6 days to go!

... till I get to go home!

Yesterday I sold my poem/illustration project to a guy who wanted to give it to the girl who wrote my poem. It was my first art sell! I was pretty excited.

In other news, today my Illustration class is working on the mural for the men's homeless shelter. Saturday, Harry and I are going to the Art Institute of Chicago!

Couldn't have asked for a better way to end the last week of school.

For a little touch of retro, here's one of the last projects I did last year in 3D Design.

I call them the ''Van Gogh shoes''.

Graphics: Photo composite project

I really loved this project we just did for Graphics. I chose an art history theme (in case you couldn't tell... hehe).

The seascape/silhouette is a Monet painting called San Giorgio Maggiore at Twilight (or ''at dusk''), the statues on the beach are the Venus of Milo and Michelangelo's David, the paintings in the water are Man in a Red Turban by Jan Van Eyck and Da Vinci's Mona Lisa, there's also Da Vinci's Last Supper and lastly The Great Wave by Hokusai.

No, the bench, beach, and boat are not from famous pieces of art. I just added them in for flair.

A word of advice for artists...(or anyone, really)

If for some reason you feel tempted to punch holes in matte board using a handheld hold puncher... DON'T.

I totally just put a crack in my thumbnail and it's terribly painful.

That is all.

The Twist of Friday

So Friday was the day of the other trip to Chicago. I didn't go. But I found that I can't regret this decision in the least because of how eyeopening the past two days were. (*quick note: this is more of a personal entry, but there are some art-related elements included)

Thursday was simply a ''bad day'' for me. I went to bed in a bad mood and woke up feeling tired and downhearted. This feeling of depression lasted most of the day. My sister called me and invited me to stay with her at her apartment in Urbana then find something to do around Champaign the next day. I told her I couldn't because I had to go to Chicago on Friday, but I knew if my depression subsisted that I wouldn't be in the mood for anything. Hoping her company (and the company of her cats) would cure me, I left Thursday for her apartment, forsaking the field trip but hoping for a better emotional turnout.

It did improve my mood a lot to be somewhere else, I soon found. My sister, her friend Justine, and I ate dinner on the gorgeous U of I campus quad and watched a cute Hayao Miyazaki movie called Ponyo afterward.

After sleeping in the next day, my sister and I went back to the quad to take a walk. I completely forgot that it was the National Day of Silence until we stopped at a Day of Silence booth where we were given rainbow ribbons and PRIDE bracelets to wear.

Now, I know this is probably a touchy subject for Olivet students because of the way Christians may view the LGBT (lesbian gay bisexual transgender) community. But I don't care. The point of the Day of Silence isn't to promote or support those lifestyles - the point is to draw attention to the bullying and violence inflicted upon LGBT people for simply being themselves. It's an issue that is very close to my heart and something I am going to stand up for in whatever way I can...
because no one deserves to be treated that way.

After stopping at the booth, I decided to text my friend Harrison (who's an art history/photography major at U of I) and tell him that I'd love to go to the ''Break the Silence'' rally at 5 in front of the Alma Mater. That was also a very moving event and I was so happy to be there and witness it. I've never met a nicer group of people. Afterward, Harry and I, along with a few of his friends, walked around Campus Town looking for a place to eat. There we saw scattered elements of the Boneyard Art Festival that was happening that weekend.

I went back to Olivet after dinner and talking, feeling refreshed and invigorated with all that I'd seen and experienced.

btw, here's a great picture that Harry took at the rally

Art show!

Here is everyone's artwork from the show we just had at Higher Grounds:

*note: I would have LOVED to get closer and better pictures for the sake of the detail work in many of these pieces, but the light in the place + my camera would not allow it. Sorry!
*other (slightly funny) note: When Kayla hung her poem up beside my piece, I noticed that it was a LOT longer than the poem that I used. Then when she read it aloud, it was almost a completely different poem! But luckily, the lines I put from the poem onto my piece were lines that she kept the same - what a fortunate coincidence, I thought.

In other news...

Less than a month left of school and SO many exciting things are happening! Where to start??

Okay, I'll start with the short term. This is going to be a great week for 3 reasons!

1) My Non-Western Art class is going on a trip to the Field Museum in Chicago this Tuesday to check out the African/Mesoamerican/Native American art
2) The poem/illustration exhibition at Higher Grounds Tuesday night
3) Trip to the River North art galleries in Chicago on Friday with my Illustration class

Yay for field trips to Chicago!

Also, my presentations for both my art history classes went extremely well! I got a 94-ish% on my Fra Angelico presentation for western art history and a 100% for my presentation on Buddhist sculpture in non-western art history.

Lastly, I've been officially accepted to the Art History Major (BA) at St. Cloud State University! I'm signing up for classes there within a couple weeks, too. I already have a few classes set up, including Baroque/Rococo art and European 19th century painting/sculpture. Tomorrow I find out if I made SCSU's Honors Program, which I adamantly hope I did. So I'm almost set and ready to go, I just need to figure out what I need for the Spanish major, too. Oh, and I'm also going to be an art minor. :)

I'll update again once I find out more about my classes and such. The next project I'm working on is called ''A Week in the Life''. We're making books about, well... a week in our lives. It can be past, present, future, or even made up. I have a good idea for mine, but I still need to start the sketches. I think it's due really soon, so I have a lot of work to do.

Poem/illustration project

Phew! Can't believe it's been over a month since my last update! No time for beating myself up about it, though. I've have a lot to get through!

