Monday, August 31, 2009

Work information

Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin

Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin was famous for his classical still life art, having been born in Paris in 1699. The 18th Century artist is widely considered to be a master of still life.
He was largely self-taught however studied under supervision of modest artists, beginning his career by painting sign posts. He was influenced by realism and subject matter which was the style at the time. Like all the still life artists at the time he painted common domestic scenes. These pieces were favored among the rich despite still life not being the prevailing art style at the time and were known for their beautifully delicate and aesthetically pleasing imagery.
Chardin favored simplistic works with delicate brush strokes and masterful uses of light and textures. He favoured simplistic items, however he was able to portray the nature of the subject through his paintings (i.e glass or material). Despite historical art being the prevailing style at the time, Chardin continued his works with still life and was even able to gain an appreciative audience.













For the majority of his life Chardin’s work was successful. His work, specifically presentation of 'They Ray' was later discovered by Nicolas de Largilliere which led to Chardin’s admittance in the Academie Royale. In 1724 he became a master in the Academie Royale. In his early career, Still life was the principle theme of his works however later on he began genre painting in 1733 to around 1751. From 1751 he began to paint still life again.
In later life Chardin’s sight began to fail him so he took up the use of pastels which he then used to make beautiful portraits.


'Basket of Wild Strawberries'



In both artworks Chardin demonstrates his ability to create realistic works of art. Both 'Basket of Wild Strawberries' and 'Basket of Plums' demonstrate Chardins ability to create amazingly textured still life where the surface of such things as the fruit (seen in both paintings) are duplicates of the original and appear very 'touchable'.
Chardin demonstrates his ability to play with lighting. Most of his still lifes appear as if light is radiating from behind the subject bringing attention to the central theme. He creates very 3 dimensional pieces through use of lighting and shadow.
Chardin uses very simple geometric grouping as is demonstrated through such things as the triangular form of the stack of strawberries within 'Basket of wild strawberries' and the triangular form of the stack of plums within 'Basket of Plums'.


Basket of Plums


Yasumasa Morimura

Yasumasa Morimura was born in Osaka Japan in 1951. He graduated from Kyoto City University of Arts and is known for his solo exhibitions which consist of various works of his that are appropriated images of famous works of art. Morimura's pieces consist of his face or features of his face appropriated onto various famous artworks and photographs.
Morimura's works range from Eastern to Western arts and demonstrates an obvious unique and unusual expression of beauty. Using forms of digital media Morimura reconstructs a famed artwork of beauty and interprets it according to the meaning or purpose he perceives from the image.

Among re-creating paintings and photographs, Morimuri recreates the textures of the originals often by phsically applying elaborate makeup to his features to get the desired effect.

"Art is basically entertainment. Even Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci were entertainers. In that way, I am an entertainer and want to make art that is fun." a quote of Yasumasa Morimura that somewhat gives us an insight to the unique designs of his work.
MoriMura's works are strange yet unique and interesting. Morimura's work stand as more than a testimony of good fun but also demonstrates his love of art and attention to great detail. Morimura's works of appropriated artworks are not simply just replacing the faces of famous works with his own but show his ability to duplicate the expressions and actions of the original in meticulous detail. Such as in his rendition of Marylin monroe, not only does his stance and outwardly appearance mimic hers, his expression attempts to also follow the original in great detail. Alike this his appropriated works of famous paintings(in reference to the image below) mimics the subjects seriousness, however betrays a sense of good natured fun.
By inserting his face into famous western art works, many consider it as a message of 'settling the score' with the dominant western colonizer. His works often ask his audience whether the western icons would be as attractive were they of a different culture. Many believing that his works not only criticize western icons but pay them tribute also.

Painting so far



Okay so heres what I've got up to so far. I hate it. I really do. And I haven't posted the 'information' portion yet since I have to type up a bunch of stuff. But at the moment I have to finish my science work and my PE work. And so basically NEXT WEEK I can fix this whole blog. For now. Just a picture.

