Assignment #11 Perceptual Cramp...cont.

Ok, I have completed my painting, overcome my fear, and explored something new! How do I overcome "artist block, or perceptional cramp"? I try something new accepting possible failure because I haven't tried it before. What better way to jumpstart an artistic streak than to have new tools, mediums, or methods to try!

Perceptual Cramp

So many times I walk around with my sketchbook in hand ready to create, but the lack of ideas or a starting point creates a black mental void. Life throws many distractions my way to assist me in staying in this creative void...kids, household responsibilities & decisions, so how do I overcome this? The easiest way is assignments in school. If there is an assignment I can converge on, a looming deadline, and a starting point, I am good to go! Sometimes, however, the assignment is so vague that I still do not have that starting point.

"Art is not a thing, it is a way", thank you Elbert Hubbard. It is a way, it is a way through that black void, not a thing to rescue me. I should not sit looking for the ladder of art to just come to me and allow me to get out of my stagnant hole, but press through the mass. For this assignment I will be presenting a couple of blogs covering my progress. I have two things I am working on: my 2D assignment and a personal challenge.

The 2D assignment is a series of "perceptual cramps" the first was my idea...I had to come up with this on my own and having Mary Stewart for my instructor will not allow me to succumb to mediocrity. I brainstormed for my "True Lies" project to find a contrasting element to design my project. I came up with "real life" celebrities and a 3D mock "Rear Window" set I would create (too ambitious, not enough time), a JFK clue game where the rooms are replaced with locations the assassination was devised at, and game characters would be the masterminds behind it (this will actually be my capstone project), and finally the choice I went with: a 3D panoramic of prohibition and speakeasies. I will blog on my progress with this as I progress with it. This does present another perceptual cramp: how do I build this lit box with a panoramic inside. The idea is cool enough, there will be a door design with a sliding "peep hole". The viewer will look into this box through the hole and see a lit panoramic of speakeasies and home-made distilleries. The outside of the box will be a facade of the enforcement and supporting propaganda for prohibition. What a metaphorical statement...the facade on the box representing the facade of prohibition. Lets face it, many of the speakeasy regulars were cops!

My personal challenge to overcome my perceptual cramp, which should also cover another assignment of a self-portraiture, I am going to attempt something I have not done before - a chiaroscuro monochromatic painting on a black canvas. I have painted several of these in the past, that I have included pics of at the top this blog, but I have never started with a black canvas and paint myself, chiaroscuro style on it in white. As I mentioned, I have completed many of these but I have always started with a white canvas, painted a black background around my subject and built my subject with black and white paint. I am going to attempt something new, something I am not quite sure I can pull off. What is a perceptual cramp for me anyway? It is not having a "safe" idea in which I know I can complete. There are many ideas out there that are way too ambitious so they are discarded out of fear and perfectionism. Today I am choosing to overcome this by taking on this project, by doing another blog assignment in an unsure manner...taking a risk that may not pan out.

Assignment # 8: Found materials

Ah, right up my alley...free tools to create with! Er, uh, but not really the results I desired.
The materials I chose to use were tissue paper that I received when I purchased a mug this weekend, and some feathers my daughter found in the yard:

I decided to try acrylic paint and watercolors for medium and use the feather quill for the acrylic and the feather for the watercolor. Although not the smoothest application, it does work. Tissue paper, however was a bad choice (obviously), but it was a found material so I decided to press on...

Not my best work, by far, but it does work to create an image!

I decided to try watercolor on bristol paper to see if it was just the tissue paper and not the feathers being difficult.

The feathers made a very interesting image with watercolors, and again....Blogger does strange things to pictures when I try to upload them (such as flipping the image vertically).

Assignment # 7: Two hand drawing

I really thought this assignment would yield different results than it did. I tried to draw a face with both hands drawing simutanously. My hypothesis was that the right hand would be spectacular while the left would be hardly noticable as a face. Surprisingly, I found that as I was unable to devote my senses to my right hand, both sides were almost equal in composition. I utilized a skill that I learned through blind contour drawing. I focused more on the lines than on my drawing. This helps with the left hand, but the right was not what it should have been, by far!

Blogger does not have a rotate option so the picture is defaulted to portrait, I apologize for this, but you can turn your laptop to see it in its intended landscape position. I intend on creating some more of these to see if my results are similar.

Assignment # 6: 3" x 3" collages

Ooooh, another cool assignment that I really did not look forward to doing, but I had allot of fun making it. This came out phenominal! I drew out 3--3" x 3" boxes and filled them with colorful scraps pf paper left over from my last project. Each one is deliberate in its composition and draws the eye to different areas of the compositions while unifying them all in color.

Assignment #5 Art and Life

The fusion of art and life. I still laugh to myself whenever I think of a conversation I had with a friend who was a die hard economist. "It's totally understandable if FSU cuts the art program to fund other more important programs. The world can live without art, it cannot live without economics."

So, businesses can do just fine without art so long as it has economists on the job? Uh, no! Without art there would be no advertising, just a black screen with an actor speaking during those 5 min interruptions of those earth shattering reality shows (sarcastic tone). Yes boys and girls, art does make the earth go round, and if you think we can live without it, feel free to blindfold yourself for one day and recontemplate that idea.

Back from my rant, I chose to do a concept map for this project that shows how my artistic talent show up in my everyday life. My kids believe I can do anything. I make homemade pizza, cut and highlight the girls' hair, do my nails and my daughter's with acrylic, pretty much every project is an over-the-top artistic endeavor. Here is a linking of my art with my life and how it influences everything for me:

This may be very hard to see, so I will list what it says here:

Painter: Make-up, nail art, home decor

Colorist: matching contacts to my clothes, clothing (choices), home decor

Creator / Idea Generator: homeschool assignments, cook / recipe cracker, unique "artsy" holiday tablescapes, (over-the-top) halloween costumes

Sculpter: Doing my own acrylic nails, hairstylist for my family, weightlifting to sculpt my body.

Blog Assignment #4 Images in Media Affecting Women in America

This is really shaping up to be a "bash the media for destroying women's self-confidence" fest, which is not my intention (seriously...just following the assignment for this one). For this assignment, I am using collage for my medium, which I really did not look forward to. I am very surprised at how well it came out! There was such simplicity in finding material for my project, I mean what is more superficial and unrealistic in the world of real beauty than Vogue? I looked at the concept of body wars and how society puts pressure on women for the "perfect body", but that's one thing Vogue could not assist with. For all the models in the magazine, there was not a single breast! I would have put together an over the top, large breast tiny waist, curvy dipiction, but the material was not going to support that. Vogue would support the perfect teenage boy depiction since the models have no breasts or hips to speak of.
So, what I did do...

Societies dipiction of the perfect face, Photoshop style, and how we women can achieve this with the latest creams and beauty aides (even though they achieved it with the slide of a mouse and couple of clicks). How I see images in media and design drawing our attention to every line and wrinkle in attempt to send us straight to the nearest department store cosmetic counter for that instant fix....