Saturday, November 1, 2014

Europe Bound

Well it is official I am heading to Europe to study abroad! So long Montanan plains and Hello Italian history! 

I won't be leaving until spring term but there is lots to do and plan until then! I hope to make many travels and have many adventures while I am over there. It will be really hard to leave my friends and family for so long, but everyone has been very encouraging and supportive of this new adventure! 

I would defiantly say the only reason I agreed to go to college was so I could study abroad. It has always been a dream of my best friend and I's. So as we both hopefully make our way to Europe this spring we will get to meet up and have awesome times!!! 


It will be weird to leave the Big Sky State for so long, but this will only make me apreciate it that much more when I come home.

Friday, November 1, 2013

Little Painting on the Prairie


This next painting is my self identity piece. It took me awhile to figure out what I wanted to do. I came up with some sketches inspired by a couple of different artists though. The first is a Russian artist, Anna Berezovskaya. I loved the juxtaposition of the subject matter under the skirt verses the scene. My teacher introduced me to Stephanie Frostad. I have seen her work before, and it is super cool! I love her pieces and how they are very stylized. The shading and way she renders the figures and fabric is impeccable! She is also a Montanan artist! If you would like to see her work follow thilink to her website.


I had fun with this piece. I found trying to paint people is very difficult. (I still hate them hehe) We had a shortened critique this time so my comments are few. Every one commented that the piece has the same feeling as the last one. Once again I heard that it looks like social realism paintings from the 20's. It was also said that there is an interesting contrast between the movement of the landscape and the stillness of the woman. They loved how it seemed that the winds of the prairie were sweeping the city into the skirt. You can also check out my pinterest board of inspiration to see what my brain was thinking HERE!

Here is a sneak peak at the painting I am working on right now



Tuesday, October 8, 2013

Man Vrs Nature... Painter Style!

The other day in my painting we began the class with a critique of our still life paintings. When it came time for my painting I timidly explained I had painted the scene out the window of the pretty mountains and trees as my focal point. 

Then my teacher asked the question. My teacher asked why I didn't paint people, cars, signs and all the lamp posts that should have been littering my painting. 

My reply was simple, "I don't like people"

When I had said this, I had meant it as, "I don't like to paint people or man made stuff!" not as I hate people.... I think...  I do love landscapes and the beauty of nature. Well with my quick and witty reply we all kind of chuckled because we realized that none of us appreciate man made objects interfering with our art!That led us to add symbolism and double meanings to my painting like crazy! It made me feel like a real artist (chuckle)

I would like to note that I didn't consciously intend to have these meanings in my painting, but I'm starting to think subconsciously maybe I did! I do feel, that man is mucking up the wild and natural beautiful scenes around us. I'm sure glad I live in Montana that is still home to the free rolling plains and wide open sky you can see touch horizon to horizon.

Back to school! My piece was also called "creepy but in a good way"... "It seems almost to perfect, in a weird sublime way. The trees are whimsical, the tree on the left received the comment of trying to push its way into the painting. The painting was also compared to a film noir. In film noir's the women would look so beautiful and extravagant, but the lighting would not dance upon their eyes which would be completely black. This comparison was compared to that of the windows on the building. Windows usually allow you to look into something but not these all you get to see is a black abyss. Also by taking the people and excess of human objects out it personified control and emptiness. But then it shows the beauty in a mockery.

Today I showed my painting to my foundations 3D teacher from last year. She picked up on the eeriness but the perfect beauty right away! She said the mountains has a looming presence over the calm empty grass that was painted simplistic in contrast to the complexity of the mountains. She also made the comment of the emptiness suggesting presence. It was great to get her comments on it! 

My painting teacher suggested I should think about starting a body of work. I think that sounds like a very good plan on how to express my frustration in a calm manner! that I guess I didn't even know I had until now... Gotta love art!


Monday, September 30, 2013

Is It Nap Time Yet?

Wow does time fly! Even when your sleep deprived! But isn't that the purpose of college to teach us that sleep is not a necessity of life? Or that blogging takes priority over studying for french..... oh well!

Today I learned though that art is important and that the world pretty much depends on us. We had a very special guest today at the college, Don Colley! He is an artist from Chicago. He was really inspirational and really cool. He showed us some techniques on how he sketches and shared some really great advice. He said, "sketching is thinking out loud" I had never really thought of that before, but it makes perfect sense! He is a really neat guy! check out some of his work, or his video by faber-castell!

