Art Dump

[pasithea]

Babble about the book Last night in design class I read through the first of three books in a series Griffin and Sabine by Nick Bantock. Interesting. It's done on the pretense of a pair of people sending letters and post cards to each other. (I won't go into too much detail and spoil it) It's pleasantly surrealist although the art is a little sedate and at points he also tries a bit too hard to distinquish the characters in their personalities and writing styles. Through the book I had mixed feelings, alternating beetween enjoying the art, finding it sort of juvenille and lame heterosexual fantasy, finding it sexy, and finding it kind of creepy and stalkery. The end of the first book left me wanting to read the second though so I guess that's good.


In no particular order, some little quips that I felt worth hilighting: Italics are my own notes jotted in on the side, which are necissarily the only interpretation of the passage, just some expansion for myself I wanted to add. bold for things I probably really ought to pound into my head or I feel conflicted about.

• Students who cannot look at form, who persist in seeing the person, draw the model akwardly, without life.
• Those who can reduce the person to form can bring the model's personality to life.
  
  Is this person a squiare? A circle? a Squiggle?



• A small intesne color shape balances a much larger neutral color shape.


• A small, irregular shape will balance a larger circle, rectangular, or simple shape, even if it is of the same color, value, or texture. The smaller shape is more interesting and therefore has more visual weight.


• Line often suggests movement in a drawing or painting.


• Variety in the thickness of lines creates surface interest.


• Gestural lines indicate action and physical movement. Our eyes follow the active lines as they swirl across the page.


• SLOW DOWN, enjoy the process and the product.
  
  This is a majorly important one for me. i've sorta been learning it with animation but I don't remember it and hold to it nearly enough. Enjoy the process.



• Don't tell yourself, "this is awful" or "this is wrong" or "theirs are better"
  
  This is something I so need to work on. I'm so frickin' overly competative for NO reason. At least I tend to keep it internal but it's still pretty shallow and childish. I hate when I catch myself doing it and force myself to say something positive about their work to myself and find something in it that they do better than me, but I still do it. Pleh.



• Build on what you CAN and WILL do - your strengths, not yoru weakness."
• Look at and respect what others do. See above


• What has the artist done and what can you learn from this piece? I know this, I just need to make more use of it


• More time equals faster progress


• Revise and reevaluate your required time frames relevant to your life style.


• Knowing yourself is a worthwhile and necessary goal. That includes your understanding and feelings about the world, life, humanity, etc. wrapped up in a masterwork of artistic elements intelligently organized to express YOU.


• Content, design, and techniques are the three most important areas to address in evaluating an art piece. Look at a piece for itself - not in comparison to other artists or other works.


• The way you look at a subject, how you relate it to your experiences, the media you choose and the way you handle ALL of these equals your "style". Your resources for style are your direct impressions of nature, your inner self and your materials.
  
  I don't totally agree with this. I think they left out who influences you. I guess that's part of your inner self but I don't see it that way. I often get an image in my head in some particular style and try to mimick it but it is not the style I might choose for another piece



• The arist must have something to say, for mastery over form is not his goal but rather the adopting of form to its inner meaning.
  
  I have mixed feelings about this. My strongest urges to make something come from political motivation, hate, contempt. I don't want to draw these things, I don't want to be these things. On the other hand, the handful of sexy or beautiful images I hold, I'm not able to render as I envision them and they become painful and hateful in and of themselves because it seems like no matter how much I work, I cannot bring these images to life. It's very distressing. I feel this note is important but I also feel like it causes me more frustration than just about anything else.



• Always experiment. You will become stagnant if you repeat over and over what you already know. I think I handle this pretty well


• Do not be afraid of making mistakes. This is another one I've learned to deal with despite my inner perfectionist


• Subject matter is nothing compared to how you feel and see your material.
  
  I've been burned so many times for expressing emotion that it's hard for me to create images that contain emotion for fear of having them brutalized. Beneath the face I present is a fragile ego which is easily damaged. I also feel this starts to conflict with the rule for having your art critiqued and remaining detached from the critique. Is one supposed to be emotionally involved with the piece during the making, then turn their back on it and let it be shredded? Isn't htat like setting yourself up to get hurt?



• No mater how clumsy and uncertain you are in your techniques, be sincere and use your ability of the moment to express, even in simplest terms.
  
  But what if clumsiness causes the feeling to get lost and replaced with angst, self-loathing, and discontent? :/



• If you are not interested inyour subject, how do you expect anyone else to be? A lot of the time I really don't operate in the right headspace, I think.


• Still life will teach you more than any other subject matter. And how do you keep this from conflicting with the previous statement?


• What good is technique if you have nothing to say?
  
