Drawing Explorations

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Drawing felt like a much more accessible way to make art. There was something about being directly connected to the instrument that helped to be in control. Through my drawing exploration, I discovered I really enjoy the texture drawing utensils make when smoothed on their sides. In the first picture, I experimented with three different utensils: colored pencil, charcoal, and a graphite pencil. The softer pencils created easy lines and did not require a lot of work to blend the lines together. The harder pencils had crisp, thin lines and struggled to easily and evely cover a large space. In the second picture I experimented with charcoal, chalk, crayon, and oil pastel. Chalk was frustrating to work with on paper. The dust got all over everything and did not stick to the paper like the oil-based products. The oil pastel was the most interesting to use. I didn’t realize what it was at first so I only pressed lightly on the paper. I tried pressing hard and discovered its smooth, creamy texture. The different utensils remind me of various musical elements. Drawing with oil pastel feels like singing a smooth legato melody while drawing with the charcoal felt like a jumpy staccato piece.

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Next I explored with ink. Since I spent a lot of time playing with force for the other explorations, I decided to do something very delicate. I dipped the tips of a dry brush into wet ink and very lightly drew the paint brush diagonally across the paper. It is the darkest stroke; I used less ink on the brush for the other lines. I find the natural lines to be really calming and pleasing to look at. The pattern is different every time, even when I tried to recreate the same lines. I added circles, but it was harder to keep the ink from pooling when the bristles moved so close to each other. The last exploration was also exploring delicate strokes, but on the wide part of the utensil. I began by covering the paper with wide layers of light strokes. After piling the layers, I experimented with taking away color. First I used a blending stick. I like the cloudy way it mixed the colors and smoothed out the texture. The rubber eraser created more white space and did not blend as well. The kneaded eraser blended the colors into blotches that were not as white as the rubber eraser, but not smooth and cloudy like the cotton blender.

Peer Work: Paper

I really loved the motion and explosion in this piece. For some reason, I decided to keep my paper compact. I love the separation of the different pieces. The manipulation on the end of the larger triangle part feels like its reaching to the other pieces keeping them together, but not connected.

This collage was really intriguing. I appreciate the use of such different materials. The words: “That warm, fuzzy feeling,” make me think of home. The structure of the cardboard reminds me of the roof of a house. There’s a connection to a physical home, but the words “I am” seem to represent a home within oneself.

I think it was so interesting to hear about this process. Using negative space to create art is so pleasing here. Both textures are swirly but use a different set of colors. It’s interesting; all three spaces (brownish, blueish, and white) have distinct shapes and movement, but they all rely on each other and are connected.

I really appreciate the simplicity in the connecting of these two papers. It reminds me of middle school and learning how to create the stapleless staple. The shape feels sleek and futuristic like it could be some form of transportation.

Collage Lesson

Making a collage is a perfect opportunity to allow students to share about their personal beliefs and musical tastes. As a getting to know you exercise, students will create a collage that represents the music they like to listen to when they are not at school. They can use images of people, objects, words, news and others. Materials needed will be magazines, various types of paper, glue, scissors, and background posters. Each student will have the opportunity to share the collage with the class and will include a recording of a song represented on the collage.

Paper Collages

Like most of my other art projects, I had difficulty starting this one. The amount of choices was overwhelming and I couldn’t decide what I wanted to convey. I started by playing with materials. Newspaper pieces were easy to arrange and layer. I also enjoy the old, discolored look of the paper. While ripping, certain words stuck out to me like “budget,” “activist,” and “why,” so I ripped them out and started making a word pile. All of these words started to make me think about politics and the crazy amount of negativity we have to intake right now and it made me feel a disconnect between my body and my thoughts. I arranged the word pile in many different ways on a small square of beige paper until it took on the shape of a thought bubble. I then created a “person” out of unidentifiable newspaper rippings whose limbs and head were floating slightly away from the torso. I outlined the thought bubble in red to draw the eye to the importance and power thoughts can have.

For my second collage, I had a much clearer idea of what I wanted to do. My first collage left me feeling like I wasted too much time thinking negative thoughts. I wondered what else wasted my time? The train, while calming and pleasant to ride (also a great place to get work done) consumes 3 and a half hours of my day. I cut strips of old metro north train passes and created a series of clocks against a piece of rectangular black construction paper.

My final collage started a lot different than the end product. I began this piece wanting to make a mirror. The previous pieces had a connection: in one time is wasted thinking about consuming thoughts and in the other time is wasted by train travel. For my third piece, I wanted to comment on time wasted worrying about what you look like. I found paper that had various color patches on it. I ripped it into piece to make it look even more broken and used that to create the actual mirror. Originally the background was a bunch of strips of two varying patterned papers. I wanted to cover more of the brown paper, and decided to cover the whole background in purple tissue paper. The blue in the middle was made from blue tissue paper layered with glue many times over. I wanted the paper to appear cloudy to mimic the cloudiness your eyes feel after looking at something for too long.