Obviously I've got to paint the pencils, rubbers, background and details. Yeek...
I did it in two lessons. Basically the image I should've taken from lesson one was just the bottle. So minus the other stuff the bottle was done lesson one.
I don't think i have a real technique to painting. The bottle is the best bit so far. But since the pcitures bad you wont be able to tell that its a bit blue-ish at the moment since we arent allowed black paint (someone should've told me that before I made the majority of my picture black).
I'll fix the colour. Also you arent able to see that the colour of the bottom bit is uneven. (Again bad picture quality) So I will re-paint that. I believe I used too much lin seed oil. So I'll use much less of that.
There are a few things I have decided on doing. First is to do a background alike Chardin's. By this I am refering to lighting. Alike chardin's I want to make it look like light is radiating from the objects at the centre. I used simple shapes also.
I wanted to do a really realistic painting but I'm not really sure anymore... Beside impressionist art will be more with the times =]

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

ARRGGHHH PAINT

Heres some information on art forms I did. I did one of them a while ago and I couldn't remember what for so I posted it with more information about the art movements that were going on roughly around the time of Chardin in france so I can perhaps make my own painting style relate to his. His is more realistic than I will be able to achieve so I might go with more modern approaches.

Realism

Realism, which began roughly in the 1850’s is an art form of art that deals with the depiction of any given subject that appear in everyday life and situations. Realisms aim was to create works of art that were objective realistic. Realism is an art form that offers no opening to exaggeration and forms of interpretation focusing on truth and accuracy. Realist painters tended to discard dramatic or classical forms of art and favored commonplace themes. Realist painters rejected the artificiality of romanticism and classiscim in art.
Paintings were done meticulously in great detail and effort to produce a realistic, almost photographic image.


Naturalism

Naturalism is an art for that refers to the depicition of objects in a realistic manner situated in a natural setting. It supported the stylized and idealised depictions of subjects in romanticism. It was an important artistic movement in the 19th century and originated as far back as the Reanasisaance.
Naturalism art is an art form that pays conscious attention to accurate and precise details. Painting is done so meticulously and in great detail.


Impressionism

Impressionism was an art movement that originated in 19th century France. Impressionist paintings can be characterised by the visible brush strokes, open composition, exphasis on lighting and its changing qualities, ordinary subject matter, inclusions of an element of human perception and the use of unsual and unique visual angles.


Post impressionism


Post impressionism was a term that was devised by British artist Roger fry in 1910. It is used to describe the development of French art since Manet. Manet referring to Edourd Manet who was a French artist who was crucial to the development and success of the transition from realism to impressionism.
The characteristics of impressionism include visible brush stroking, open composition, emphasis on light, ordinary subject matter, the inclusion of movement as a crucial element of human perception and experience, and unusual visual angles.
Post-Impressionism is an extension of this art movement although there was a continuation of the use of vivid colours, thick application of paint, distinctive brushstrokes and real life subject matter.
A key difference in impressionism and post impressionism is the emphasis of geomatric forms, the distortion of forms to create effect and use of unnatural or arbitrary colours. Colours became more simplified, forms became more definative and the art had the tendency to appear abstract.
Post impressionism was campaigned by a multitude of well known, famous artists such as Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Cézanne, Georges Seurat and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.
Artists like Van Gogh adopted impressionist techniques to broaden emotion in his art through use of bold colouring and short brush strokes that contrasted with strong colours and exagerated lines.
Paul Guaguin was influenced by impressionist movement as he seeked to transcend his art from that of the complexity of the paris art world. He began painting rural life in pure flat colours.
George Seurat used techniques that dealt with optical illusion. Painting images uses dots or strokes spaced closely together. He believed that a viewers eye compensated for the difference between two pure adjacent colours by mixing the primaries.


And....


I'm really disapointed that I havent blogged for a couple of days. And I'm blogging this as I wait for my...parents to pick me up at school. However AGAIN they forgot so I'm last here AGAIN. Anyway after my irrelevant rant I should go on to mention that today in class i got an ample amount of painting done. OH! I started painting. That should've been blogged...hmm... anyway. It's my opinion that my painting is horrid so far. And well I'm not too enthusiastic about finishing/fixing it since i really hate painting. The lin seed oil is making me feel sick... also I just really hate the way its going so far. Whether I am enthusiastic about it or not is actually not important anyway since either way I've got to fix it and make it up to scratch. Otherwise i could'nt live with myself. Tournament of the Minds and my assesment tasks are killing me aswell as 3 upcoming tests.
Anyway. I have recorded myself working on a part of my painting but I couldn't upload it so thats pretty sad. I dont know why, my computer just doesnt work right. I suppose it was just to show my technique anyway. But i doubt thats shown well considering that I'm just painting... Well actually I initially wanted to paint softly like Chardin but I realise, with modern times comes more modern painting techniques. So I disregarded that idea and just decided to paint with obvious strokes.
I'll be taking a picture of my painting progress tommorow.

