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.

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.

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.)

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! :)

In Progress: Illustration project

The biggest project I'm working on right now is my Illustration project. It's inspired by the work of an artist named Joseph Cornell*. (I promise that link isn't spam - feel free to click away!) I found a really good description of his work from another website and wrote it down in my sketchbook. This is what it says:

By collecting and carefully juxtaposing found objects in small, glass-front boxes, Cornell created visual poems in which surface, form, texture, and light play together. Using things we can see, Cornell made boxes about things we cannot see: ideas, memories, fantasies, and dreams.

Joseph Cornell's boxes are full of imagination and I love looking at them. Here are a few of my favorite examples:






As a class, our boxes were to have a theme, and that theme involves a man named Bezalel. Bezalel was the very first person in the Bible who was mentioned to have been filled with the Holy Spirit. It's also important to mention that Bezalel was an artist!

Yahweh spoke to Moses and said, ''See, I have chosen Bezalel, son of Uri, son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah. I have filled him with the spirit of God, with wisdom, understanding, skill, and ability for every kind of craft, for the art of designing and working in gold, silver, and bronze; for cutting stones to be set, for carving in wood, for every kind of craft. (Exodus 31:1-5)

Basically he is referred to as the ''chief artisan of the Tabernacle''.

And that leads me to the project I'm currently working on now. I decided that the box is going to be the inside of Bezalel's workshop and I'm capturing the moment in which the spirit of God (in this case, a dove) comes upon Bezalel (in this case, through a window).

The box is constructed from old cardboard boxes and I cut out Bezalel's hands and a dove using cardstock. I also decorated the inside of the box using newspaper, acrylic paint, and matte medium to add texture and feeling to the inside of the room. Bezalel will have one hand in front of the other, as if he is shielding his eyes from the light. His left hand is going to be in the foreground, his right hand will be in the midground, and the dove is in the background. My finishing touch will be adding rays of light coming from the dove and possibly through his fingers, plus I plan on staining and putting on a frame which is going to give the box a more completed look when the inside is finished.

Here's the progress so far (sorry, this picture was taken with my phone so the color is probably somewhat distorted):

I have a lot of work to do... so thank goodness the weekend is coming up!

Any ideas/suggestions would be appreciated!

* For any Illinoisians who might be reading this, the Art Institute of Chicago has an exhibit featuring many of Joseph Cornell's boxes! So if you're ever in the area, you should go check it out! I'd be happy to arrange a trip. Weekend train passes to Chicago only cost $5 for me, so it's a pretty sweet deal! Oh, and for all your Facebookers, you should become a fan of the Art Institute of Chicago by going here!