I have (finally) started my project! I got the supplies with shreya a while back and she also got me some supplies I needed from school, and now I’m ready to buckle down and grind it out. I’m honestly pretty excited! I’ve been doing a bunch of sketches at work in my down time on slips of paper, so i know what the mayor is going to be generally. It’s been so long since I’ve made these shapes, but i feel like they look pretty similar to what I did last year. I want there to be a lot of difference in height and texture, so I’m using the wire to do that. I really hope when I lay the plaster over the wire pieces they don’t fall off when I hold the piece right side up, since I’m assembling the piece while it’s flat on the ground. I feel like I’m being a lot more efficient with this piece, since I know how I have to make some pieces, coat half of them in plaster, make other stuff, and then come back to finish the plaster since I have to let the other side dry. It feels nice to be sculpting again! And since I’m just going to cover everything in plaster anyways, I’m using this atrocious red duck tape to tape parts down to make it as secure as possible (the hot glue wasn’t as secure). I also used some old paper that my dad had instead of the newspaper that I would have normally used since I didn't have any on hand, and it honestly wasn't that bad.
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I know what I want to make!!! I emailed Coach and he gave me some really good advice that I feel like I knew in the back of my head but just wasn't accessing. I also went to the VMFA with my family the other day and I saw a piece that really inspired me! It was also just really nice to be back and surrounded by art and explaining the meaning of the pieces I knew about to my family gave me a bunch of ideas and got my creative juices flowing. So I saw this piece that I've seen so many times before, but when I saw it while I was there I looked closely and realized that it was something that I could hypothetically make myself; meaning, I worked with metal armatures with my last sculpture and I feel like I could figure out how to make it. I also love how its a sculpture but flat and can be mounted, since I have really been wanting to make a large hanging piece that can be the center of my portfolio. I think I'm going to make a sculpture with the same materials I've used in the past, but try and assemble it on a canvas. I'm kind of scared because I'm really not sure how the physics is going to work out, but I think re-using some of the shapes I've used in the past is going to add a lot of cohesion to my portfolio. I'm also just excited to work with with wire mesh and plaster again; I genuinely enjoy the process of making these types of pieces so much. I'm not entirely sure how I'm going to get all the materials, since in school I had basically everything I needed at my disposal, but I'll figure it out.
I have no idea what to do for my art project. It's not even that; it's more that I really don't want to do anything. I know that sounds horrible that I'm literally writing this on my art blog (actually in the notes app on my phone) but with everything that's going on in the world it just doesn't feel like I have anything meaningful to say! My last piece in Q4 was about emotional distance vs. physical distance but that topic just feels so jaded after months of quarantine. And then going back to my sculptures feels like I'm just redoing something I already did, and to be honest, right now I'm kind of forgetting what those were about in the first place. I just don't know where to start!!! I'm probably going to email coach soon just to ask for his advice and to see if he has any ideas for me to springboard off of. This feels so silly to post about but I think it's kind of important to document this prolonged "stuck" I've been feeling. I will say, I have been doing little sketches on slips of paper at work but they're all super abstract, so I'm not sure if I can pull any inspo from that.
I have had such a hard time getting back into the groove of art. It's been kind of in the back of my mind that I really should start my summer piece, but I haven't really worked on anything. I'm thinking of doing a sculpture, but at the same time I don't know how I'm going to make a piece that isn't literally exactly like my sculptures from the beginning of the year. I really really loved the process of making those though, from the armature making to the plaster- I love working with my hands in that way so much more than painting like my last Q3 project. Maybe I'll make a singular big version of the 3 smaller sculptures I made at the beginning of the year. That feels like cheating almost though, because it's nothing new. Also that would be a pain to transport, which I learned my lesson with the big sculpture I made at the end of sophomore year. But then again, it would look kinda nice in a portfolio- a little kingdom with a big castle.