 So I have not posted in ages which means I have been hard at work on projects for school! Here are some of the cooler projects! My first graphic project was a success! We were to create bit-mat monograms in adobe illustrator, which was a piece of cake! We had to mount our designs on mat board and they had to be presented perfectly.
Up next on the update is my painting projects! Our first project was to do a grid painting with a specific color scheme. I had analogous colors, red, yellow, and orange. We are supposed to make our own black in my painting class so thats how I ended up with the green color, the black I make has a ton of blue in it. We were supposed to pick a silhouette and use a 12X12 to cube-ify it. soooooo ya ta-da! Pretty wheat! We were to show depth by using the varying colors shades. Darker colors stand out more while lighter colors recede to the back. 

And finally may I present my first still life. We were supposed to render a still life in gray scale to study lighting and how far we can push the contrast between dark and light. I used oil paint and my own black so it has a blue-ish hue. I also used a pallet knife so the painting is full of texture! It was a really fun study! 

Tuesday, September 17, 2013

Back Into the Swing of School

My how time flies! To bad I'm not having a marvelous time! It's college time once again! Break out the overpriced books, late nights, and coffee comas! A friend and I the other day at lunch decided college is really those days you can't get back because it takes 20 years off your life from stress!

But this year is fun if i use my optimistic attitude! I'm taking a painting studio and intro graphics studio! I'm also taking French, art history, and a human and life development class(FCS)!

The FCS class is pretty awesome! The purpose of the class is to learn about humans development from conception till death, so we do the whole flour baby kind of project, but its a computer game instead! This is the only time we will ever be allowed to leave our kids alone for two weeks. The other part of the class we create our own avatars and raise them from 18 to a ripe ol age when we kill em off. Oh this is gonna be fun!

I love my painting and graphics class because duh they're art classes! It's great hanging out in the studio till 3 am again.... oh the memories.... coffee....

french is french! Im not failing yet so thats a plus!

Well it will be a busy year! I'm almost half way there!

Let the Everyday Adventures Begin!



Friday, August 2, 2013

Fancy Fruit!

I brushed up on my creative food skills this summer by making a fruit bouquet for a friend of mine from high school. She got married this summer and asked if I would make a fruit bouquet for the rehearsal dinner. Of course I would! I love playing with food!

She even provided the fruit so I only had to worry about finding the time and cookie cutters to make the  arrangement!

I looked up what fruit arrangements can cost, and it is insane! This is way cheeper than hundreds of dollars! Ya it may take some time, but thats what makes it special!
So here are some things you will need if you ever want to make a fruit arrangement! It was super easy and fun to do!

 For fruit I used watermelon, pineapple, canalope, some other mystery mellon, grapes, strawberries, and I used kale for a filler.
You will need wooden skewers to hold up the fruit, and obviously cookie cutters, knifes and a cutting board!

Start slicing up fruit about an inch or a half an inch. I made the pineapple probably to thick so you can probably get away with only a half an inch.

Once you have fruit cut and ready to assemble, slice off the top of the watermelon. First I figured out what side it was the most stable on though so it wouldn't go rolling around!

To make flowers, cut a flower shape out of pineapple and a circle from a melon, stick a toothpick into the pineapple and melon to attach, and finally a skewer into the pineapple. I found it to difficult to just put a skewer into both. You can cut out letters, and stick a row of grapes on skewers for simple creativeness! I also sliced a small piece of strawberry and cut it into a heart shape to go inside of a heart shaped pineapple to make it pop.

When You start to stick things into the watermelon, work back to front.  I started with the letters and then added kelp. I slowly added flowers and mellon pieces, always adding kelp. You may need to stick toothpicks into the kelp to help it stay down. Once you have a simple design stuff it with strawberries and grapes to create the full fruity effect!


Thursday, August 1, 2013

Soap and Splatter

I have done a horrible job of blogging over the summer! You would think I would have the time, but alas I don't! I continued to do Wacky Wednesdays in my community for the month of July, which was a blast! I am determined to play catch up and blog about the projects. So without further procrastination, this was one of the days we made soap sculptures and splatter art!

Telling parents that kids were going to make soap sculptures, I got some quizzical looks. There was no way I was going to trust little kids with knives! But I was going to trust them with a microwave! Turns out you can microwave Ivory soap, and it will grow and turn into this really cool blob of coral looking soap! I got the idea from Pintrest which came from a blog called, Our Best Bites, you can see their post here.

So I had the kids take turns helping me blow up the soap in the microwave, the look of awe on their faces was so rewarding! We would place the soap on parchment paper, and microwave it until the bar of soap was no longer a square. Afterwards I had them color their sculptures with food coloring. I mixed it with a bit of water to be thrifty. They used brushes and eye-droppers to 'paint' the soap. Kids and things that squirt water are dangerous, proceed with caution!

The really great thing about this project is that it has a good use! They could use their sculptures for a fun, and very bubbly colorful bath time! One of the moms told me her bathroom has never smelt better!


We also made some splatter art by putting some paint on a page and using packing squares, and straws to splat it all over the paper.