One of the most important projects of late is the poem/illustration project. Each of us were given a poem from a student in one of the English classes and our job was to create a piece of art for that poem. The poem I received is called ''Missing'' by Kayla Koury. It goes like this:

I went to a land of dreaming spires,
But I didn't want to leave.
To think I would not love being there,
I suppose it was naive.
My heart aches to be away,
like a long arm in a very short sleeve.

For at the time,
I did not understand
that the land of brats and cheese
was not my true homeland.
For in this place I felt a peace
as if my right was holding my left hand.

I would have loved to linger and dream,
I wanted to stay there forever.
I'm not crossing my fingers behind my back,
I'm not playing tricks or being clever.
Somehow it just felt right.
To come back home, I was okay with never.

After meeting with Kayla, I discovered that the Land of Dreaming Spires is another name for Oxford in England, where she studied abroad last semester. Then it became my task to create a piece of art that I felt expressed the essence of her poem in the best way. I decided the feeling of the artwork should be dreamlike - playing off the ''dreaming'' spires idea and the line ''I would have loved to linger and dream''. And of course, the person dreaming had to be Kayla. After a few sketches of ideas, this is basically the composition I came up with:

I got a chance to ask her what her favorite landmarks were that she visited during her trip, and she mentioned the Radcliffe Camera Library at Oxford, the Bodelian Library, the Roman aqueducts at Segovia, Stonehenge, and she also mentioned that she loved the green countryside of England, so I tried to incorporate each landmark in some way. Anyway, I am more or less finished with the project as of today, and this is what it came out to be. It's done mostly in oil pastel with some colored pencil and acrylic paint.

I'm getting it matted tomorrow and will hopefully also get a frame soon. We're having a showing of the art and reading of the poems at the Higher Grounds cafe on Tuesday, April 13... can't wait! (I hope Kayla likes it.)

Fra Angelico

For as long as I've been exposed to Christian art, I've always found it rather repetitive and uninteresting. I'm starting to realize that my opinion is a little biased because there's a lot of beauty to be found in some, including early Renaissance Christian art.

I chose to do my artist/artwork presentation for art history on an Annunciation fresco by Fra Angelico, a Dominican monk/painter from Florence whose artwork is just beautiful. The scenes he creates are so serene and elegant. They're filled with so much spirit and soft light.
I find it unique how Fra Angelico portrayed Mary in comparison to how she was being portrayed in Christian art from the Middle Ages. Normally she's shown wearing bold, dark blue that makes her the immediate focal point of a piece of art. But here the colors are pale. I like it when Mary seems more like a real person instead of an exalted queen.

Finished: Illustration project

I'm so glad my box is finished!

I'm fairly pleased at how it turned out. If you need a recap on what it's all about, scroll down and read my second post. It will explain everything.

In the background, I made a couple ''chests'' out of flat pieces of wood that I painted/stained. I placed bronze, silver, and gold ''nuggets'' in the background to suggest the types of crafts that Bezalel worked with. The only pitfall is that the Holy Spirit is supposed to look like it just came through the window, and I'm not sure if that point gets across... but oh well!

Here are some other views of it. Comments would be greatly appreciated! :)

My favorite painting!

Well folks, I'm finished with my box for Illustration! I worked on it last night from about 11:30 pm to 2:30 am and for a couple hours today. I will have a post for it following this one!

You know, much as I've been involved in art, I can't say I've ever come upon a particular work that I can call my favorite... until now!

There is something captivating about ''La nascita di Venere'' (''The Birth of Venus'') painted by Sandro Botticelli (c. 1482-1486). It would be worth your time to see a larger image of the painting by clicking here.

When I first saw this in Janson's History of Art, I couldn't take my eyes off of it.

Anyway, according to an introductory segment on this painting in Perspectives on Western Art (vol. 2), ''Venus, the Greco-Roman goddess of physical beauty and sensual love, was exalted in the Renaissance as the embodiment of ideal beauty and as the channel to spiritual love.'' The painting depicts Venus emerging from the sea. On the left, Zephyr, the god of the spring winds, blows Venus upon her shell to the shore while Chloris clings to him. On the right, a nymph prepares to clothe her.

There are so many things I love about this painting. I love the rich color, especially Venus' hair, I love the movement in her hair, the movement in the garment she's about to be clothed in, the movement in the water, and especially the light... I can't even name everything.

Some day, I shall venture to the Galleria degli Uffizi in Florence to see it.

Intro to Blog 101

Welcome to the land of artistic reveries, my new blog about art and art-related things! (I know, so specific!)

The establishment of this blog is partly for school-related purposes. aka, I've been assigned to do it for my Illustration class. I say partly because I intend to take it beyond just class assignments. It will be my place for sharing my art, my ideas, and what I'm learning. To anyone who is saying, ''Why would I want to read about art?'', I have this to say: you don't have to know a lot about art to love it. HOWEVER... the more you know, the more you love it... I promise!

This year, I've been more engrossed in art than I ever have been, and that includes art history and art studio classes. Right now I'm taking Illustration for Publication, History of Non-Western Art, and History of Western Art II. Honestly, I can't get enough of these classes. I love all of them.

If you're wondering why anyone would blog about art, well, I think people learn by sharing. So if nothing else, then being able to write about what I'm learning will help me learn what I like, what I understand, what I don't understand, and what I hope to understand. And the plus side is, anyone who reads this can comment and give me feedback... who knows, you might even learn something as well!

Art encompasses a large portion of my life at the moment, so in summary, the heart of this blog is... life!