my second home

Advice to future AP students:
you are lucky to be where you are

look at a lot of art, on the internet and in galleries, expose yourself to everything

you will only get as much out of this class as what you put into it

make a lot a lot a lot a lot of work!

Favorite piece:

Fish tits. I had a lot of fun with this and I learned how much effort should go into a piece to make it really successful.

I learned about myself as an artist that I still need a lot of practice and that there is no secret to making good work. Inspiration comes and goes but hard work and patience are what save you in the end. I learned that it's okay to scrap something and start over, because not everything you make is going to be a masterpiece.

Most rewarding activity this year:

Working with Jesse Reno. For a workshop that replaced our retreat, I think this was great. We all learned a completely new way of painting and this influenced everyone's work for the rest of the year. I'm always amazed at how much you can learn from another artist, especially a very experienced one.

I think we should all have submitted self-portraits to the Utrecht contest, because you can also learn a lot from doing a self portrait, in my opinion. The 30 mini-me's was a good project, but making one really nice refined piece is also a good chance for growth.

Annnnnd...a retreat would have been nice...! But that's old news.

In 10 years...I see myself living outside of the United States. Still doing art, but maybe something else as a focus. I still won't be eating meat.

I've learned more in this class than I have in any of my other classes in the entire year because I discovered more of what I want to do, which is infinitely important to shaping my future. I've felt more supported and successful in the art room than anywhere else, at home or elsewhere at school, and I feel lucky like an adopted puppy to have found my place in it.

the final s t r e t c h

I'm physically and mentally EXHAUSTED! I just finished the first draft of my research paper; it's 15 pages long and essentially everything I did last year over the course of three months or so, in a day. Exponential improvement.
Anyway, now that that's out of the way (hopefully, if I get a grade on it) then I can work on ART ART ART all weekend! I'm excited because I really like my portfolio this year. It's a lot stronger and more cohesive than last year. I'm also just really excited for our showcase and the end of the year and merit awards and graduation and everything I guess. summer. ho hum. so much work and so little time.
I really hope that I don't get all caught up in how much work I have to get done before the end of the year - AP tests, calc finals, endless APH work, scholarship applications, etc. - and forget to really enjoy the last month or so I have here. I mean, this is it! This is the end of high school! I don't know if I feel like it's a big deal or not yet. I think it just comes down to whether or not I'm happy with where I am now and who I am and where I'm going.

a cool artist i found. he has really great sketchbook images, I recommend them for next year's sketchbook assignment...which I won't be here for. :/

http://hannap.com/vermell/

concentration!

Maybe not this one

but definitely these two

inspiring works and one word whys

sewn

busy

moth

jars

love

impressioniste

Instead of my concentration, I am currently working on a project for my french class. We were supposed to pick an impressionist or post impressionist artist and reproduce a painting of theirs with oil pastels. I'm not much one for copying works, and though I would've liked to work with oil pastels, I decided to just do a painting in an artist's style.
I chose Berthe Morisot because all the other artists I recognized were taken, and I figured, why not learn about a new artist... Her work is really beautiful! I actually really like this impressionist painter stuff even if it seems all traditional and boring. They really were good at what they did.the cradle. I think her most famous one.
This is one of my favorites of hers.

from what I can gather, what makes the impressionist style the impressionist style is that they have very loose, painterly brush strokes, but they aren't careless. There is a lot of light in their paintings and very little black, so everything seems very angelic and serene. I think there is a lot to be learned about their use of color: they were brave with them and chose vibrant over what they actually saw, or maybe they did see them.
I'm painting Melis and a fish, and I'm making progress nicely, but it is not in any shape to be photographed right now.

concentration critique!

My concentration is exploring the beauty of fish that we eat, regardless of whether or not you find them delicious or if you think they smell altogether too 'fishy'. Whether or not they are alive or dead, fish have a really natural and elegant movement to their shapes, and I'm trying to explore that idea in a painting.

This one is pretty awful I hate it a lot I did it for my french class after reading the Stranger by Camus, and it illustrated the theme I picked pretty well, but ...ugh. It's too concrete and doesn't even look that cool. lame. when i put it up with all my other pieces that i have so far, it's just kind of blah and doesn't flow as well with the others. I don't think it's really a problem with the 'elements' or 'principles' of art, it's just conceptually lame and doesn't fit.


This one I like a lot more. The colors and the whole feel is very different, so I might paint over the previous one that would show more of a "bridge" between the first few and this one. I'm planning on taking this abstract thing further and maybe pushing it more. I want the fish to feel more loose and flowy than they have been. I think the movement idea is going to become more prominent in the next paintings I do, and I think that the rhythm of the fish and their shapes contribute to that.

sigh sigh sigh cough cough cough

Being sick is so awful, yet it's so easy to complain about! For the first time ever, I missed a day of school because of being sick on Tuesday. It felt great, partly because I was actually productive, and because well, I wasn't at school.

So I recently I don't really know what I want to be drawing or painting or making...I've been half-heartedly looking at art but nothing really strikes me. Whenever I think I'll just draw what I see when i close my eyes, I just see slightly dirty things that don't translate really well onto paper. hahaha
These are a few gems that I've stumbled across..

http://plslala.com/#


http://www.thorazos.net/index.html

http://robagorni.blogspot.com/

So as of late, I think what I'm trying to be more moved by is the aesthetic quality of something, like the way it was rendered on the page, than the actual concept. I'm a bit done with really conceptual things right now, and I think I want to focus on developing my style and exploring ways of doing things in all kinds of media. I don't REALLY know what that means, but we'll see...