Tuesday, August 11, 2009


I'm really feeling the weight of assessments. And besides them we all got trials and some of us have T.O.M. So this quick scribbled chibi demonstrates how I'm feeling (and my platypus).

Sketch

Today in class I worked on my sketch on canvas
I was fairly unsuccessful in finishing it today but hopefully on thursday I'll complete it. As soon as I finish I'd like to start painting straight away.


Rough outlines of the rubbers and pencils have been drawn. The neck of the bottle needs to be re-done again. The pencils I assume will be hard to draw (arrgh) the rubbers fairly easy and the neck of the bottle will not work for me.
I am wondering whether I should leave in the edge of the box the items are on or not. If its there its more like Chardin's (His is on a table top. You can see the edge of the table) and if its not it won't bother me since I don't like the line. It looks to me like a strip of white out of no where and I honestly think that when painted people wont even understand its the edge of something.

Monday, August 10, 2009

Curse Mondays!

Curse Mondays.
I find out that I have like 5 assessments due barely two weeks before the trials. TORTURE. And besides that I think I'm WAY behind in art.
Alright so today in art I was attempting to upload my mind maps. Didn't work. Bad net connection or something. Then I went home and tried. Wouldn't upload. And after an hour of uploading it to different sites to try and get the links to work, they finally worked on Image Shack. Which I probably should've thought to use in the first place but didn't...go me...
Anyway.
I think I'll do a chibi sketch for fun to take my mind of work. And then get back to work right after that...
Now that that's done, I really want to finish my sketch on canvas tommorow. If I don't I'll suffer with my other assessments which I really have to work on. GRR.
I might stay up late today and start going to the library at lunchtimes for the next week and a half. Doesn't matter. Sleep is for the dead anyway.
In conclusion. I now hate shakespeare. And canvases.
(unrelated topic)I need to fix the ball and make the neck of the bottle thicker. The pencil and rubbers have yet to be drawn.

Thursday, August 6, 2009

Sketch

Before beginning the process of sketching onto my canvas, I did a small quick sketch of my still life.
To be blunt I'm posting this for the sake of posting since there hasn't been a considerable amount of work accomplished in my sketch on canvas.
I suppose to sufficiently record my process I'll have to continuously post images of my work. I wonder how well that will go due to my forgetfulness.
And I've been a little less motivated with my blog because I cant exactly pick up a pencil and draw some of my pointless chibis all over the web page. Which will probably prompt me to post some here. Actually. Yup. I'll post some here.
Sadly I discarded the files with other pictures or other still life's i made to possibly use. I wish I hadn't... But those basically revolved around the central theme and included stuff like pacers, paint brushes, paints and even my graphics tablet's pen and mouse.
In my previous post I recall mentioning that I'd explain how it relates to the original. I did some research on Chardin that I should have posted before all this and I don't see myself posting until I finish the work on the other artists I am supposed to research. Oh well.
My work relates to the original in a few ways (as was previously mentioned).
Alike Chardin's the pieces in the image are not unsual or particularly outstanding. are simple items found around my room alike Chardin's probably found in his home (opps speculating). The items of Chardin's work belong to a domestic scene and are extremely common for the time.
Other research I've conducted shows there might be symbolism which loosely relates to family and fertility (all items share this symbolism). This is considered (at the time) as a beautiful concept and was seen quite often in art from the time.
My own, whilst quite different in symbolism, represents artistic practice (yes the 8 ball too! It's now essential in my endeavor to learn to sketch). This is considered beautiful personally.
We were required to do mind maps on 'what is beauty' and 'what is style'. Here are mine for posting sake =3



Just so its known what I meant when I talked about the 8 ball becoming a central theme in my artistic practice. I basically am using it to learn sketching. This is an attempted sketch I tried doing before I started going to classes (against my will! dang mother *shakes fist*) to learn. So this is like me trying to sketch something in god knows what kind of way. It is actually round but the photo came out crappy because I was using someone elses camera and didnt know how to make it work right so it can out all weirdly shaped.
It took me a while to dig this one up. Its really crappy and you can probably see I was trying to do a shadow but after i failed the first time I sort of just ditched it and went back to drawing my 'anime' styled works. rawr.

