Escher Art Start-5/7/14

Today we created an art start based on M.C. Escher’s tessellation art. Escher was a Dutch graphic artist. Escher is known as the father of modern tessellations. He’s famous for tessellations, but is also a master of superbly crafted landscapes. These landscapes looked almost impossible to make because of all of the mathematics behind his artwork. Escher’s special art and way of thinking has influenced both science and art, and he is also known all around the world.

To recreate Escher’s art, I started out in Photoshop. I first created a simple square and colored it in using the paintbucket tool. I then used some of the marquee tools to cut out shapes from the square and make a fish out of the square. Once I created the first fish, I used alt+ movetool to copy the layer and keep making more fish. I put them each side by side and also inverted the color using ctrl+I. I kept repeating this until I had a full page of fish that created a sort of design. It was really fun making this and I loved how colorful and creative these fish turned out! 🙂

Flower ArtStart – 4/30/14

Today we were able to choose any art off of artprojectsforkids.org and make it in Photoshop. I chose the Watercolor Flower Garden because it really jumped out at me. I love flowers and it looked like a lot of fun to make. The colors were extremely vibrant and really pretty so it seemed like a cool idea. The original art is made using watercolors, but I did my best to replicate it using Photoshop. This art isn’t from any particular artist, but it was created by Kathy Barbro, the owner of the website.

To make this art, I used a few different tools to get the watercolor effect. I used the paint brush tool and lowered the hardness and varied the size of it. I used the most vibrant and spring looking colors I could find. I also used the same tool for the stems and grass. With the stems I lowered the size quite a lot and raised the hardness to give it more of a real life effect. Once I had the basic structure down, I took out the pencil tool. I set it to black and made the size as low as it could be. I sketched out each individual flower with the pencil and gave them all a different shape and form. I added a few leaves here and there and didn’t sketch it out perfectly. It is supposed to be a watercolor painting so it makes sense that it is a little more abstract then geometric. I had a lot of fun making this artstart and look forward to looking through this website more. If you want to check it out, click on the picture and it will take you directly to the website! 🙂

Scream Artstart-4/23/14

Today we made an artstart with inspiration from the scream art by Edvard Munch. It was a really creative and fun artstart to make. First, I took a picture of myself screaming. Then I drew a body on myself and started adding in a lot of different colors. I switched off from mild tones to cool, and then warm colors. For the most part I only used the line tool to create movement in my image. I also used the blur tool quite a lot to give it a better effect. I am somewhat proud of how my image came out. It gave me a chance to be creative and think outside the box. I have done better work, but this one was fun to make.

Edvard Munch was born in Loten, Norway in 1863. He created a completely different style of his own. The Scream is one of his most well known pieces of art. It sold for 112 million dollars which was a new record in 2012. His later works weren’t as recognizable, but they insured his legacy. He later died in 1944 but is considered a very famous and well known artist.

Kadinsky Art Start- My winter tree! 3/26/14

Today we used the style of Wassily Kadinsky. We created an abstract tree and chose the season we wanted to use. I made a winter tree with snow and dark colored leaves. The tree is just cropped out from another picture. For the snow on the ground, I used the pencil tool and the paint bucket tool to fill it in white. The snow falling is just clicking once with the brush tool and turning the hardness down. The leaves of the tree was the most difficult part of this art start. I used the ellipse tool to create many different ovals and circles and then put them all together. I created about 6 or 7 different ones and copied some of them in different places.

Kadinsky was an influential Russian painter and art theorist. He is known for his abstract circle paintings. He was born in a well-to-do family and always had a passion for art. He gave up being a lawyer to follow his passion of art. He made a lot of abstract paintings and is very well known for his circle abstract art.

ArtStart Collage- 3/21/14

Today we made an Art Start inspired by David Hockney. We used Photoshop to recreate some of his artwork in an easier way. I used one big landscape and selected smaller images from it. Then, I added a drop-shadow to each image and transformed them slightly. I rotated and made the images bigger to give the art a nice effect. It looks more realistic to the original paintings.

