14 ADV ART & PORTFOLIO - Select/Reflect

This year, I made several pieces involving light and negative space. I love these concepts because they both deal with hidden meanings that are revealed if the viewer searches in the right places. It includes an 'Aha!' moment that makes the piece more interesting. Here are the pieces I have done throughout the year:

•  The Jessica piece, which was completed as the light passed through the back of the painting (the negative space was filled in)
• The Ghost Ship piece, which had layers and was revealed to be one painting as the light passed through the sheer tracing paper
• Medusa, which are two portraits on the front and back of a canvas. Light passes through it to bring the two paintings together

I also did the wax on wood that was inspired by Cy Twombly, but as much as I enjoyed creating the artwork, I found out that I would like to focus more on the negative space / light. 

15 ADV ART & PORTFOLIO - Conclusion

Throughout the year, I have researched a variety of artists from several different areas, such as fashion, fine arts, and photography.
At first, I started off with Christina Troufa and Cy Twombly. Troufa deals with negative space and Twombly deals with abstract art. Both of them influenced me, but I moved more towards Christina's work as I progressed the school year. Don't get me wrong, making art that was influenced by Cy Twombly was fun. It dealt with writing and hidden meanings, which was awesome because I personally love literature and it was neat how I could write whatever I wanted on my art and show it to everyone, while still ensuring that no one would know what it said. But I didn't like the end result. I liked it, but it was not something I'm super proud of. While I love the concept of it, the work just didn't stretch my abilities or help me improve what I want to do, which is painting, in any way.
So I moved towards painting around the concept of using light as part of my art while incorporating negative space if I could. I researched an artist named Kumi Yamashita, who quite literally paints with light and shadows. I also looked Shamekh Bluwi, who is a fashion designer who makes designs that are influenced by its surroundings. Keng Lye, another artist I researched, is an artist that uses layering to create realistic three-dimensional paintings of fish.
Those were the artists that I researched based around the concepts I was interested in. I also researched things that would influence the content of my works.
For example:
Kerby-Jean Raymond is a fashion designer who bases his works around his political beliefs.
Paul Jackson is an artist that twists realistic drawings of animals by stripping their flesh away in a very intricate way.
Faig Ahmed is an artist who makes traditional rugs but with a psychedelic twist.
Menno Aden is a photographer who takes over head pictures of different rooms.
OKAY NOW THAT I BASICALLY SUMMARIZED ALL OF THE ARTIST I HAVE RESEARCHED THIS YEAR, LET ME BASICALLY SUMMARIZE ALL OF THE ART I HAVE MADE THIS YEAR >:O
I made the Jessica piece, which reflected Christina Troufa
I made the piece with the wax on the wood, which was influenced by Cy twombly
I made the Ghost ship piece and the Ensley piece which dealt with laying, similar to Keng Lye
And right now Im creating "Medusa" which reflects realism mixed with abstraction, such as Paul Jackson and Faig Ahmed, and deals with light and surroundings such as Shamekh Bluwi and Kumi Yamashita. Medusa also deals with Greek Mythology, which is something I'm interests in. I let the topic influence my art, which is what Kerby-Jean Raymond did. Lastly, I feel like I'm taking something simple and instilling a deeper meaning into the piece because when the painting is finished, it is quite honestly going to look like a normal portrait of a girl from the front.

I feel like every artist I researched has in some way shown up in my art works this year. I hope to expand my works and be inspired through the research of more amazing artists.

13 ADV ART & PORTFOLIO - Menno Aden

Menno Aden is photographer who does room portraits!

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Okay, first of all I find these really neat to look at. The photographer apparently installed a camera on the ceilings of each of these rooms to take these symmetrical two-dimensional-looking photos. I love this because it flattens the rooms out and you can observe it as a whole. It kinda takes away from the room but also gives it more perspective.

But besides the way it looks, I love this because they are different people's actual living spaces. The artist also does portraits of other places such as connivence stores or classrooms, but I chose to focus on her Room Portrait Series. A person's room says so much about a person so seeing these portraits are really interesting to me. I'm also doing something (kinda sorta?) similar to this. Haha okay I guess this is kind of weird but I periodically take pictures of my room from the same exact spot every once in awhile. I've done this since I first moved in the house (which was maybe about a year ago) and it's so cool documenting how my room evolves. There are small details in every picture that show what was going on in my life at the time each picture was taken, like when my room was super messy, it is apparent that it was exam week and I didn't have time to clean my room, or when I had a lot of shopping bags scattered across my room because the family had finally made a trip to the malls at Atlanta. 

Rooms, regardless of how mundane they may seem, are basically a huge glimpse into a person's life.

And I love that concept. This photographer takes something that's not seen as special, and makes it extremely meaningful AND super pleasing to the eye. It gives you something to think about. I want to do something like that with my own art, whether its through photography or paintings. I love seeing simple things with a deeper meaning, which is partially why I chose the concentration that I did, because it allows me to take normal things, like people, and replicate them in a way that is more interesting than it seems at first glance.