Wednesday, August 5, 2009

My appropriation image



I'm usually highly critical of my own work however on the subject of 'What work is bad?' this one certainly takes the cake. I wonder if that statement will lower my score on this particular work? No? Probably not.
The objective of this work was to group together things in our life that we found beautiful. I find appropriation difficult of course. My image doesn't match the original as well as I might have hoped. I.e The 8 ball. There's only 1 while there are like 4 different peaches.
I am not fond of my colour scheme either. I'd have prefered to have chosen something with richer colours to paint, however everything I own or find fascinating is usually... dark, dull, bland. ECT.
My image holds four specific items. A bottle of Wine, A 'magic' 8 ball, Pencils and rubbers. My first appropriation started out with a gloomy bear, chains, badges and Cd's but it didn't exactly look 'right' to me. And while I find those things fun and entertaining, not all I would fit into the category of beautiful and one viewing my image might find me to be 'disturbed' (laughs). And it was dull considering it was another reflection of mainstream teenage stuff.
I wont elaborate too much on what my image represents through these very basic items which your probably thinking now are not very beautiful. However each has a subtle meaning to my own interpretation of beauty (the pencil and rubbers probably being the most obvious)
Beauty in art is art. I think art is beautiful regardless of whether its aspiring to be grotesque. I think art is simply expression and can easily communicate particular feelings and emotions. And that is beautiful. So simply put my pencils and rubbers represent ART.
As for the magic 8 ball and the wine bottle. Those i guess would be harder to understand. The magic eightball is a representation of my love for blatantly useless things. Created with no real significance, no real purpose and no other objective than entertainment(which can sort of apply to the artworks make with no meaning or reasoning haha).
Lastly the wine bottle. It represents transition in my art. It's obvious that my style is based solely on manga and anime however recently I thought I'd broaden my pallet and began drawing in different styles, one of which is to at very least learn sketching (thus the wine bottle, a pretty common thing to sketch. And 1 I have drawn about 40 times...grr).
I suppose in a following post I'll elaborate on how this relates to the original. For now a posting of my incredibly bad photography skills, which I took with my incredibly complicated camera that hates me.

And so begins my blog

I realize this blog should have been started a week prior to this however only now have I been able to get free time to actually construct it. That and I completely forgot to make it after three terrible failures. Well its obvious i'm not as 'Tech Savy' as I like to think I am. That's not a positive for this assesment.
Well, obviously. Besides the teacher, its completely fair to assume noone else will read this. Yep? Phew I'm glad.
Other subjects have been weighing on my schedule and unfortunately I have not made the time to do my art. Which I cant blame on the work load or other matter because it simply comes down to my lack of time management skills. But FINALLY I made one. Probably much to the teachers disapointment. Sorry miss.
Woohoo alright. To begin- Our subject focuses on the subject of APPROPRIATION. A term that means 'the action of taking something for ones use, which is typically done without consent of the owner'. Basically we take one image, appropriate it, and form it into NOT a completely new image but instead something either strictly or loosely based on another artists work. We are also focusing on still life images. And due to this fact we have been studying about still life. And what better still life to study then still life from the 17-18th century (which in western art was the time in which still life was at the peak of its popularity)
To be honest I'm not comfortable with appropriation. Probably because I'm not comfortable with replicating another's work even if I'm changing everything. Yes everything. I've made the decision to change everything since this art is also a reflection of how we percieve beauty. And since its something that more or less personal (i guess) I decided it should also reflect the time as Chardin's still life did. Chardin's still life is a sort of domestic scene, using very common items that he himself most likely possessed. And they are all taken from one space, in this case the kitchen. And since my room is my sanctuary (has my computer, my drawing stuff and my books) I have resolved to take things from my room only. And obviously the things I find most pleasing and beautiful will be found in there.
ANYWAY...
Today, like previous lessons, I worked on sketching my image onto my canvas. My irratatingly LARGE canvas (no hints there). To be blunt, I despise painting. Outside of digital painting that is. So the bigger the canvas, the more I'll resent my work.
After suffering through my introduction here, I'll now end the first post with the image to be appropriated!