David Hockney is an English painter. He is an important person that contributed to the pop art movement of the 1960s. He is considered one of the most influential artists of the 20th century. Hockney started to create collages in the early 1980s. He used a varied number of Polaroid pictures from different perspectives and arranged the photos to make one large image.

Character Cards

Today we created characters using only text and symbols. This was actually very challenging and I had to really think out of the box. I created a bunny rabbit with parenthesis and dots. I also created a stick figure with lines and used periods as his eyes. His hair is just a bunch of slashes. It was pretty fun making these little figures while also being challenging.

I’ve known about symbols and characters being made out of text for a long time. People us ASCII symbols to create works of art. There are already many works of art out there that are made completely out of text. It’s an interesting and fun thing to work on. It gives you a chance to be creative! Happy Monday everyone, lets have an awesome rest of the week 🙂

Mondrian Painting

Today we created an art start based on Piet Mondrian’s paintings. All I did was use the rectangular marquee tool, paint bucket tool, and line tool to create this artstart. It wasn’t to difficult for the most part. This wasn’t my favorite artstart, but I enjoyed making it still. It’s a different form of art but it’s still pretty cool 🙂

Mondrian is best known for grid like paintings. He uses primary colors in the squares. Most of the lines he uses are black and also leaves a few of the squares white. Art during this time focused on landscapes and still-life subjects. Mondrian was determined to become a painter and got inspiration from the Netherlands.

Art Current Event – 3/11/14

In a just-published book on the Mona Lisa, historian William Varvel sees a feminist
Art Daily: 3/11/14

URL- http://artdaily.com/news/68683/In-a-just-published-book-on-the-Mona-Lisa–historian-William-Varvel-sees-a-feminist#.Ux80kfm-18E

 

After 12 years an amateur art historian thinks he’s solved the mystery behind Mona Lisa’s smile. In a just published book William Varvel argues that the woman painted was a 16th century feminist who favored a bigger role for the women in the Catholic church. This is a theory of many others. Varvel says that Leonardo Da Vinci placed a total of 40 separate symbols taken from verses of the bible that prove his theory even more. It is a complex painting yet there are many symbols and hints to show that the painting is a biblical reference and Mona Lisa is in favor of women’s rights.

I completely agree with Varvel’s theory. It’s not only Varvel that believes this though. You can clearly see there are issues diffused into the painting that were going on during Da Vinci’s time. Mona Lisa looks like a confident woman in the painting too and that smile shows that there is a bigger meaning. There are a lot of biblical references in the painting also like the Calvary and Mount of Olives. 

The women during this time were not treated equal. Actually, women weren’t treated equal until centuries later. We didn’t get rights until women started to rebel in the 1920s. Mona Lisa’s painting is mysterious yet a beautiful piece of artwork. I love it and it was really interesting to learn about!

Facebook Cover and Profile Picture!

We created a Facebook Cover and Profile Picture this week. The only requirement was that it had to be creative and cool looking. I had the idea of making a collage of pencil drawings for my cover photo, and also making my profile picture a pencil drawing so it looks like its part of the collage.

I had a really fun time making this it gave me a chance to really think outside of the box and be creative. I’m proud of how it turned out also. Happy Friday everyone! 🙂

Road Sign Artstart!- 2/26/14

Today our artstart was to create five different road signs that served as immediate communication systems. I chose to make a teen driver sign, ant farm sign, tsunami sign, baseball field sign, and a fortune teller sign. I really enjoyed this artstart because they were really fun to make! Making signs was a lot easier then I expected. I’m a lot better with Photoshop now so it didn’t take me very long to create these images. 

To create these, all I did was download the blank road sign. Then, I used various clip arts and the text tool on Photoshop to create my signs. I also used the magic wand to quite a lot to delete unnecessary backgrounds on the clip art. Road signs are a simple way to communicate things quickly. Happy Wednesday everyone! 🙂