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 this link 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

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!

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! 

Capstone Drawing: Progression of Emotions

Like other art classes, at the end of the semester means, chaos, stress, and capstone final projects. These projects are supposed to be examples of your creative capabilities (which hopefully you have some left by the end) and also skills acquired throughout the semester. For our drawing final we were instructed that we needed a set of three drawings We had the freedom to draw whatever anyway we wanted to. I decided to use charcoal, and draw figures. I hated figures before, but for some reason I had this ridiculous idea to have figures be my subject for my capstone! Maybe I drank to much coffee and felt super confident when I wrote my proposal paper, cause I have no idea what I was thinking! There is a reason why I never posted a picture of my self portrait. I hate drawing humans. dumb humans. Anyway I have included some parts from my capstone proposal so you can understand the inspiration from the pieces.

The capstone project I propose is that of a personal journey of strong emotions and growing up. It is a reflection on my personal emotional history. The first drawing is of a little girl’s hands clasped within a father’s hands. The next sketch shows a self-portrait of a bent head and outstretched hand. Last is the third sketch that shows a close up of eyes peaking out behind fingers and the gesture for quite. I also am inspired by the realism paintings of Honore Daumier. His paintings have a very sketchy characteristic to them. I was inspired by the boldness of his actions and how he was not afraid to stand and speak his mind through his art. He often exposed the un-glamorous side of life that many people in France at that time were trying to avoid. To me his paintings and prints have a lot of feeling and emotions packed into them. I wish to do the same in my progression of drawings.

Gift Wrapped Skeletons

For our final individual projects in my 3D class we were faced with building a structure using linear and planar materials to make a dynamic design that utilizes an interior structure

(skeleton) to create an exterior form (skin). The pieces had to have a transparent skin, windows for viewing the inside (which had to be a different design from the outside), and show our understanding of compression and expansion. 
We first built structures from straws to get a sense of what forms we hoped to render. From there we moved on to use balsa wood to build our sculptures. In the beginning I felt this project was going to be easy, and maybe even fun. I was wrong. I hate sculpture. Hate is a strong word. I hate sculpture. It may have to do with the fact I hate math. A lot. There is a reason I am an art student. I can't spell and I can't do math. To give you some perspective on how awful I truly am at math, it took me three hours to build a Hexagon! THREE HOURS! That's why I hate sculpture. And so I survived countless hours piecing this structure together which questioned my patience and what I had ever done to deserve such unfair treatment. I sure did have some bad karma with this one! but avail, like a gazillion hours later I finally finished the sculpture!!!

Naked sculpture

The Never Ending Drawing

 10 hours is a long time. Especially if you spend 10 hours on one drawing!

That was our latest assignment in our drawing class was to spend at least 10 hours on our still life. That's 10 hours dealing with the joys of charcoal (I hope you could tell I was being sarcastic), 10 hours of squinting at a still life, 10 hours of frustration, 10 hours of stress, 10 hours of pure anger (people kept changing our still life, they better hope we never find who they were).

But 10 hours is really not that much to spend on a drawing that you want to do really well on, and we jam out to music in studio so 10 hours isn't probably as bad as it first seems!

So to begin our still life's we had to choose a spot, I gravitated towards the little piccolo. I have a soft spot for the instrument since I used to play it in high school!

Some of my sketches

Little Black Blobs

How busy can you get? SUPER DUPER busy that's how much!

And so to get back into the swing of blogging I present our new 3D project!

We had to construct modules to create one big form. The project was called, design between the folds.

we had to create a 3D form constructed from many multiples of a singular modular design or “unit”. The unit had to be created from paper and include some type of “fold” in its construction. The final form had to have an exterior surface texture that was different from its interior texture. 

And so we played with lots of concepts and lots of paper. We saved so many trees this past month.... not. Art school uses paper like smokers use cigarettes! 

After murdering countless innocent trees our projects were finally done! 

2D transformed into 3D

Today finally was the day that we critiqued our project we have been working on for weeks in 3D. The project took forever (ok so like three weeks) but it turned out really great! Our piece was based upon geometric planes, we were supposed to create a 3-dimensional design based upon a map marked out by points.

Our first step was to pick a location that had some meaning to us, lots of people picked the places they grew up, or went to school. I choose France!!!! I miss it a lot and had an amazing time there. The specific location I chose was the Oise-Aisne American Cemetery. I have relatives who manage the cemetery there. The country side was so beautiful and moving and to hear stories from my relatives about the cemetery and people who come to visit, and then to even find Montana guys buried there really "changed" me I think. Oh and they have wheat fields in France that was pretty epic too! All the farm land, and the tiny little towns all over really reminded me of home!