  I have things I want to put messages in but they're always ham-handed and trit and ugly. why can't I just make something beautiful or sexy? I feel my worst pieces are the ones where I'm actively trying to say something. On the other hand, I do feel this is closer to the core of my problems. Much of the study I do is geared only towards learning. It has no passion, it's trying to learn how to make because there's such intense frustration with not being able to make what I want to see. I think I tend to approach art with the imperical eyes of an adult. I can rationally gruellingly study this problem and solve it. I know what I am doing is crap. I know that my message is not being conveyed. I never had the nurturing environment where I could stick it on the fridge and say, 'Mommy I made this!' and have it praised despite it's being crap. So I'm afraid to work on something like meaning because I should be able to rationally build up my art muscles to be able to say what I want to say before I say it. Catch 22.



• Work as you see and feel at the time and place, not as someone else might feel.
  
  I'd ammend that to say, or put yourself in the headsspace for the right time and place. Still though, it's hard to do shiny happy art when you're bitter and depressed.



• Always look at what others are drawing and designing.
  
  You'd think this one was obvious but until Peggy moved in, I was largely happy to work in a vaccuum. Surely if I kept looking at models and drawing what I saw without ever glancing at what other people did, I'd somehow magically figure it all out and create my own new and unique style that isn't copied from anyone and I'll show them all, HA! Or maybe I'm just a MORON!!! Anyhow, after I finish this post I'm going to go curl up with Sin City.



• Don't try to go it alone. That was number-one rule for another important thing in my life. *sigh* I really never do learn things.

That's a lot of quote and ramble. I'd like to explore some of it more but I think I really should sleep.

Comments

[kensan-oni.livejournal.com]

Just random comments...

- A person is a squiggly line that has some more squiggly lines, and maybe a circle or two just so the squiggly lines don't look lonely...

- Slow DOWN? While I am not really in a rush to finish anything, how can you slow down when you have a vision in your head? Don't you have to get it down on paper as fast as possible before it transforms into something else, or even worse, it's gone forever? It's not that I don't love painting, and I will take my time when it gets to that point (In fact, with watercolors, you have no choice in the matter. You have to chill out. ;'D), but those first few moments of creation, when the world has given you vision, and you must pounce on it like a deer prancing through a river... There is a time to go slow, and a time to go fast... and it is always fast in the begining... And I know this is a ramble, but I am not sure if I really understand this insistance of slowing down...

Content, design, and techniques are the three most important areas to address in evaluating an art piece. Look at a piece for itself - not in comparison to other artists or other works.
YES! Thank you! I keep trying to tell people this. It is so freaking GOOD to hear it come from an instructors mouth.

... Your inner self, your soul, attaches itself to things that it loves and will not deny, even if the brain trys to deny it. If you love an artist, and what they do, then it is part of your soul, and therefore is a part of you.

Art is a painful proccess. A few are blessed with people and parents that aren't critical of their work, and some are blessed with a vision that I am very envious of. However, for the majority of us, art is fighting back against the pain. It's not good enough. You'll never be an artist. That stinks. It's ugly. These are the words starting artists tend to hear from non-artists all the time, starting at Kindergarden. The artists soul is under constant assault by what people percive as things better then it, and is constantly battling to get noticed in a sea of noise that is our world. So we set ourselves up for pain, cause no matter what every one else says, we know deep in our soul that we are good, and we are all reaching for that perfection that we can see in our heads, but struggle to make the medium tell people. A critique is a useful tool, and the goal is less not to take it unemotionally, but to not allow that emotion from clouding the truth. It can hurt. Oh, it will hurt sometimes, but if you can find the truth that makes you hurt from it, then you can improve, and it can heal, and you might be less hurt next time. THAT is the power of critique. A kind critique (Oh, I like it, blahblahblah) is utterly useless, cause you can't learn anything from it. If it hurts, then you can. I will always love a person for giving me a scowering critique, then a person who is afraid of hurting my feelings.


You know, they are kinda right, but not in the same way, I think. Still life teaches you a lot. The one thing that you need to look at, though, is not to let still life be just still life. I know that I can't help but doodle while I am doing still lifes, turning bottles and car junk into cities with ant's crawlling about, and waterfalls coming out of open ends, and rivers, and streets... I just can't help it. It comes out of me... and that's cause most still life is boring...

However, if you find the right kind of still life... a old homestead in the middle of nowhere. A fence with a feild of flowers. A shelf of books. Something that YOU find fascinating, then you can learn something, and make it interesting, and have it come to life. Still Life in the classroom is about as dead as you can be... but take what you learned there, and find something else... and then you can start learning like nothing else in this universe.

... It's kinda funny. You never get homework in art classes... but if you really are an artist, you'll do some anyway. ;'D

Wanting something to look sexy *is* trying to get a message across.

*HUG* You are a marvel, and a gem. You do things that make my mind boggle at times. You need to worry less about where you are going, and just go there, and be happy. You can be happy, I know it. Maybe if you slept a little more. :'D

Love and Lollipops, DV.

[turbinerocks.livejournal.com]

That is right though, still lifes are incredibly important to do. ^_^