I could also go a totally different direction and go the blueprint/ architecture direction. I really liked the idea I had with the last piece I made, but I don't think I really executed it well due to the not so planned out materials I used. I would love to draw something digitally and then get it printed out to make it look super clean and official. I'm definitely not in the mood to do another story piece like my Dolly the Sheep piece; I loved making it but funny story writing isn't really my cup of tea. I do love the aesthetics of the piece though, and how it unfolds. Maybe I could design a blueprint that folds like that as opposed to being one big poster. I'm really not sure yet! I'll try to brainstorm some more soon. I'm not gonna lie I executed this piece pretty quickly. I was thinking about how to use the materials I got from school last quarter for a while, and my heart just wasn't in the piece I had begun brainstorming at school. The concept behind this piece isn't really clear which I could definitely improve on, but it was a really good experience to try and mix all the medias together. Since physical distance is such a big thing right now, I wanted to go in another direction and make a piece about emotional distance. I tried to tie in my exploration of colors, grids, and architecture all into one. I admit it is a pretty crowded piece. The house layout (which is my own house) is supposed to convey that even if two people are physically very close, in the same house even, there can still be a divide between them. In my next piece I want to try toning back and focusing on adding color more intentionally. I love love love Deb Sokolow's work and I'm trying to not mimic her moves exactly but they just make so much sense! I still have the paper I had started my Q3 in class project on so next I want to try and rework the piece I had started then. There are a lot more layers on this piece than you can see in this slideshow; tape, tissue paper, translucent paper, colored pencils, watercolor, two layers of ink drawing. I'm going to take better photos outside in the morning. I haven't posted my progress posts yet because I still need to add photos to the drafts, but here's the final piece! I'm not mad at how it turned out. The piece is 16" x 20" so it's kind of big, and I wish I had been able to add more detail into it but honestly mixing the colors took so long, especially since most of it was rock or cobblestone with a ton of colors. This is my first painting on a thick canvas so I'm not sure how to resolve the sides yet, so please let me know if you have any suggestions! I'm also wondering if I should go back in and add more details to the people's faces, but I feel like the detail may seem out of place. The sky looks a little funky from close up, but from far away it looks accurate so I'm not sure if I should blend it out more.
Doing the grid for this was SO HARD. To be fair the picture I used was not the right size for this canvas so my plan was to just paint it to scale and then add extra sky up top where my reference photo ended. I don't know why it ended up being such a hot mess (spoiler alert: it's because I can't do math for the life of me) but I somehow ended up fitting the whole image on the canvas, meaning I must have stretched it one way or another. I only realized after sketching the whole thing out, but by then it kind of looked pretty okay so I just went with it. I picked this project bc I knew it was going to be a challenge bc I haven't worked with paint in so long, but I'm already over it whenever I paint I feel like I revert back into my 6th grade self and all my forms and colors look like they're out of a crayola box. I hope adding detail will make it look more on the realistic side. She's finished! I'm really really proud of how it turned out to be honest. I'm still not sure how it's going to be received but it looks like how I wanted it to look in my head. I think the story kind of lands, but I think the messiness of it might not. I sprayed it with fixative but something about that mechanical pencil really doesn't want to stay in place. I also added some pops of highlighter to the images which I feel like brings them together pretty well. I didn't keep with a super consistent style while drawing them which I was unsure about, but I like how it turned out. I really love the ballroom drawing and I definitely want my next piece to incorporate the graphite grid like a blueprint under the main image. Dare I say it.... I think this is definitely the direction I want to move in with my future pieces. I love sculpture, but I really enjoyed making this piece, and it was definitely a lot easier and my final product was a lot closer to what I originally imagined than how my sculptures usually turn out.
It's coming along! Up close there are a lot of imperfections in the layout but I really like it that way- it gives me a "scribbled in the coat closet" kind of feeling, almost as if the scientist wrote it themselves. I do think that the style of each drawing is kind of different and not as cohesive as it could be, but I think once I add the highlighter to each image it'll draw things more together. I'm not sure how much shading I should put into them because I want the pictures to stay kind of basic, but I feel like I shouldn't leave them too simple. For example, I shaded the van because I wanted it to be black but now I feel like I should shade the other images too, but I don't think I'm going to do that.
I'm so excited for this piece!! It's very much inspired by the Deb Sokolow's work and just the general vibe I get from it. I've written the story and I'm attempting to make commentary about the short sightedness of humans as a society and how they only think about turning a profit. I really hope that the story gets the message across, because I feel like the message could either hit the mark or totally miss. I really like the combination of the graphite and the highlighter together, and the color gives it a sci-fi feel.
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Ria BakshiCheck out what I'm currently working on by clicking the PROCESS button! Archives
December 2020
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