Back in school I first printed out my map from google.

And Then I proceeded to cut out a shape by plotting points that had significance to my adventure! Some points were, a spot I almost got ate by a deer on a walk, another was the old farm I walked to, a field I took pictures of, a Montana guys grave, my relatives house, and ect.

To Draw or Not To Draw

Who draws shoes and pillows? Me that's who! Over our extended break we were assigned to draw our pillow and a shoe....
So that's what I did.

I started with setting up a pillow and my favorite shoes! Say hello to VERA WANG!!!!!! I love these shoes so much the box even came to college with me even though I probably don't have the room for it... Oh well its Vera Wang!  Another thing that's probably not smart is working until the hours of morning day light... whoopsy! That's college for ya!

Feelin Like A Degas....

Awesome, crazy, stressful, blah, sleepy, hyper, ow, and Go! All are adjectives to describe my day.  My day started out with the dire need of caffeine... aka art history at 8 a.m.
In the early a.m. we learned about the Medicis' of Italy. But if I learned anything from history class in high school, other than politics, it was the Medicis'.

Afterwards was my forever long three hour drawing studio. (How was I going to make it through the day without coffee!?)
But It turned out to be awesome!!!!! (even without the coffee) We learned about gestural drawing.  We set up easels in a circle and everyone took turns modeling in the middle. We started sketching for two minuets and worked down all the way to five seconds to sketch! We were all on edge by the end. Our teacher called it drawing boot camp. The purpose of this exercise was to kinda re-learn how to draw. Usually people start with an outline and work in. We needed to start from the inside and try to avoid outlining too much. Our teacher also told us to hold out pencils like cavemen.... that didn't work so well...

Some Tim Tebow Action up top!

 Otherwise it was super fun! My teacher was super impressed with my sketches! So studying all those Degas sketches finally paid off! But somehow amongst all the fun I sliced open my finger.... I don't know how but good thing I noticed my finger puddling blood before I got it on my sketches! Yay for pretty sketches!

Back to School Kids

The smell of school is in the air, too bad its not the smell of summer. Today classes started, and I got to start my day off with and 8'o clock class. yippy. But art history seems like it will be a lot of fun this semester! I am excited for all the European art! Once we get to french impressionistic art I will truly love this class!

Today I also had my drawing class, we had to draw portraits of the person sitting next to us. Well my poor partner resembled more of that of a bug than a human being....

*Warning*

this next paragraph has been dedicated to outrageous expense of college books and supplies 

And so this morning I, and quite a few of my fellow art classmates discovered the wonderful fact that we do in deed have to buy another stinking art history book. Volume II. wasn't all 1000 pages of Volume I enough? Do I really need to spend another $115 on an art history book? why couldn't we just use the one from last semester like we did for our fundamentals class!?!? Are we not killing enough trees! If we are going to kill trees you think we would put it towards a better use that TEXT BOOKS! And whatever happened to "you can't put a price on education" hmmmmmmmm?????? And then I have to buy all new supplies for 3D and my drawing class. ODE TO JOY, more art stuff that's just what I need, stuff I will use one time and then have sit there on my desk forever! (well until I move out)

You may now proceed with caution.

Then I was called to the office. It seems like my job is starting to swallow all my time..... hmmmmm. But I'm working over my scheduled time, so lots gets done!

Today I finally gave in to Pinterest. People kept asking me if I was on Pinterest. I also keep hearing, "found it on Pinterest" "oh ya I saw that on Pinterest" "I waste all my time on Pinterest." So I finally had to find what Pinterest was all about.To be honest I really don't get how it is different from stumbleupon or weheartit. Oh well maybe it will get cooler. 

Advice From an Art School

It is finally all done!!!! well almost....
This morning at the wonderful hour of eight O'clock poor little me had to walk across the perils of icy campus to a exciting Art History exam, but the hope and light at the end of the tunnel that guided me through this horrible experience was ITS  OUR LAST ONE! -except part two of the art history course is next semester.... oh well!
After the excitement of being tested on Romanesque and Gothic architecture, which included my favorite cathedral, the Reims Cathedral! (I got to see it in France while I was there, creepy angel....!!!!) Next was our 2D recitation. Mr. Dean of course had a great lecture we learned all kinds of really great facts about life.

"Wear different shoes every day, they are the most important, so invest money in good shoes!"

