CONTENTSM a j o r S e m i n a r

T h e M y s t e r y o f L a n g u a g e

M i s c e l l a n e o u s D i g i t a l A r t

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

B L O G

M A G A Z I N E

T O S K ADigital Painting , Photoshop CS5

The composition is asymmetrical and pret-ty simple. I suppose I tried to balance it out by making the hair fuller on the right side. The squares are used as a design element and to draw the viewers eyes to the woman’s face.

I didn’t have the time, money, or resources to create a traditional piece so I decided that this was a good time to try to improve my digital painting skills. To keep it related to my previous ten pieces I used a similar color scheme and composition as well as concept. This piece was very loosely based off of an untranslat-able Russian word, toska, which to put it as simply as possible means a great depression or longing for something. The word is very complicated and holds many different meanings, and I felt it most suitable to not try to create a very complicated piece to go along with the word.

S L U M B E RDigital Painting , Photoshop CS5

The assignment was to create a piece in a different size than the first, but since I am doing these using digital tools I felt it most appropriate to create some-thing with very different dimensions, instead. The composition of this piece is asymmetrical. I used the pink pixelated spots and the horizontal white bar to draw the viewers eyes towards the women.

To tie this piece together with the rest of my series, I used hair as the central subject rather than the human(s). I also made use of the mosaic filter in Pho-toshop CS5. Another consistency used in this piece is the use of abstract colors, meaning I am using colors unusual for the subject. For example, in this piece I used pure white for the skin and a purplish blue for the hair.

F L O AT I N GDigital Painting , Photoshop CS5

The assignment for this piece was to cre-ate an image with an entirely different color scheme than the previous works in our series. For this piece, I tried to use much brighter col-ors than before. I usually incorporate some kind of neutral color, such as a brown or tan, but in this piece I only used bright blues and purples.

I used the stars to bring the viewer’s attention to the girls face. The stars create a subtle V shape, with the girl’s face at the center point of the V. I used the col-or scheme to do this as well, using pure white for her skin and darker colors for her hair and the back-ground. Once again, to relate this piece to the rest of my series I used hair as a central element of the piece. I used the colors, mosaic filter, and exaggerated facial proportions to create a cartoony and dreamy look.

S L I P P I N GGouache on watercolor paper

The assignment for this piece was to create a piece with a different medium. Since I had only been working with digital art, the obvious direction was to make a traditional piece. I decided to try out gouache, as it was a medium I was unfamiliar with. I used a theme of natural medium equating to natural female figure. I thought it would be a nice contrast to the idea of digital art creating unnatural beings, as can be seen in my previous pieces.

I used the rectangular shapes to elongate and Exaggerate the shapes of the female figures. The vertical shapes framing the sitting figure elongate her torso, while the horizontal bars underneath the stand-ing figure widen her hips. I kept the background un-painted to draw full attention to the subjects.

F O R E S TGouache on watercolor paper

The assignment this week was to create a piece only using shades of green. I felt that the limit was a good challenge, but I decided to challenge myself even further by using a traditional medi-um. This way, I had an even slimmer variety of color. I feel that limitation of color forces the art-ist to focus more on the composition rather than relying on pretty colors to make a good piece.

I kept the female figure completely white to draw com-plete attention to her. The green squares were meant to draw attention to her as well - the bottom ones to break the wall of white where the female’s body is, and the ones at the top to continue the wall of green that is the female’s hair. I feel that the use of these squares in conjunction helps to bring attention to the face.

D E C A YDigital Painting , Photoshop CS5

The assignment for this piece was to draw inspira-tion from three artists. The three that I drew inspi-ration from were Alphonse Mucha, Gustav Klimt, and Egon Schiele. The inspiration from Mucha can be primarily seen in the color and subject mat-ter, the inspiration from Klimt can be seen in the composition, and the inspiration from Schiele can be seen in the color and line quality. I was espe-cially inspired by Schiele’s way of rendering hands.

I picked these three artists as they were already Inspirations of mine, so drawing specific inspirations from these artists would be a simpler task. These three artists usually draw humans, and Mucha espe-cially usually draws females with long and intricate hair, much like I usually do. I was inspired by Klimt and Schiele’s not always straightforward portrayal of the human.

M E R M A I DDigital Painting , Photoshop CS5

The assignment for this week was sim-ply to create a piece that would tie our previ-ous work together. The only piece that I felt didn’t fit was “Forest” because of it’s incredibly bright green color, a color that I rarely use. So in this piece, I used bright green and green-ish-blues to relate the pieces to each other.

“Forest” used bright green, large squares so I Incorporated those same shapes into this piece. I also tried to use a similar composition to “Decay”, because the composition of that piece was unlike my previous pieces. I used the squares to keep the eye moving around the piece, as they are set around the three fo-cal points - the hair, the hands, and the face.

D O U B L E B A S S

Digital Painting , Photoshop CS5

The assignment for this week was to create a piece inspired by the work of a fellow student. This piece was inspired by a student who in-corporates text into her work. I used some lyr-ics from a song that this piece is named after by a band that inspires me very much, Gorillaz.

The text is used to make the hair the focal point, as it almost always is in my series. I did not want the fe-male form to get lost in the hair and words, so I used an incredibly bright red to draw the attention to the female.

G A L A X YDigital Painting , Photoshop CS5

The assignment for this week was “many small pieces or one big piece.” I prefer working on a smaller scale, so I went with the former idea. In-stead of creating many individual pieces, I made one piece and edited the colors of each, creating something in the vein of pop artists like Andy Warhol.

