On campus Event : sheila pree bright

I loved to hear Sheila Pree Bright talking about her experience in photography! She did so many interesting things and her work is really really good !
She reminded me about an older woman photographer named Marie-Laure de Decker who was an amazing photo-journalist and photographed in extremely dangerous places. I remember her telling to my photography classmates last year,  how she risked her life so many times and telling us about the incredible things she has done. I ‘m sure that one day Sheila Pree Bright will be that impressing too.

 

Reverse Self-Portrait or representation of myself but not myself

And here it goes, the last project. I’m glad to have finished the class with such a project, even though I wish I had more time to work on it.

The class might be over but it’s the only project that I feel is not really over and will never be. Especially since it’s at the same time a work on your skills and on yourself too. It makes it hard to take a step back and be impartial on something that is meant to represent yourself.

The fact that we erased our face from the paper instead of “simply” drawing it made it even harder and challenging, but in a good way! And I feel like it made us improved our visual skills more then all the other projects combined.

In definitive, I’m really glad I had the opportunity to participate in this project and learn this new technique.  Now time for you to judge by the followings pictures of it.

Abstract Words

For this project we were given two opposite words, for my part Tender and Tough and had to create an abstract representation of those word.

In order to obtain that representation we first had to understand our words, to find their minings, which we did through a brainstorming. Brainstorming took some time but wasn’t really the difficult part. Trying to find abstract representation of a word, without any meaningful component was really hard. You need to go further then what comes to your mind immediately and detached yourself from all you know.

I finally came to make the opposition between the two words both using black&white and colors but also the size of the predominant element.

I so choose to create for the Tough word a solid and imposing black “column”, to represent to force, balance and also the coldness.

For the Tender word I decided to create a small white rectangle (here in opposition to the “column” for Tough) and shrouding it with forms of different colors., to represent the sensitivity of a tender person, and his ability to feel other feelings and be easily touched by them.

We then had to find the concrete representation of our abstract creations and take a picture of it, which I decided to be a column in front of my building and tree leaves.

Overall, it was a challenging project, and I realized how difficult it is to work with abstract because it goes against everything we learned in our life.  But I really enjoyed learning how to frame the pictures on a black board (even if I had to do it again) and I’m sure this is a knowledge that will serve to me again in my life.

 

Super Power Animals – Photos

Since everyone I talked to about this class project asked me about the work of others in the class, I decided to show them through pictures on the blog.

I took the photos with my DSLR camera so if some artists wants to get a high quality photo of their sculpture, feel free to do so !

I really love everyone’s animal and I think we all did a excellent job so I hope you will all feel the same way by looking at this pictures….

Enjoy !

 

Super Power Animal: description, process and favorite animal choice

My animal is Pandove, a mix between a Panda and a Dove.  Before deciding the animals that will be using to create my animal, I first though about an issue in the world that was important to me. After a moment, I realized that violence was the one that was popping the most in my head. Violence has become something we are too anesthetized of, and in my country it’s really not punished enough by the law. So I thought that the better way to fight violence was  to turn hate into love. So, quite naturally, I decided to give to my animal Cupid’s power, which is represented by the bow and harrow in my sculpture.

The panda is calm and everything in his figure is generous and the dove is white like a white flag so they both seemed like a good choice to contrast with violence.I first used sequin to make my animal “prettier” but it actually turned out to ad to my animal a defensive power of invisibility,  just  in case he will run into villains during his quest against violence.

Everyone’s animal was really interesting and well executed, but if I would have to pick my favorite one I will choose Xinyao’s animal : the tortoise/eagle hybrid.

I think he’s the most appealing to me because of the feeling that comes out of it. We can really feel the effort and care that she put to create this beautiful animal. She searched to reproduce with extreme fidelity and precision all the elements of her animal. We can even perceive the eyelashes on his face and see the feather on his legs. What’s even more impressive is that the most precise and accurate animal was actually  the smallest one. It’s just beautiful how a tiny object can have so much cultural and emotional baggages depending on the use of  colors and materials.

As I’m remembering all the process of this project, I notice that the first and probably the most important thing I learned, is that art can be created from everything and in any form. It’s not because something is made out of garbage that’s is just garbage, that it’s just ugly, unappealing. Art simply goes beyond everything.

I also learned from the group critic that sometimes people can be more accurate in analyzing your own art than yourself and that you can really learn about your creation from them.

At the end, I’m really glad I had the opportunity to built a 3D work. It’s really a different approach to the creation. The way to use your hands to actually built something, is completely unlike using them to draw or do collage.  I’m not sure it’s something that I want to explore more at the moment but I feel like, now that I actually did one, it’s something more feasible and will be more open to it.

