art105spring2014: February 2014

Wednesday, February 26, 2014

Joshua Thomes Print Project and Insipiration

when I looked at this peciluar picture done by the spanish artist Francisco Goya, I knew right away that this would insipire for the artwork that I had in mind. This print art that I have done draws the ideals from Francisco since both the newspaper and monsters symbolize the stress and fears that people experience and also draws them towards the edge of despair. In Francisco's work, the person has lost their will to get up due to the constant owls and bats that flutter around and harass them, in a very dark room. The picture that I made draws on the same spirit due to the man who has withdrawn from society for his own reasons, and then surfs on the internet to dwindle away the hours. But due to the constant negative news that our news sites and channels always seem to leash out, this man slowly goes into madness and finds even more reasons to turn away from the world, until he traps himself with his own chains. The only way out of this madness is to take the risk, go out once more, and to free yourself. "The sleep of reason produces monsters" is made by Francisco Goya and I give credit of the artwork to him. Feel free to critique or comment on my project.

Collage - "Be the change you wish to see in the world"

I spent half a year living in South Africa as a student and volunteer. Being that all of the photographs used for this project are my own, I think that this collage is a good representation of my time spent abroad. Through my piece, I hope that viewers get a good sense of what I did while in South Africa and can feel the love that I have for the amazing children I got to work with.

Collage -Print Project

Collage: Print Project 1

Because there is no dropbox... here we go!

Toxic

At the beginning of this project I intended to model my collage after the work of British artist Duncan Mackay; as my collage progressed I strayed from his style a little bit. Duncan Mackay creates simple collages, focusing on techniques of image taking/making, material, and politics. Although my piece is a bit more barren than his are, I think it lends to my theme.

I tried to use many different types of images in my piece. I scanned many images, including: the cigarettes, lighter, "clouds"(moldable plastic beads), "smoke"(torn cotton), and "Water"(fabric). I also chose to use both personal photographs and images found online.

I tried to avoid too much editing in this piece because I wanted the drastic images to really speak for themselves. I believe the only things I did were play with opacity a little bit and apply a ripple filter to my "oil spill."

My goal in this piece was to represent the harmful things we use in our everyday lives and some of the repercussions they can have.

If I had more time to work on this project I probably would have a adjusted some of the scaling, as it seems a bit off. I also would have worked harder to make the images on the horizon appear to be buildings, because I don't think thats how they're reading.

Overall I'm pretty happy with how "Toxic" turned out.

Collage Project

Surrealist Collage Artists-Sarah Eisenlohr

Sarah Eisenlohr is a Surrealist Collage Artists. I got inspiration from her. So I made Surrealist Collage.

Astray

For this collage, I used my moccasins and the fur from one of my ferrets as my two original images. I used the clone stamp to create the fur sections, which I used as "grass" in the picture. I decided to make everything transparent to some degree, excluding the map in the background, and I edited the saturation and color of most of the images to portray the nostalgic, somber mood I was aiming for. I used two wampum belts in place of a sky and used spears to create the border in the upper corners.
A lot of my inspiration for this project came from William Steiger, who uses quite a bit of maps in his work, and who also experimented with the same color scheme, such as in this water tower collage of his. Before creating his collages, he takes a photo of the subject matter he uses in his collages, sometimes using maps of the locations of the subjects as the background of the collages.

The Beauty of Friendship

Originally, I wanted to model my collage after the work of Gemma Leys--her work gave a warm feeling and it reminded me of the great friendship I have with Chaviely (my best friend featured in my collage). However, I opted to change my collage from the sepia tone that I had to the normal tonal scale it had. With that, I searched again for possible artists. It was not easy by any means, and the only one that I found that came close was Richard Hamilton. Through this project, I was able to observe the many different types of collages and learn that the way I first learned collage is far from the only or best way to do it.

This collage contains letters that Chaviely has sent me as well as some images of ones I have sent her. The background is of a bridge in Duluth, MN where we spent some time on my 17th birthday. Most of the drawings are hers, although a few are mine. This collage is filled with memories of a great friendship.

Collage

For this collage I gathered various textures and patterns from around my home. The white of the clouds and the green grass are both blankets. I put a mask of a green skirt over the grass blanket for extra texture to create the underlying lines and wave like semblance. Gondor is a jewelry box and the figure riding toward it is an model of Gandalf and Pippin on horseback. The flowers surrounding the frame are all hair clips that I masked over with the textures and patterns I gathered. I also altered the brightness/contrast/saturation/vibrance/highlights and shadows for most of the objects I put into the collage. I used the clone stamp tool along the grass and clouds to blend together the areas of "rolling" clouds and grassy plains to make it more realistic. I altered the opacity on the flowers to have the petals show through the patterns. I also used the quick selection tool in order to grab all of the objects I used in the collage as well as the free transform to alter the shape.

Tuesday, February 25, 2014

Silvio Alvarez Collage Artist

I couldn't take just one of his Examples, because they are all just so amazing.

Monday, February 24, 2014

Collage Artist Luigi, Chris Lange

Clown Blog 4

Collage Artist to Consider/Influence

http://www.oneart.org/galleries/juan-burgos-magicians-dios-y-el-diablo-en-la-tierra-del-sol

Juan Burgos is a contemporary collage artist to watch out for. His artwork includes lots of different sources to blend in to create one image. He has some political message to his work which influenced my collage project.

Pablo Picasso

Collage Artist Derek Gores

I think Derek Gores collage work is absolutely stunning. I love the bright colors he uses and the intricate details in his pieces.

Wednesday, February 19, 2014

American Gothic

Cimabue, Cody C. Kvistad

SCREAM!

Blog 4 - Ben Wilmes

This work is by Banksy, which i am very interested in his artwork. His art is looked upon as graffiti to some but insipirational to others. I used the pen tool and fill method to draw in Samuel L Jackson, while leaving John travolta in his original composition. I preferred this method over creating a new piece and having them side by side because of how clean the whole composition looks.