The idea of this piece, compositionally, was to keep the eye moving around the piece. I feel that the most eye-catching of the four are the top left and bottom right, as they are more saturated and have a wider va-riety of colors. I placed these two diagonally from each other so that the viewer’s eye would look all around the piece rather than just the top, bottom, left, or right half as they would if I placed those two vertically or horizon-tally of each other.

P R E V I O U SW O R K

THE MYSTERY OF LANGUAGE:

UNTRANSLATABLE WORDS

WA L D E I N S A M K E I T

This piece, and many of the following Pieces from my time before SXU, was made for an AP studio art class I took in high school. For this class, we had to create 12 pieces that Revolved around one theme. The theme I chose for these pieces was “foreign words that have no English equivalent.” This piece was inspired by a German word, waldeinsamkeit. This word refers to the feeling of being alone in the woods.

This was the first piece in my series, and I was experimenting with the idea of using non-typical mediums for painting (that is, anything that is not canvas or paper.) My initial plan was to use a different medium for each piece, but I enjoyed painting on wood so much that I kept using that medium for the entirety of the series.

Acrylic and pencil on wood

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MAMIHLAP INATAPE IAcrylic and pencil on wood

This piece is based on the word Mamihlapi-natapei, a Yaghan word that is known for be-ing one of the hardest words to translate. The word refers to “a look shared by two people, each wishing that the other will offer something that they both desire but are unwilling to do. “

Many of the pieces in this series experiment with expression in the human face, the usage of nega-tive space in the form, and composition. This piece especially played with negative space, as I kept most of the piece uncolored. I felt that the wood had such a beautiful, natural texture and col-or that it was hard to bring myself to color over it.

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D U E N D EAcrylic and pencil on wood

This piece is based on a Spanish word that re-fers to the “soul” that is present in all art forms. This piece was primarily an experiment in compo-sition. The previous piece in this series explores the relation between the negative space and fig-ure, as the hair (which makes up most of the fe-male figure in this piece) is mostly left uncolored. This piece was also the first piece in the series that explored the possibility of exploring the canvas space. In this piece the sides are cut on a diagonal.

The sides of this piece are cut on a diagonal to em-phasize the shape of the female form. The composi-tion is top heavy, with the hair gradually thinning and the colored blobs, the representation of the “soul”, giv-ing the top half of the composition even more weight, However, to keep the composition not entirely top-heavy, I painted a gradient in the hair to draw attention to the bottom. The focal points of the dark ends of the hair and the “soul” create a somewhat triangular com-position to keep the eyes moving all around the piece.

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MONO NO AWAREAcrylic and pencil on wood

Mono no aware is a Japanese phrase that refers to the awareness of the transience of life. This phrase is more than a phrase, but almost a phi-losophy or even a way of life. This phrase ex-presses the acceptance of transience, and a gentle sadness at their passing. But it is the shortness of life that allows us to truly appreciate it for its beauty. In this piece, life is symbolized by a bird. When a bird learns to fly and leaves its nest, it is no doubt a sad moment for the moth-er bird. But the mother bird then reflects on the time she spent with the baby bird, and appreci-ates it for what it was - beautiful and meaningful.

This piece was an experiment with composi-tion. I used mostly scrap pieces of plywood, because I had a lot leftover. I feel like, with wood, it is easier to create interesting and oddly shaped areas to work on. I felt that it was necessary to take advantage of this.

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W A B I - S A B IAcrylic and pencil on woodWabi-Sabi is a Japanese phrase that, like Mono no Aware, focuses on the acceptance of transience. This phrase does not evoke the beauty of life as it ends - it emphasizes the beauty of life while it is passing. Wabi-Sabi is a way of life that finds beau-ty in the imperfect. Literally translated, this phrase means “the beauty of decay.” This literal translation inspired me to further play with the use of scrap wood for not only aesthetic purposes, but sym-bolic purposes. This piece was made from scrap wood. By itself, most would not say it’s beautiful, but I would disagree. I tried to create something beautiful to invoke the beauty of impurity. The fe-male figure is imperfect - she is literally decaying.

I feel that the composition of the wood itself already creates an interesting piece. In all honesty, I was so pleased with the shape that bringing myself to paint over it was quite difficult. I used some of the small bits of wood to connect with the dripping appearance of the female figure. For example, the small piece of wood above the right eye of the woman. I painted it with a semi-transparent white paint to look as though it was part of the female figure as well as the wood.

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C A F U N EAcrylic and pencil on woodCafune is a Brazilian wordmeaning “The act of tenderly running one’s fingers through someone’s hair.” Because this piece is not as extrava-gant as far as symbolism is concerned, I felt the need to make the piece more extravagant in order to make up for the very literal presentation of the word. ‘Cafune’ is the last piece in this series, and easily my favorite and the one that is nearest to my heart. The pieces in this series never took very long to create - I limited color and value so as not to distract from the beautiful texture of the wood. Most of these pieces took a few hours to make, at most. This one, however, was made over the course of about a week. I had no access to pro-fessional wood-cutting materials, so I had to hand carve the piece myself. It took me many days to complete, and I ended up with blisters all over my hands from the carving, but I truly feel that the hard work was all worth it.

I had, at first, planned on having the cut-out shape stand alone as a piece, but I felt that the piece needed the vertical rect-angular piece to create a more pleas-ing composition. This way, the eye of the viewer is moving all around the piece.

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P R E V I O U SW O R K

M I S C E L L A N E O U S

DIGITAL ART

G O L D F I S HDIGITAL PAINTING (PHOTOSHOP CS5)

S P A R R O WDIGITAL PAINTING (PHOTOSHOP CS5)

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F A W NDIGITAL PAINTING (PHOTOSHOP CS5)

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H U M A NDIGITAL PAINTING (PHOTOSHOP CS5)

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