Midterm Article

It’s been almost two months that the Visual Thinking course started, and in this short amount of time, I feel it has brought me so many things. First the discovery of new art tools but also a better notion of space and light. But it has mostly brought me, not a better capacity to create art, but the capacity to approach art differently. By making me work on patience, on self-confidence, and on my ability to let go of my mistakes, this course has offered me the opportunity to work on myself as much, if not more, as on my art.

This work on myself that I ‘m talking to you about, can simply be reflected on the comfort of showing your creations to someone else, which is now much easier for me.

But the thing that strikes me the most about this class is being able to not feel alone anymore in the art process, we are ALL working on the same project, we are ALL confronted to the sames problems while doing it, and we are ALL paying attention to others work and appreciating it.

And with that proximity and exchange with other artists, you somehow develop something that goes beyond any knowledge that the teacher, alone, will be able to give you.

Ceci n’est pas une boite (This is not a box)

First part of the project: Drawing of the box

Second part of the project: Defining the different shades

My clothes made the different scales of shade for my box

Final part of the project: Collage of the box

Gallery of Boxes

The project of the box was challenging but I’m glad to have discovered a new way of creating art. I also appreciated to work on my ability to apprehend light and shades. Nevertheless, I really struggled with patience and precision, both of them not being a part of my qualities…

I had to arrange my box to make it work better and that was kind of frustrating to not be able to make the box fit perfectly together. But once I stopped looking closely at all the defaults in my box, I started to see the collage in its entirety and was surprised to actually see a box. I took a picture and send it to my friend in France and I was once again surprised that she though it’s was an image done on a computer. And, finally, when the class discussed about my box I was surprised, again, that they kind of felt the same way as her, they didn’t see the mistakes I made will doing it, they just saw a box.

So, today was the critic of this project, and even if at first I was nervous about going through those critics, I can say today that they are the best part of both this class and the digital process’s. I love to hear what everyone else has to say, not only about my work, but about the work of everyone. Sometimes it makes you think about it differently, you can see it on a totally different point of view and somehow you rediscover the art a second time, and I love it !

Plus everyone is so creative and they all succeed at creating something meaningful and interesting for each project. This is the real beauty of this class, to enrich yourself not only from your own work but from everyone’s.

I think that’s what surprises me the most, to get so much from 3 simple boxes or from one simple chair.

Different kind of drawins, different kind of feelings.

Yesterday we were introduced to a new project and I must admit that, when I saw this scene in front of me, I freaked out.

But then I was more curious and intrigue by what will come out of this; a blind drawing.

I had already hear about the blind writing, just let your hand instinctively write something without thinking about it, and it will tell you things about yourself.

But that was another exercise,  it was more about connect yourself to the pen and to the paper, and let go of things, let go of prejudices.

It was really interesting and I am glad we made this exercise even if I wont probably do it again really often.

So, here is some samples of what resulted from this “Blind drawing”.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s really interesting to see how the scale of everything is wrong comparing to other elements on the page.

When I think about it, what really changes between the different kind of drawings that we did so far, is the feeling that you have while doing it.

For the free drawing at home of a chair, I was a lot more relax, comfortable, I could do it again, start on a fresh paper, erase when something was not good enough.

For the drawing in class of the chair, I suddenly got way more frustrated, I couldn’t do what I was used to do, I could not have the freedom that I had at home, the rules were really defined and we had to stick to it, listen direct critic as we were drawing. That was a completely different atmosphere and so was my state of mind while drawing.

As for the blind drawing, it was something new, that I know could not be perfect, I felt less pressure for trying to represent the subject in an accurate way. There was also kind of an amusement into discovering what your drawing looks like when you can see your hand drawing. But it wasn’t just fun, it was also exhausting, It was demanding a lot of concentration, and I could feel like that this exercise was developing and using a brain capacity that I had not really used before….strange feeling.

Anyway, I’m looking forward to see what’s plan for the next class….

 

Free drawing of a chair

Class drawing of a chair

The End

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is the end of an era. It’s now time for us to move on and say goodbye to our magnificent chair. What an hard time…No. Wait. Let me rephrase. Hallelujha !

I’m so glad that I wont have to erase my chair  again and again and again. At the end I was feeling that I was doing more arm then good to my drawing. I think it was the perfect time to stop and move on to another project.

Nevertheless, this first project was the perfect way of beginning this course. I think it taught us the bases we needed for continuing on a good path.

I have learned to not give up on my drawing, and I  think that in the future I will try to spend more time on my personal drawings and keep persevering. I also learned that sometimes your brain tricks you and that in art you sometime have to let go and stop over-thinking everything.

 

By seeing everyones chair on the wall, I realized that even if the chair is the same, the artists are different and you can really see it. You can see by the force of the lines and by the marks left on the paper that every chair reflects the personality of the artist who made it.

 

Dirt

You think that’s dirty ? Come and take a look at my drawing !