Adventures in Artwork: 2014

Saturday, November 22, 2014

Not Waving but Drowning

For those of you who don't know, "Not Waving but Drowning" is a famous poem by Stevie Smith. If you're interested, you can view the poem here. To me, the poem represents not only death, but depression, misery, pain, etc. The last stanza of the poem says,
"Oh, no no no, it was too cold always

(Still the dead one lay moaning)

I was much too far out all my life

This stanza really inspired me to create a piece of artwork (alright, if I'm being honest, I'm also doing is as a "nonpaper" instead of a paper for my Brit Lit II class...).

This is the result:

The figure is a woman because the sketch that Smith drew alongside the poem was of a girl in the water, so that's what inspired me to paint a woman, standing in water, with the water reaching up to grab her. Inside the water you'll see a figure bent over with words all around saying, "I hate my life," "Why?" "I don't care," etc. This deeply depressing image, along with the image on her body and by her head, represent the depression that's inside of her and always attacking her. It also represents the darker message of the poem. The area surrounding the woman is bright, colorful, and filled with words and designs. This is meant to illustrate Smith's playful rhythm and tone. The background also serves to distract the viewer from the depressing images, illustrating how society likes to forget about the negative and focus more on the positive. I got some of these ideas from three criticisms about the poem:

Not Waving but Drowning

Poetry for Students

Autonomy and Commitment in Twentieth-Century British Literature. Eds. Christine Reynier, Jean-MichelGanteau. Montpellier: Presses Universitaires de la Méditerranée. 2010. 145-161.

Anderson, Linda: Gender, feminism and poetry

The Cambridge Companion to Twentieth-Century English Poetry. Corcoran, Neil (ed.)Cambridge; New York173-186

Sunday, November 16, 2014

Nov. 16, 2014

This is what I decided to try to draw at around 12 am last night:

I followed a tutorial that I found on Youtube. You can find it here.

Saturday, November 15, 2014

An Oil Portrait...with FUN colors

As of now, this is my most recent work of art. I was inspired by the same photo that I based my last post (Watercolor Self-Portrait) on. Only this time, instead of using black and white watercolor, I decided to go in the completely opposite direction. I opted for oils, which incidentally, take a LONG time to dry (especially if you use linseed oil with them, like I did). I also opted for... (drumroll please)...
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(oh, that's enough drum roll? Okay then...)

COLOR!

I decided that I didn't really want this face to look traditional, that is with flesh tones, etc. I wanted this face to be a kaleidoscope of color! So that's what I did. I used brighter colors for the parts of the face that would be lighter, and darker colors for areas that would be darker or in shadow. Then I created the hair with some black "highlights" (or lowlights, as it is). A what could be more beautiful than a bright, green lip?

A Watercolor Self-Portrait

You know, I've put several self-portraits on this blog already. None of them really look like me. So far, this is the closest I've come; it's from a picture from 3 years ago (my Sophomore year of college) and so, in reality, it really doesn't look like me now. I did have a really fun time painting this though, especially with all the shading. If you haven't guessed already, yes, this is another watercolor piece. I tend to go through phases of art, where I focus more specifically on one thing for a period of time. At the beginning of my art "career" it was sketching and drawing. Then it was acrylic paints. Next it was Sharpies, then a little bit of oils, and now watercolor (with the occasional other medium thrown in). There's something so beautiful to me about watercolors. Maybe it's the subtlety, or the transparency, or the way it just seems to flow. I'm not entirely sure. What I am sure of though, is that watercolors (I use watercolors from little tubes) are incredibly fun, and I encourage you to go and try them out. You might just be surprised.

Watercolor with a black gouache border.

Work In-Progress

This is my current work in progress. It is a watercolor portrait of my twin sister, sitting on a chair.
It's rather minimalistic, with the exception of the eyes and glasses, that is. It took me a few hours to get this far on it. But the really impressive part of this story is that I actually got my sister to sit still for that period of time. Sure, she was watching television while I was painting, but still, the fact that she sat still is a small miracle. You wouldn't know it by looking at this picture, but my sister has quite the personality. And by that I mean that her personality is HUGE. She's bubbly, talkative, hyper, dramatic, loquacious (I know I already said talkative, but I really like this word), funny, crazy, and mine. She's the most amazing twin anyone could ask for, and so I decided to try to paint a portrait of her. The painting doesn't do her justice, but it's all I'm capable of doing right now.

Watercolor Lamp

This is a watercolor, sharpie (or pen...), and gouache painting of a lamp that hangs in my living room. The lamp itself is purple and black, but I really wanted to do a black and white painting of it because I thought the contrast would be really striking.

The lamp caught my eye because of its shape. It's rather convoluted and seems almost to be unidentifiable on its own. I loved that I got to play with lines in this piece.

Watercolor Class - July 2014

This past July I took a watercolor class at Hope College, taught by Bruce McCombs. I absolutely love watercolors. Although I wasn't taught a lot in my class, I did learn a lot. I think that my watercolors have improved, and I'm so happy about it.

Flower

A Lautrec Bag: Moulin Rouge

Panera Bread Bag

A Moynihan Bag

A 20+ hour painting of part of downtown Holland, MI.

Myrtle Beach

These are the watercolors that I painted while I was in Myrtle Beach this last Spring Break. I think that would put me in February of 2014... or was it March? I don't know. Either way, I painted them this year. I think my faces have improved; at least I like the watercolor portraits much better than the faces I tried to draw.

Random other things from my sketchbook

Here comes the Random Stuff!!

This is what I like to call the Random Stuff. It's drawings that I did quite a while ago that I found in my sketchbooks that didn't fit in the previous three posts. Basically, they're not people, nature, or depression related.

1.SMARTIES

2. A HOUSE - I was asked to draw a house, so this is what I drew.

3. RANDOM DESIGN

4. COCA-COLA GLASS BOTTLE

5. CROSS AND HEART

6.ANOTHER RANDOM DESIGN

7. SOMEONE STUDYING

8. FLYING BIRD 9. RANDOM DESIGN

10. DESIGN

11. RANDOMNESS

12. I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THIS IS...

13. ROCKING CHAIR AND A RANDOM LAMP

Friday, November 14, 2014

Nature and other things...

One of the great things about the above three trees is that, though they may not be very realistic, they span three different art mediums (art mediums are like the materials that you make something out of). In this case, I used charcoal for the first picture on the left, pastels for the middle picture, and pencil for the third picture (on the right). It's really fun to try different mediums because each produces its own special effect.

Oil Pastels

"Other stuff"

A landscape done with pen and ink.

This is the "other things" from the title...

People. Warning: NOT GOOD

I feel that I need to put a disclaimer on here: This artwork is practice only for drawing people. They ARE NOT good and are just practice. However, I hope that with more practice I will become better at drawing them. Human faces are incredibly difficult to draw - they're so technical with all the proportions having to be just so.