Art Update

I have been ridiculously busy these past couple of weeks, and here's some pictures to help show why.

First we have mine and Hannah's space we took over whilst studying for our Art History midterm. The exam was seperated into two parts - one was an in class slide recognition, and the other was a take home, open book. Final mark: 98%. :)

Next we have painting. First assignment was an Expressive Landscape assignment, in which I completed this 3 feet x 3 feet acrylic painting. Our second assignment was another three week one, called Three Style Boogie. The idea was we drew randomly from a selection of artistic styles (for example Cubism, Expressionism, Impressionism, etc), and put together a painting using three of them. I drew Orientalism, Comic, and Psychadelic. This is the result. 1.5 feet x 3 feet acrylic.

Something I've realized, now that I'm starting on my third painting, is that there is clearly a colour pallette of choice here. My four colours of choice are Pthalo Blue, Ultramarine Blue, Alizarin Red, and Indian Yellow Hue. If I only ever had those four colours to paint with for the rest of my life, I'd be okay with that.

Moving on, we have drawing. I've done quite a few drawings in the past couple of weeks, as our drawing teacher is insane and assigns a huge amount of homework per week. At any rate, I'll only post pictures of my favourites.

In drawing I was focused on the landscapes, as was the assignment for the last month and a half, but I was also thinking about expression. I was going for expression in line in the two plant drawings, I was going for expression in atmosphere in my two fir tree series, and I was going for a sense of emotion in my colourful one.

And now we  have the class that has been taking absolutely all of my time: Ceramics. Our assignment for the past few weeks is a Pouring and Drinking assignment, focusing on things thrown off the wheel. The idea was to make a series or a set, something that obviously goes with each other. How I chose to deal with this project was just throw throw throw until I had a good amount of stuff, and then try to match them with each other. Because nothing was ever consistent with me, so I ended up with a few different shapes.

At this point in time I have finished glazing all my pieces that are ready to be glazed. Our teacher has this thing against hoarding our work, which makes sense, and I look at all my stuff and scold myself. But then I realize that it's not that I've been hoarding my work; I just made it all at the same time. And I kept...

Making...

More.

Bit of advice: If you're an arts student and you're going into ceramics and you're an over-achiever, you're never going to get any other work done. Ever.

So anyways, I finally have enough stuff bisqued, and before I was ready to glaze I had to sort them out and figure out the set I wanted to put them in. I found a theme. Naturally, it has to do with nature and landscapes, as does everything else in my life apparently.

So first we have spring. I have glazed them with pale, natural colours. I chose these three for spring because the pouring vessel looks like it's melting, the large bowl has black and white drips, as if icicles are melting, and the cup is just nice.

The next set is summer, also three pieces. I chose these three for summer because the pouring vessel looks like a watering can, the bowl looks like a fountain, and the cup has blue and white slip on it, so it's gonna be bright and colourful. I've glazed them with blurs, reds, whites, and yellows if I do remember correctly.

Autumn is next. Oh I should say, the cool thing about what I'm doing now with the pulling of items together after I've made a bunch, is that there was stuff I already had on the go before I was given this assignment, and some of them have just worked out in the themes. So this one's autumn. I'm probably only going to have three pieces, just like the other two seasons, but I've used two pouring vessels in case one doesn't turn out very nicely.

Naturally, I've glazed them ambers, browns, and beiges. Maybe a green or two, too.

And then we have winter. Winter to me is cold and gloomy and dead and gross and I don't like it. So most of my winter pieces I've glazed white, black, beige, and other kinda pale, sickly colours. However I also have some bright red and greens, since Winter to me also means Christmas, and is in fact the only thing that redeems winter in my eyes.

Again, I'm probably only going to have three pieces in the set, but I have extras in case they turn out hideous. I chose these two pouring containers because of the way I've built them, they reminded me of snowmen.

So there you have it! You are now caught up in all my projects. Coming up: Glazed works as well as lots of self portraits and a Halloween painting! Stay tuned!

More Ceramics

As per usual, there is a lot that goes in to Ceramics. Along with learning how to throw on the wheel (pottery wheel. Making cups and bowls and such), we've had to make some things like cups and boxes and such with soft or hard slabs. Basically just experimenting with the clay and figuring out how it works. So part of our work was to glaze the things we made in the first few classes, but also to make sample tiles. The purpose of those is to test out the glazes we have, and how they react by themselves and with the clay slips we can put on the pieces before we fire them. So I made ten sample tiles, and I can't wait to see how they look when they come out of the kiln. I'll have a better idea of how to glaze things when I see the different colours they make.

So above here we have some of my items on one of my storage shelves (left) and a couple slabs with my tester tiles (right). Six different kinds of slips, ten different glazes, and they're all recorded in my sketchbook (pictured below).

Some glazed items.

Something else I had to do this past week was study for my art history midterm. There was a take home exam, which I'm not fully sure how I did on it, but the other half of the midterm was an in-class memorization test. I memorized 15 slides, which my teacher had posted online. I memorized each image, who the artist was, when the piece was made, what era or movement, and any other piece of information I could remember about each painting/sculpture/drawing/etc. In the test there were only eight slides, but I know I aced it. My memory is the thing I am most proud of about myself. So that was fun.

I cross-referenced slides on blackboard (our school's system of communication for teachers and students) that my teacher had posted, my notes I took during class, my huge 8-ton textbook, and a little bit of google, to get all of my information for each slide I had to memorize, and most questions I had to answer during my take-home exam. Which yes, was open book, so I wasn't technically cheating.