Final piece. Last day of WARP

This was our last in-depth assignment our last piece for warp. Because this was the last it had to be better than all the other stuff I produced. We also had no restrictions on this assignment. For the final I decided to go with a sculpture because a painting would be too safe and I've noticed that my sculptures are liked a bit more than my paintings.
       I made a large unicorn skull decorated with real insects that I caught and displayed. The unicorn skull is pure self harding clay and I used a wooden dowel to attach the horn. The skull took forever to dry, I even had to put it in the oven to speed up the drying. I struggled very much with the color scheme either realistic or fantastical but I choose fantastical and made it pink. The pink unicorn skull contrasted the reality of the insects and also the piece represent me, my love for unicorns, skulls (taxidermy) and insects. Im proud of this piece.

Packaged Narrative In-Depth Project

    For my zines I also created a package and 3 sculptures to go with it, my package is a large plush unicorn. The plush unicorn is the fist time I ever sewed anything this large. I hand sewed the unicorn along with the three hand held objects, it took some time but I was able to do it. For the large unicorn I designed a pattern to go off on and once I cut it all out I sewed it together. My goal was to make this unicorn adorable so that it would contrast with the zine. My three objects were a heart pocket that held the zines, intestines and a detachable unicorn horn. I wanted the insides to look almost real so that when you unzip the unicorn you would be surprised. I love unicorns and that was my reason for the heart pocket, to hold the unicorn zines.
   I was glad to see a lot of people interacting with my unicorn, they held or hugged it. Some students were even eager to unzip the unicorn to reveal what was inside. And on critique the feed back was not what I was expecting, but oh well.

In-Depth: Landscape

     This assignment is all about landscapes, so it could be any thing that we have explored in this topic. They wanted us to be more ambitious than before so the had specific criteria that we had to met. For 2D works we would have to make 6 pieces of a series, and that sounds pretty crazy so I picked to do the 3D assignment that must fit  24'' cubic volume. This would be the largest 3D piece I make.

      From the small works I made two 3D pieces with the exploration of clay, I liked how it was easily manipulated and could be given a great amount of details. In the small works 3D pieces, the clay allowed me to make forms that looked realistic and that is the goal I was trying to achieve in the In-Depth piece. 

      For this landscape inspired piece, I went with the idea of focusing on the smaller inhabitants of our landscapes. I focused the art piece on insects, I took creatures that are very minuscule to us and i scaled it up. I wanted the audience to really feel emerged into the piece, to get a bugs eye view. 

      The insects I included are 3 ants, 1 fly and 1 millipede. The insect's bodies are all made with grey self harding clay and once dried that were painted with acrylic paints. Some of the limbs (ant legs, antenna, and fly wings) are crafted from floral wire. For the wings of the fly, I first bent large wires to create the shape, I then got thinner wires to create the vain like structure, after I got the wire part done I then got kitchen plastic wrap and melted it over the wire to give it a see through skin look. The fiber board was painted black and then I covered it in natural top soil, reindeer moss and floral moss to give it a lively appearance.

      The lollipop was a way that I wanted to show scale in size with the bugs and a human made object. The stick of the lollipop is painted a PVC pipe, it was hollowed out and gave it a sort of manufactured lollipop feel. The actual lollipop is made of real candy, it is melted down jolly ranchers, so because of this it gives the sense of smell, taste and texture of a real lollipop. Before critique started I had the lollipop laying down, and I then found out that the 3D had to be 24'' in width, length and even height. My piece was way too short and it would not have made the cut, but the lollipop saved my piece, I sat it up and it was a full 30''. Not only did this work but Don even said that the piece benefits from the lollipop staying up.

In-Depth Assignment- Portrait/Propaganda

    For this assignment we were to make a realistic portrait of a person either as admirable or ignoble and then we'd make a propaganda piece which would be the opposite. This is something I've never done, I have never made a realistic portrait before. I first wanted to make a portrait of a family member but instead I went with something I enjoyed more. I decided to go with the notorious serial killer Ted Bundy. I made his portrait in and admirable way by altering the simile so that he looks a bit happier and for my media I used graphite which is different from my usual. 
          For my propaganda piece I tried to go old school, so I used large bold red letters. I portrayed him as a serial killer in the propaganda. I decided to kick it up a notch and go more ambitious than usual, I modified my piece so that it could slid up and down to show blood splatter.

In-Depth Project. Abstraction of the form.

         For this In-depth assignment, we were to create an abstraction of the chair form the chair we designed. I based my design around the idea of the unicorn and a centipede. The personality I was trying to convey is weird/different, I wanted people to act shocked or maybe even grossed out when they saw my piece. For this unicorn and centipede piece I was also working with the idea or cute/innocent but morbid and creepy. 

         The artwork is 24''x34'', this is a much larger scale than I am used too. Canvas is something that I am not comfortable with either, to me this was ambitions. The media I used was acrylic for most of the unicorn and then the centipede, unicorn mouth and guts were all oil paints; oils I don't work with usually. I very much liked this piece and I believe it was well executed. 

Process of making the artwork.

Because this was a very large piece, the only thing I had available to me at the moment was a large canvas. I dislike drawing on canvas because it smears and stretches it out, what I did to prevent that was to first sketch it on paper to then use as a template. 

