Month: April 2016

I found today’s reading of the beginning of Asterios Polyp very beneficial. I hadn’t finished reading this graphic novel before class, so our class discussion of it drew my attention to certain elements in the beginning of the book that I hadn’t focused on before, like the objects Asterios chose to take with him when he fled his burning building. As I read the remainder of the book I realized how well planned out the narrative was, so that each element mentioned had its purpose later. This was a very enjoyable read, and I can see that it does have a lot of value to be read again. With the many images with a lot of little details, I’m sure there are important things that I missed on the first read through that would add even more to the story if I read through it again knowing how the story ends. It was also very fun to look at the book with 3D glasses and see how that altered the images and feel of the book.

For this week’s collage workshop, I decided to go scientific and attempt to portray Charles Darwin’s discovery of natural selection! I decided to use a chapter from my biology textbook, which mentioned Darwin’s fascination with birds, specifically finches. The scientist studied the anatomical differences, such as beak size, between birds on the Galapagos Island. I found a magazine on birds, which contained a lot of beautiful nature photography, but I also used wings from silly ads and feathers from a picture of a tattoo. It was great having a variety of magazines to pull pictures from, because I almost feel as if collages look more put-together when the clippings are different. It’s the challenge of creating your own image and story out of pieces of someone else’s story. I definitely need to experiment a lot more before I can say I have mastered collage.

This weeks workshops were interesting. While my main medium is gouaches, paints, and digital drawing on photoshop, it is nice to see how collage works in the act of physical creation. I definitely wished I could have played a lot more with interweaving layers- I had not even finished the background I was setting up when it was time to go. That being said, art takes a lot longer than just 75 minutes.

The collage project also brought to mind some more modern versions of collage, like stop motion animations. Monty Python is famous for its use of collage stop motion, and youtubers have millions of followers from their work. It is something that is simultaneously high-tech and tactile, which is the winning combination in the era of virtual reality.

 

I’m not going to lie, going into Monday’s workshop, I wasn’t expecting to get much out of that class period. I thought it would be a good time to start thinking about the final project and get a head start on the work, but I didn’t think it would really help me to think about the class material at all. Well, I was wrong. One of the first things I realized when I started working on my collage was that I suck at arts and crafts. Okay, so maybe I realized this multiple years ago, but I must have forgotten or stopped caring at some point. Either way, it made me realize just how time-consuming creating a single collage is. It took me the entire class just to come up with an idea, find the necessary pieces, and to cut out just a few of the images I wanted. I’d always thought of collages as a less impressive form of art (the few times I’ve ever thought about them), but Max Ernst and the process of creating one of my own have changed my mind. It’s extremely impressive to me that Max Ernst was able to create an entire book of collages in just three weeks. To come up with that many ideas and to be able to execute them in that short amount of time is really incredible to me. It really gives me an appreciation for what a master can accomplish at his craft.

The workshop on monday was an eye opening experience to say the least. I learned several things from my experience attempting to create a collage (it honestly was my first time ever). The first thing that stood out to me was how meticulous one needed to be when cutting if they wanted create a clean image. I had difficulty cutting out the shapes of human figures as well as cutting out trees in particular. I ended up giving up on the trees as they were almost impossible to cut out accurately around their border. Given the extreme difficulty I had with producing clean cut shapes, I cannot even fathom how Ernst was able to create his collage-book in three weeks. I just do not see how it is possible.

The next thing I noticed, was how this process was inherently improvised. While one may have an idea of an image or scene they wish to depict, the process is improvised because it requires searching through material that is not one’s own, and piecing it together. There is something about tearing apart images and piecing them together in a new way that is very fulfilling and spur of the moment. One simply flips through the pages until something they are looking for appears and then it can be removed from the original source. The fact that the author does not know the exact end image at the beginning of the project makes the art form very interesting and fun to carry out.

This hands on approach to doing these creative projects really helped give me a better understanding of what our final projects will be.  It also gave me a better idea of what I am capable of doing using programs I have never worked with before using technology.  These two days of working out our ideas and exploring the different mediums will be incredibly beneficial for our final project.  I greatly enjoyed learning how to use the different programs at the library and recreating Achilles’ Shield, as well as really understanding the collage process by delving into it wholeheartedly.  Overall, this past week afforded the class a great opportunity to experiment and experience two different and useful art forms.

The collage workshop was a positive and constructive experience for me. I walked into the workshop without an idea in mind of what I wanted to create, or what my final DIY project might be. Flipping through magazines and newspapers, however, drew me to certain images and helped me to develop an idea for a socio-political critique I’m planning to develop as the subject of my final collage project.

As many people have already mentioned, working with collage definitely granted me an appreciation for Ernst’s seamless and efficient collaging skills. Simply choosing and cutting out images took me almost all of the class period. It’s incredibly impressive that Ernst finished his brilliant collage novel in only a few weeks. I’m especially impressed by his ability to render such profound psychological commentary and meaning in addition to creating a cohesive narrative and physically seamless collage.

I also personally enjoyed working with magazines, newspaper, etc. for collaging more than working with digital media, because I’m interested in the idea of deconstructing something pre-existing in order to construct something new. I think it would be interesting to play with this concept more in a digital form, but it’s something I didn’t get to during our second workshop day.

In working in the collage workshop on Monday, I had no real plan regarding what I wanted to do.  I began by finding scenes that looked like they went together, namely winter scenes from the Christmas magazines.  I began to entertain the idea of simply creating an amalgam of winter scenes that looked like they belonged together but were slightly different.  Over time, things began taking a turn for the absurd and I became more comfortable with creating more bizarre images that reminded me of Max Ernst.  The first was a large kitten’s face I put in to make it look like the giant baby cat was peaking around the tree a man was about to cut down.  Eventually I used the rest of the cat in conjunction with a picture of a stuffed bear and cupcake to make a new creature altogether.

 

Over the course of this exercise I became more comfortable with combining apparently discordant images to try and create new images.  I used it to create something rather silly, but the experimentation helped open my mind to the possibility of more deliberate and meaningful combinations.

This week we were given the opportunity to work with a medium that most. Of us had little experience with. While I did enjoy the collage workshop, I felt that my piece was disorganized and no where near what I usually produce. One can blame it on having just barely woken up but I feel the collage will not be the way to go for me.

The same could be said for the digital art workshop. While I did enjoy learning a new way to create art work, I felt going the media route was way beyond my co fort zone. While I do plan to include some sort of media to my final piece, I do not think it will consist of a lot of it. What were your thoughts on the workshops? Do you think you might incorporate some of the new things we learned this week?

The collage workshop really gave me respect for Ernst! The seamless, cohesive way the pictures he used in his collage form one big image seemed totally unattainable to me when working with the magazines. Regardless, though, the workshop helped me create a cool collage and gave me a better understanding of what I want to do with my final project.

The workshop also made me think about the way collages function as a reflection of the culture they are created in. We used pretty current magazines, so the collages we made mostly showed the current times we live in, even if they had a certain message to them.  Collages are unique reflections in that way because they are not made from universal art materials, like paint, pencil, charcoal, etc.