Oh yessir my art professor told us this, of course he meant so you don't have back problems and what not, but I kind of interpreted it a little different... :) He then taught us how we should wash our hair, manage our time, fall in love, take risks, have confidence, and then the best lesson of all, don't get herpes.

"You can get herpes anywhere, from hand rails, doorknobs, shouldn't have this been on national television like everyday!"

When Dean was a grad student some med student mis-diagnosed him with herpes cause he had a corneal scratch and they figured it was from herpes, but it wasn't so he was just fine. But Dean made sure we all understood that we shouldn't touch our eyes so we don't get herpes! Gotta love Art School!

But alas I am glad this week is starting to wind down! It has been crazy studying for a final and working on my capstone. My dorm room totally looks like an artsy fartsy tornado ripped through here! But I still have a math final next week (which is the real finals week...). So ready for this semester to be done and move on to a new one!

And so I am finally posting about my capstone project! So what we had to do was listen to a sound on ubu.com. But these songs are not normal songs they are super messed up theres screaming and scratching and banging on pots, just really odd stuff. But I found one called tri-cello which is kind normal. So anyway I mapped out the entire 9 minute song in 30 second increments  whew that took forever! Next I painted on watercolor paper with gouache, I used salt to add dimension and interest, and then covered the entire thing in a veil of sheer black fabric! The whole thing turned out to be about 12 feet long! But it was very worth it! 

In the process of making the 12 foot monster

up on the wall in the studio

We experimented with the lighting :)

One More Art Assignment Down

Wow it has been so busy! The weeks are flying by I can't believe this semester is almost over! Jumping from class to work to dance I have hardly found time to blog... whoopsy. So finally after sculpting class was cancelled because of this.

SNOW!!!

I am now finding the time to write this!
This week our assignment for 2D was to take pictures that showed contrast between natural organic elements and human or man-made structures. We could do part of the assignment in Photoshop which totally made my day, week, and almost year! My teacher probably thinks I'm super weird cause I was so excited when he said I could use it!

The three pictures I choose from the left, a power line at sunrise in Beijing China,  the gardens at Versailles France, and  the last one is an old chair in one of our wheat fields. 

To begin the project I manipulated the pictures in photoshop into  simple black and white sketches that showed the positive and negative space. Then I had to transfer them onto bristol board. Ode to joy. I am sick of bristol board and markers gah!!!!! But thankfully this was our last project that involved the stuff! I traced the images very carefully which made my eyes hurt from staring at these things for so long,  but the result was fantastic!

My tools :)

during the process of tracing 

This project gave me a headache! ah so many lines!

But they look pretty in the end!

....Coming soon Capstone! The final project of 2D is on its way!

Its Monday Again?

Well here comes another week ready or not! sheesh! Last week was pretty uneventful class, sleep, eat, survive college! But last friday was fun! we did print making!

So how do you make prints?
Well what you do is roll out ink on a table, and then roll the ink you just smothered all over the table onto transfer paper. You can then put stuff on it like string, leaves, and other super random textured things. After that you squish it in a press and viola you have art!
Bam now you know how to make a print!

Both of my prints! 

And in honor of Halloween (super overrated holiday! ugh I just don't want to dress up!) this is my poster I made for the ChampChange Auction coming up!

Well now I'm off to do my homework! Yippy taking twenty random pictures of campus, sounds like pretty easy homework to me! Gotta love being an art major!

I will survive hey hey

What a crazy friday! It all started with a race against time. Here is some advice for college, if you happen to be one of those who goes to all their classes, make sure to wake up with enough time to get ready before class, not two minuets before. I am not even joking. So this morning was a flash and then I was off to Billings to visit the family. Its my brothers birthday so we were meeting at Gammie's. So there was lots of shopping and Olive Garden to go to! I love five cheese ziti al forno mmmmhhh soooooo good! It literally made my day! I mean seriously who doesn't love wonderful carbs and cheese that has this lovely enlarging effect upon one's hips.... oh ya I do!

So anyway on an artsy note I finally have pictures of my box project! Everyone was very impressed with the fact you could walk down the stairs and still make the box disappear, they loved my perspective and color matching! 

Theres a First Time for Everything

Today has been lots of fun! And busy!

I am very proud first of all that I finally figured out how to do a french fishtail braid! It took me 20 minuets! Yes thats right 20 minuets on one braid! thats, uno, un, yi, one, stinking braid! sheesh I was running out of time before I had to leave for class so even if it had turned out horrible I was going to wear it out in public, but it turned out great! (thankfully) 

Yay! I feel pretty, Oh so pretty!