Once I was pleased with the sketch, I cut out the drawing and then traced it on the canvas. When I finish the tracing I then refine it to make it look cleaner and it makes it easier for me to see what I will be painting. For my unicorn I wanted some fantasy like color so I went with a type of light purple or like a lavender. I used acrylic to achieve the color and texture.

I stopped painting at about halfway of the body so that I can then sketch out my centipede that will be bursting out of this unicorn.

For the centipede, I based its body out in a thin layer of acrylic paint (light brown and a mustard tone). While it was drying I continued to paint the other half of the unicorn. Once the centipede's paint was dry I would then paint over it in oils so that I would get an opaque coat and it would make it easy to blend the colors. I painted the bands first before I would paint the head and legs.

Once I finished painting the centipedes body I then work on the legs and head by using the same process I used on the rest of its body. I now begin to work on the organs which I painted with oils and the gums of the unicorn.

 I then begin to detail the painting, I paint the unicorn's horn in a mixture of gold acrylics, I also began to detail the organs and paint the inside of the unicorn along with inside its mouth. Once the focus seemed to be complete I then begin to paint the background black.

Once I painted the whole background I then refine the details a bit and add some glare and then the piece is done.

Topic #1: Creative Impulse

First 3 pieces  

     For the first week of WARP I received my first assignments. Our assignment was to get inspiration from household objects that we considered art. Below you will see what I used as my inspiration, a wooden decorative skull mask and a deer skull. Those were the elements I wanted to incorporate into my pieces. 

 

  I made four pieces instead of three for the first assignment, mainly because I disliked the first one I made. One of them is a small acrylic piece that shows two decorative skeletons, the other three are done in water color. The larger water color piece has a blue skull to match the household object which the other two pieces were colorful deer skulls. The feedback that I received for my pieces is that they had an illustrative/storybook style and that they were kind of small. 

Two small works

   The next assignment were the two small works. Everyone was

 supposed to bring a material, doesn't matter what it was. Then all the materials were placed on the table and everyone had to grab three materials; a material to draw on and the medium to use. I grabbed acrylic paint, oil pastels and wood to paint on. For my pieces I kept with the theme of the colorful deer skulls (especially blue). For my round piece it had a plain wood background and the creature had black fur, for my feedback I notice that non of those aspects were liked so I changed them, I gave the creatures body more texture and color and I painted the background yellow. For the second piece the only feedback was to rust the nails so that it matches the piece.

In-Depth Project.

    The In-depth project was supposed to be our ambitious piece. I wanted to keep the theme of the blue deer skull and flowers so I did. My piece is made using watercolor, acrylic, string, ink, and glitter. When it came to critique my piece was not very much liked, there were flaws such as the color and the placement and that it was hard to understand the emotion, but I very much liked my piece and I will still accept their feedback. 

WARP First Post

Labels Help You Organize

All blog posts must be labeled with two keywords, which blogger calls Labels. When faculty visits your blog for evaluation purposes, we will use the labels to quickly find your work. If you do not use the keywords properly, we will not be able to find your work. Proper set-up and maintenance of your blog falls under the Research and Participation part of your grade which counts for 30% of the overall semester grade. 

Topical Keywords

The first set of keywords correspond to the module we are working in. We will refer to these as topical keywords since they correspond to the topic we are exploring over the two-week periods. Your first group of posts will be labeled under Topic: Creative Impulse since this is the first topic (Topic #1). Here are the topical keywords you will use through out the semester:

Topic: Creative Impulse

Topic: Pattern and Ornament

Topic: Rhinoceros

Topic: Narrative

Topic: Landscape

Topic: Zine

Categorical Keywords

The second set of keywords will organize your posts according to kind. Here are the Keywords you will use for Labels:

Exercises - tag for posts documenting all assigned exercises. The first one will be the paper folding exercise from the first class. 

Readings - tag for posts containing your two paragraph responses to the assigned readings. The first ones will be for "The White Bird" and the Jerry Saltz article from Vulture.com. 

Small Works - tag for posts documenting all assigned small works. The first blog post labeled Small Works will contain images and accompanying descriptions of the three small works you complete for the Creative Impulse Module (Topic #1). 

In-Depth Projects - tag for posts documenting all assigned In-Depth projects. The first blog post labeled In-Depth Projects will contain images (or video if appropriate) and accompanying descriptions of the more robust work you produce in response to the Creative Impulse Module (Topic #1).

Outside Visits - tag for posts containing your two paragraph responses to all required visits outside of the classroom. These include visits we do together as a class [during class time] or individually outside of class time. 

Please be sure to use both a topical and categorical keyword when labeling your posts.

Next Steps

1. After copying and pasting this text into your first blog post, create your labels from the keywords we listed above. In the Edit post window you will find an area titles Labels where you can add your own custom labels to your blog. This is where you will add the keywords we listed above. Please be sure to add all keywords to the Labels window for this first blog post. 

The easiest way to do this is by copying and pasting the following text into the Labels window for this blog post:

Topic: Creative Impulse, Topic: Pattern and Ornament, Topic: Rhinoceros, Topic: Narrative, Topic: Landscape, Topic: Zine, Exercises, Readings, Small Works, In-Depth Projects, Outside Visits

Here's a screen shot of what that looks like, and where to find Labels when editing a post

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