Contemporary Collage Artists

Ariel Collage

This collage artist attracted me because of the warm colors and the various materials she used on her different pieces. In her portfolio, they are broken into four categories: Myths, Poets, Headlines, and New. Throughout the sections, there are continuous themes of nudity, sex, love, and explorations of power. The piece on the left is titled “In the Lakshmana Temple” and is from a series in progress. It uses found paper and paint to create the scene. I specifically find it interesting that so much of the bodies are made of paper with words on them. I wonder if that represents our personalities and thoughts and desires? http://www.arielcollage.net/index.html

Liz London

On the collage artist database it said: “Liz London describes herself as a Spiritual Surrealist and describes her artmaking process as “much like the practice of yoga.”” Immediately I wanted to research her art and see if it brought me the meditative feelings they help her to achieve. At first glance, I thought the collages looked very busy and I did not feel the calm feeling I was hoping for. There was a lot of layering and the use of a lot of different kinds of paper. There were images, patterns, words, solid colors, and transparent papers that when looked at closer, do have a calming effect. The piece on the right is titled “My Sister’s Liberty”. There is depth in the center created with layering and colors that makes it feel like the center of the memory. The images surrounding the darkened center are all parts of the memory that outline a journey. http://www.lizlondon.net/

Earliest Memory of Art

I know baking is not what you think of when you think art, but it’s what I think of. My mother has always been an incredible baker. She knows all of the recipes off the top of her head and she has endless patience for figuring out the balance between baking powder and baking soda. As a child I often helped her decorate her pieces of art. I specifically recall making little red, purple, and blue flowers made from fondant. I remember thinking it felt just like play doh, but you could actually eat it. It felt calming to work the fondant through my fingers trying to make flattened and pinched petals. If you worked the fondant too much it started to melt, leaving your hands sticky and blue. I was never quite delicate enough with it to make successful flowers, but my mother always shared the fondant with me and encouraged me to experiment with it. Baking was my first window into art.

My mother’s art.

Paper Exploration

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When we were given the first assignment, I sat there for a few minutes not really knowing what I wanted to do. Everyone else seemed to jump straight to action which made me worry that I was thinking fast enough. I sat there staring at the big green piece of paper for a while until I started ripping long strips. At first I tried to make the strips even, I even folded the paper to make crease lines to follow, but hands don’t have the same control scissors do. I then took those strips and rolled little tubes between my fingers. This repetitive action was calming and allowed me to think while I was creating. Once I had a handful of rolled green tubes, I tried to assemble them and tie them together with a long strip of green paper. I could not get it to work and the tubes kept erupting out of their bundle. I decided to create a ring from the long strip and then insert the tubes. Once in their ring, I placed them trying to vary the heights and widths throughout the whole piece.

I chose to use an old bus ticket and the receipt from that same bus ticket as my two pieces of paper. I chose the bus ticket because I was feeling a little homesick for my family. I had just used the bus ticket for my trip back to New York from visiting my family. The bus ticket is a little sad, but also exciting. I did not originally choose the receipt as my second piece of paper. I tried manipulating a couple other pieces of paper before I tried the receipt and liked the “download” image.

 

I knew I wanted to try to braid part of my paper. I tore the bus ticket into sort of even strips and twisted and crumpled them in my hands. Once they were pliable enough, I twisted two pieces together until they became stiff, rope-like material. I repeated this process a few more times. Once finished twisting, I braided the three combined pieces together to form a very strong and inflexible braid. I tried a couple of different tactics with the second piece. One paper was crumpled and folded into a boat-like shape. The second time I tried to create a basket by crumpling and pinching a piece of paper until the texture looked woven, but I could not get it to hold its shape. Out of frustration, I folded the receipt three times, ripped small openings, and stuck my braid through the openings.

At first I thought I would braid both pieces of paper, but I did not want both pieces to have the same texture and shading. Even though it developed from frustration, there was something simple and organized about folding the receipt so it too was strong like the braid, but it didn’t have to change too much to be that strong. Ripping slits in the folded paper just seemed like that made the most sense.

The handle is a part of a bag that is usually forgotten. When you’re purchasing the bag, you make sure the length and color is fitting, but after that, not a lot of thought goes into the bag handle. I like that the handle is the interesting part of this piece and the bottom part is the simple, easily forgotten one. When I look at the handle, I see hard work. I can feel my hands carefully twisting each strip of paper. Tough enough to soften the paper, but delicate enough so the paper won’t break, and fast enough so my hands don’t get tired.