In Art History we had a guest speaker. One of the teachers from the art department came to talk about her project in Pompeii she is involved in. She restores frescos in a roman villa, it was very interesting!

Then the super fun class came! I had another art workshop in 2D recitation, and today was drawing! We had to do portraits... Duhn duhn duhn duhn..... (dramatic cord) I draw landscapes NOT people! And on top of it we had to do cross hatching! (YIKES) I know what cross hatching is.....but I've never done it..... But anyway my partner was from my 2D class so it was fun to get to know her better! She had also wanted to go to the Savannah art school, and she had actually got to visit it! She said it was super amazing, the building is an old train station, but inside everything was brand new! We had a blast! Our teachers who were grad students, were hilarious! They joked around all the time and made fun of us.

 We then helped them with their thesis by determining what makes good art and what makes bad art. They asked our opinions and then we mosied on down the hall to the gallery in the art building. The Gallery is showing grad and faculty pieces right now. We picked our favorites and very carefully and quietly picked the bad ones (because we didn’t want to have the chance of picking our teachers pieces).  One of the grads asked why we hadn’t picked one of the pieces…. That would probably be because it’s the dean’s and no one wants to offend him! But we had a great time with them we learned a lot.

Soooo my poor partners face is a little off… oops,  I had warned her it was going to look like picasso!   the one she did of me is in maroon. 

Its a Bird! Its a Plane! NO its My Poster!!!

I feel pretty special right now! My poster has been printed!!!!!!!!!!
I work at the career office as a graphic designer and my first assignment was this ChampChange poster! I went in a whole new direction from their old posters and ta-da!

I made all my elements from scratch, even that awesome iPod is made by me! except Mr ChampChange I don't know who originally made him! But the big picture of him with his iPod does have some little fixes by moi like his eye and his hand...

How awesome is that! haha my dad will be so proud! he's so tech savvy he reads my blog! haha oh boy theres nothing like 280 miles separating you from the most intimidating person in your life that gives you confidence to talk about them on the internet tehe! But he's great he really wants me to be a Graphic Designer so I know he's gonna be just as excited as I am!

Mmmm Coffee

Well coffee painting was a HUGE success I don't know what grade I got yet but everybody loved it! My teacher especially, since he loves coffee! Can you say brownie points?

Our next project is, "hide the box." Its a project they make the freshmen do. We take a box and pretty much have to camouflage it to blend in with an area in Haynes Hall (the art building).  By painting the box it has to blend in from three angles.

This is the area I'm thinking of "hiding" my box! Right there in the corner at the bottom of the stairs will be the home of my lovely box.

And Just because I love fall and I'm not really used to the whole leaves changing, and falling, and making HUGE piles everywhere, since I live on the plains and we are pretty low on trees, I had to post this! 

Lovely leaves falling on a peaceful campus morning.

First Post and First Art Project

Well I obviously I have too much time on my hands since I'm starting a blog while at college! But I would like to share my creativity and art/DIY projects with friends and family! and who wouldn't want to know what I'm up to? (besides my parents, I am very sure my mother will love this!)

So this blog will be super random I have so many interests! from dancing, fashion, cooking, art (in like every form!), and even the farm I am from. so never expect the same stuff all the time haha I'm sure that will make it more entertaining anyway.

So I'm going to start off with my first "real" art assignment! We have just been creating dot and line pictures that cause all of us poor art students heart attacks over sharpies. By the way sharpies are evil. any way we have been stuck in the land of dreadful markers, and finally have moved onto painting, but of course there is a catch! there always is!

Our project was to paint with gouache. Gouache is more evil than acrylics imagine that! Anyway our assignment was to paint areas we had visited as groups, but we couldn't literally paint it.  My group went to the campus library, so I couldn't literally paint books, people, a fountain or coffee! So now we got to be real artists... hooray for abstract! Hint I was being sarcastic.

So how do you paint a library without really painting a library?

Well by using line and all that jazz we have learned over the past couple weeks. My big dilemma though was how to portray the wonderful, stupendous divine, luscious smell of coffee. So how did I do it? Through real coffee of course! So the cafateria downstairs generously supplied the coffee for my project (even though they don't know that....)

So first I painted a layer of strait coffee and then added a bit of color, I replaced water with coffee pretty much.

 next I added moooorrrreeee color, and random lines.

 and then I dripped some paint, made some circles, and made some more lines.

 Ta-da! Its the library and it smells like COFFEE!