Final Art Reflection

    I believe that of all of this year's projects, my most successful work was my final landscape painting. I developed my ability to focus on small details rather than try to absorb everything at once and get ahead of myself. I used oil paint for the first time with this project, which I actually really liked because of its consistency and the ease with which I could spread it and change its thickness. In creating my piece, I wanted to create a feeling of calmness and serenity, which I did by not using very many harsh brush strokes, and mixing my colors pretty thoroughly within an object so that there wasn't too much blatant contrast between different areas (unless they were different objects).
    I think that the most challenging piece this year for me was my silhouette ink drawing. Looking at my preliminary sketches, they were all very detailed, and weren't really silhouettes. I think that I was just trying to get a sense of the subject itself, but I didn't focus on the outline as much as the details inside. In the final ink drawing, I did focus more on the actual silhouette, instead of all of the minute details, which made it a pretty different style. This was actually fine and I'm happy with the outcome of the project, but the silhouette of the tree that I chose proved to be extremely detailed itself, and was extremely tedious and time-consuming to be copied five different times. There wasn't much to be done about this problem except to dive in and put in th necessary time to finish it--I had already committed to this silhouette and I really liked it, it was just hard to stay that focused for that amount of time. However, I did it and it turned out pretty well.
    This year, I think that a formal skill I have developed has been my ability to work with different values, and my color-mixing abilities. I've painted more this year than I did last year, so I've had more opportunities to practice these skills, and I am proud of my progress in color mixing and creating realistic values for the subjects that I paint. A technical strength I have improved has been my ability to hone in on specific details of a piece and put in a lot of concentrated effort on those small areas, rather than try to concentrate fully on the entire piece at once, which can be overwhelming and hard to focus on all at once. A conceptual strength that I have developed over the course of the year is my ability to create a piece of art that conveys an emotion. I think that I've become much better at using certain kinds of brush strokes and color variations in order to express a feeling, such as in my artist emulation project, when I used a scene of a lighthouse blocking an ocean view in order to convey the idea that mandate objects are obstructing natural beauty.

Landscape Final Reflection

    My intentions for this project were to communicate a realistic sense of the light in the landscape. I think that adding a realistic light element in my scene really helped to define the different values in my painting, because it added variation to the different shades of green. If I hadn't used the light to enhance the color scale then it would have been a lot more bland and monochromatic.
    I addressed my self-defined theme of landscape by including a foreground and a background in my painting, and by covering a pretty large area of space in my painting. I also think that I used my artistic voice by portraying the scene pretty realistically, except for a few details, like the texture of the large tree on the right.
    In our feedback discussion, I received comments about the light on the bushes, and the texture on the trees--which were details that I focused on, so I would consider my work pretty successful in terms of accomplishing my intentions.
    I think that in this project, I was able to improve as an artist by developing my ability to focus finitely on one aspect or detail of my work at a time. I think that for many of my past works, I have tried to bring everything together too soon, and I focused on how the whole painting would look at the end of the project. However, through this project I learned to direct my focus on one small thing at a time, and take it little by little in order to create an end product that I am satisfied with. This did a pretty good job of representing my formal/technical strides over the course of this year, because it brought everything together one aspect at a time and created a painting that I am proud of.
    I think that I "stretched and explored" pretty well with this project--in the past I haven't really focused that much on light because I thought it was too hard to fully communicate through a painting. However, in this project, that was one of my main focuses, and I think that I did a pretty thorough job of including it in the way that I intended.
   

Landscape: Interim Reflection

I would define a landscape as a piece of artwork that includes a foreground and background, and covers a substantial area of space. I don't think there has to be a lot of limitation on the subjects in the art, and there doesn't necessarily have to be a specific subject(s). In my landscape sketches/painting so far, I've tried to include these elements--specifically a foreground and background, because I think that it adds a lot to the element of distance and space in a landscape. Especially in my painting (probably because its easier to do with color), I tried to pay a lot of attention to the natural light in the landscape and how the tones of certain objects were changed significantly just by the addition of a ray of light hitting it, which I also think helped to break up all the green hues in the painting. Without the light causing different shades and variations of yellows in the painting, it would be pretty dull and just simple and green, so the light helps to communicate the vibrancy of nature's colors into the art.

Artist Emulation: Final Blog Post

    In this project, I tried to come to understand and employ Hopper's way of not only painting and producing a final work, but also the process involved before the final painting--the sketching and outlining. When I was researching Hopper, I learned that he sometimes made pen and pencil sketches of his subjects before painting the final work. Because of this, in my workbook I made basic sketches of certain subjects that I think Hopper would have been interested in, like road signs and pipes, and buildings with plants around them. I think that I have come to substantially understand Hopper's style, but if I had more time, I could have dug a little deeper by working on improving the light in my painting, and how it contrasted with the dark areas. I know that Hopper focused a lot on light and the way that it came across in a painting, and I think that I could have done a better job of perfecting the detail and different shades of light in my work.
    My conversations with my pen pal were pretty helpful, but I do think that if we had commented a little more, we would have been able to give each other more constructive criticism and advice on how to improve our works.
    I think that if we had had more time for this assignment, I could have dug a little deeper by doing other things that Hopper would have done in the process of completing a final work, like going to the actual place (instead of using Google Maps as a guide) and maybe making a few sketches there for inspiration.

Artist Emulation: Intentions

    For my final project, I will be painting a scene of a lighthouse next to an ocean. My plan is for the lighthouse to be on one side of the painting, partially obstructing the ocean. It will be pretty close up, and will block about a third/half of the image. I am using a lighthouse as the subject because Edward Hopper painted several scenes including lighthouses, and because I think that it will do a good job of conveying the theme that I am trying to communicate. This theme is one that Hopper also sometimes focused on in his works--the idea of humanity encroaching on nature, and nature being pushed out of the way in order to accommodate it. By placing the lighthouse so that it obstructs part of the ocean, I am aiming to convey a sense of manmade objects blocking nature.
    In my final work, I will try to use mostly relatively short, light brush strokes in order to create a thin layer of paint, which I can continue to add to until I've reached the color and shape that I want. This is the same sort of technique that Hopper used in his works, so I hope to create a final piece in his same style. I will also pay attention to light in my painting, and how it would be shown in actuality--I will try to include the proper shadows that the lighthouse would cast, and portray the light hitting its surface realistically.
    In this project, I began by observing images of lighthouses and Edward Hopper's art in order to get a sense of how I could combine them in my final work. I then envisioned my final project by sketching my ideas in my sketchbook, and laying out my general sense of space and organization. Additionally, by studying Edward Hopper extensively for this project, I have broadened my understanding of the art world, and deepened my knowledge of the artist and his work.

Artist Emulation: Edward Hopper

A lot of Edward Hopper's work involves using both naturalistic and industrial objects as the subject matters of his paintings. For his industrial objects, he usually tended to use objects or scenes that were known to represent modernity in his lifetime--such as movie theaters, lighthouses, cafés, gas stations, and street corners. He also incorporated naturalistic components into his work alongside the modern components, which to many were interpreted as a way of communicating the ways that society was imposing itself upon the natural world. In this way, Hopper was able to convey deeper themes and messages in his work, giving it a more personal feel and giving Hopper a more meaningful objective as an artist. According to my research on Hopper, I learned that he often created sketches and outlines of his drawings before starting on his final (painted) work. These sketches were usually done using a pen, pencil, or ink, and conveyed a rough sense of what the final project would include and how it would be laid out. He did this as a practice routine in order to prepare for creating the final work.