Links:

• http://wisdomchokeyou.tk/post/132799442713/ryanpanos-room-portraits-menno-aden-through
• http://mennoaden.com/room_portraits.html

12 ADV ART & PORTFOLIO - Faig Ahmed

Faig Ahmed is an artist who creates rugs. He's also experienced in making art in other mediums such as painting, video, and installations, but right now he is focusing on his interest of Traditional Azerbaijani carpets. What he's doing is he is essentially taking his interest in this culture and replicating the rugs, but with a twist. He blends realism with abstraction as he disassembles the rug's traditional patterns into something more contemporary.
Have a look:

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I think it's super interesting because he not only accomplishes what he wants, which was to take something realistic and convert it into something more psychedelic, but he also did it with something he was interested in. Sometimes I feel like I'm limited because of what I'm exploring, like I can only either paint what I want to or paint something that goes with the concepts I'm exploring. But this guy took both and ultimately created an interesting union between contemporary art and ancient Azerbaijani root.

It also compares to my are because there's a lot of conceptual aspects in this and Ahmed uses both realism and abstraction in this pieces.

Links:

• http://wisdomchokeyou.tk/post/137025717293/faig-ahmed-creates-psychedelic-rugs-from-traditional

11 ADV ART & PORTFOLIO - Medusa Idea

I'm back to traditional paintings! Well traditional in the sense that there isn't anything noticeably off when you first see it. It's basically a portrait but front and back.
The painting is going to be of Medusa, before and after she was cursed to have snakes as hair. I don't really want to go into the story in depth because 1) I already did research on this and there's actually like ten different versions of the story about why/how she got the snakes and 2) I haven't chosen which one of the versions I want to influence my art, if I choose any at all. So I don't really want to give the background of the story because it may give you some unintentional meaning to my work which, I usually encourage, but this time the message is pretty straight-forward: I'm just portraying a Greek Mythology story using acrylic paint, a play with light, and a pretty girl.
Ok, so here's how this plays into everything else that I'm doing: It's a play with light. Basically, on the front of the substrate, I'm going to paint Medusa (before the curse) on the front, and Medusa (after the curse.. aka with the snakes) on the back of the substrate. But the portrait on the back will be flipped, so that Medusa's features correspond with the front. The pictures will (hopefully) collide in unity when a strong light hits it.
The only thing about this is that there is absolutely nothing about negative space in this project, which was included in my artist statement (and I was hoping it could be part of my concentration) so I'm a little stuck there. But it does follow through with the light part-- light does play a serious part in this piece. Maybe I should just change my artist statement / concentration. I absolutely do NOT plan on dropping the concept of negative space, though. I have too many ideas for that.
Although I actually did plan on doing this project a very long time ago, I didn't think that I would be doing it now. The only reason I'm doing it right now is because I need a break from doing layers. Layering is really complicated, and I didn't enjoy dealing with layering two projects in a ROW, which, both of them turned out awful. So I'm really looking forward to this one! Especially because this project is really what gave birth to basically ALL my other light/layering ideas. I thought about this painting a really long time ago, and because of it, I suddenly got more and more ideas about light and hidden paintings, which basically led to negative space and layering. So this is kind of like my first step but I'm doing it as my fourth step aha.

10 PORTFOLIO - Secret Garden Idea

The next project I'll be working on is going to be titled "Secret Garden"! WHICH IM REALLY EXCITED ABOUT BECAUSE I USUALLY NEVER HAVE A TITLE FOR MY ARTWORK but for this one I do!!
Okay well anyways, this is going to be more negative space stuff. Basically, what I'm going to do is that I'm going to take different slabs of wood and paint on the side. I'll place them strategically and then arrange it so that the different paintings on each side comes together. It's a little hard to explain-- not because the concept is complicated, I'm just bad at explaining things. But anyways I'm excited! Mrs. Miller and I already cut the wood which is absolutely beautiful. Here are some pictures of it because I am in LOVE with the wood.

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you can see the sap in the wood

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I LOVE THE RINGLETS!! they're so pretty

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9 ADV ART & PORTFOLIO - Ghost Ship

For this project, we listened to Sonic Escape's "Ghost Ship" and painted based on what we heard. What I did was that I listened to the music, and separated them into different sections depending on the tone of the music. Then, I took different layers of tracing paper and painted different images on each of them (corresponding to the different tones I heard in the music) using watercolor. I put them all together using glue spray adhesive, but the images didn't all come together like I thought it would. The piece was translucent and it was supposed to come all together when the light hit it. Another problem that I had was that the pieces of tracing paper that I used was so big that when they were put all together, they became wrinkled, which didn't help because the paper was already pretty wrinkled from the water from the water color (I ended up ironing the tracing paper before I glued them together)
Overall, I did not like the project at all. This is also a project that was more on the abstract side, and I'm used to being very detailed so I wasn't satisfied with the outcome (yet the process of doing this project was fun!). But I love the concept of it! The layering reminds me of the Ensley project except much, much easier and the substrate I painted on was good because it was translucent. I would love to do this project against but on a smaller scale and maybe with a different medium, so that the paper wouldn't wrinkle. But right now I want to take a break from layers ahaha. I'm so tired.
Here's a picture .. it was accidentally taken from the back but I actually don't mind