first time working with charcoals, and to put it simply it was more of a challenge, not because the medium isn't enjoyable to work with, but because the charcoal felt rather gritty and chalky to the touch and it was rather uncomfortable. As a result, the values appear scratchy, and it probably doesn't help that I was not patient with the wooden desk in the background, but I thought it appeared clean and eventually became one of my favorite drawings.
Tiramisu at Olive Garden. 18x24 inches, acrylics on canvas.
This painting was completed just before the dawn of 2010. The goal of the project was to paint a favorite food inspired by the illustration style of Wayne Thiebaud. At this point in time (nearing the middle of year one of IB Art) I was feeling much more confident with my painting abilities, though there were some small points needing improvement such as the plate's values. I would not hesitate to call this a stepping stone in class, as I learned a very important lesson while painting: attention to detail and patience go a very, very long way.
Indonesian Mask, Pencil drawing.
Imagine as a student walking into a room full of masks from all around the world, each one beautifully different, and being asked to choose one that was the most individually interesting. And thus began the mask project. This was meant to be a rough sketch before the project began, but extra time after school was spent adding more details, though the values could use more range to give the drawing more contrast. My art teacher seemed to like it anyways, and she took it to the school districts art show. I made up the hair on my own as well, the real hair didn't really look like this, but this showed improvement in my ability to draw still life from observation instead of a gridded photo.
No Face's Indonesia, paper mache mask.
Paper mache mask project prior to the winter of 2009. I chose Indoensia and Indoensian masks as my points of interest when designing the mask. The story of No Face from the animated film Spirted Away by Miyazaki was used to create a character and tell the story of No Face's liberation from the spirit world. My mom's bridemaid's dress from my aunt's wedding was used as the cape around the face (I had her permission). The mouth attaches to the face with fishing wire. This mask was the first real, in depth IB-style look into other cultures. In retrospect, I had no idea how defined Indonesian culture was, and how much Japanese influence resides in it. The art, the people, the rainforest and asian-like essence all combined into a beautiful culture that I was lucky to learn about.
Liberate Me, Linocut.
These are two prints taken from a collection of seven total prints. The inspiration came from Indonesian shadow puppets, the same culture that was explored during my mask project. This was the first reduction print and linocut I've done, and a printing press was used. The story being told is that of the war for independence between Indonesia and Japan. It was difficult getting the pattern to appear in the background, and figuring out how deep to carve in order to create certain effects is still something I am experimenting with, but linocut is definitely new and it was the most fun to work on in class.
Conversations in Converse. Linocut.
This is one of the six prints of my converse shoes for the shoe project in art class. The object was to paint shoes relating to ourselves, however, the previous linocut project had been so much fun that I wanted to try more. I would say that this is a small improvement with carving detail wise, but the background patterns have still proved to be a challenge. The messiness of this piece seemed to add to its charm in my opinion, though, because these shoes are old and from my childhood and it represents their character. By far this project was the most work physically, but I want to also add that I had the most fun with it as well. Printing is very new and different to me, and therefore exciting like there is so much I could create that I couldn't create before. Conversations in Converse was one of my main stepping stones in year one.
Untitled, acrylics on canvas. 18x24 inches.
Before the beginning of this project, my art class created individual photo collages made from magazines. The objective of this painting project was to take a snap shot from our collages in order to create a painting, and being the aviation fanatic that I am I decided to paint an airplane during an air show I saw in Oshkosh last summer. Because I so much liked the benday dots from the second painting I did in year one, I added the same influence to this painting. It is rather simple and I didn't like how "awkward" the plane looked, but it was a fun painting and I liked seeing a little of my own style developing in it.
Integrity First, Service Before Self, Excellence in All We Do. Acrylics on canvas, 18x24 inches.
This painting was one of the final projects of year one of IB Art. I was assigned to mimic the style of the famous painter Jasper Johns. I quite loved the mysterious layers of paint and almost quilted or wood-like paint-chipping-type of style to his work (it reminds me of my grandparent's barns), and found inspiration especially in his painted numbers. I took words important to me in my life, the core values of the air force, and incorporated them into layers of primary colors with letter stencils I made on my own. Though it didn't turn out quite like Jasper Johns, the attempt turned into something I see as more original. It does look a little simplistic and unfinished with all of the colors and could use some work in that respect, but I ended up liking the painting quite a bit.
Untitled, silk screen print.
Before I begin analyzing this piece, I would like to begin by saying that it was rather rushed into the very last week of school before final exams, so I did not have a lot of time to spend on making it the best that it could be. I was assigned to re-create a work from the past year into a silk screen print and I decided to pick my No Face mask as it was, in my opinion, a piece worthy of further development. This particular scene is the character No Face, from the film Spirited Away, crossing a bridge to the spirit world. The goal was to represent his freedom as he crosses the bridge and becomes more visible, and in other words, it specifically represents my "big" idea of freedom chosen at the beginning of year one. Overall, silk screen printing was a little easier to handle with different colors than linocuts, but I had some trouble with bleeding ink.
Untitled, ceramics. 24 inches tall.
This vase was not truly completed until after summer break from school. The objective was to model a vase after an animal relating to the idea of freedom. The first animal that came to mind was the bird, who can fly anywhere he choses at any time he wishes. I love the skies and so naturally, I chose to add wings to my vase. Copper adventuring was applied and scrubbed away to accent the texture of the wings and create a contrast to the richer copper of the vase's body. Choosing glazes took quite a long time, as I didn't want to work with blue because I used it so often. This was the first thing I have made with clay in nearly five years and so (it was a pinch pot originally, then slabs were added), and despite the off coloring near the feathers of the wing where I couldn't scrub, I was very pleased in the end.
