Artist Statement

Most people say that being an artist requires patience with your work. In my case, it's the exact opposite. At the beginning of the year, before Ms. Roberts knew me as an artist, she wanted to me to plan out my work beforehand. As we got further into the year, she decided to let my work flow and have me reflect on it afterwards. I dislike both. I feel that real passionate artwork can't be planned because a lack of spontaneity makes art bland. I can't reflect afterwards because it just makes me over-think my work and waste time when I could be making more art. I can't be restrained by mundane tasks when I make art, because the work that those tasks revolve around will turn out to be the same thing: mundane. I love making art when I can make it real. Since I rarely to never think about my artwork, whether or not it is good is determined solely by whether I am passionate about the work I am making. My favorite medium to work with is permanent marker, because whatever is marked is irreversible. This forces me to work with any mistakes I've made if I want to preserve what I've already taken the time to create.

Process Reflection #2

This week, I've finished my final project. I called it SHAPES: A Collective Piece of Artwork by Joe Chafkin. It turned out pretty well. My three main pictures were glued up with a title piece. Next week, I just have to get my blog more up to date, then I will be done with all of my work.

Process Reflection #1

This week has been productive for me. I wrapped up all of my projects, and started my independent project: shapes. Basically, I draw a shape and form a work of art around numerous amounts of the same shape. I got a couple pieces done, then tried to do something but ended up screwing around with a party hat, listened to music, came back, and made something unrelated. I have no process. I have no plan moving forward. I will make art.

Project Planning

During my independent project, I want to create something interesting and entertaining (obviously.) My plan is to have no plan. I will take the same causality that I use in my sketchbook and turn it into something more finished.

Sketchbook Archeology

At times, the sketchbook felt live a privilege. At others, it felt like a chore. Looking through, I see I used a lot of graphite, charcoal, and paint marker. There was a time where I experimented with realism, and another where I experimented with cartoonism. Countless times I mixed both. Some abstract pictures are stories of my life, stories of other people's lives. I feel that the ability to experiment with various artistic elements in my sketchbook has been very beneficial to me as an artist, because it gave me a chance to recognize what I am most comfortable with and what elements I enjoy using.
Things that appear multiple times:

• Dice
• Numbers
• Eyes
• Smeared charcoal simulating wind
• Drips
• Circles
• Trees
• Mushroom clouds/explosions
• Cubes
• Text

Initial Reflection

Art Principles has been great for the past 2 terms. My strength has been overall creativity... getting frustrated with a project, then finding hidden inspiration. I began Art Principles not liking art, thinking it was just another class. I have found a creative outlet in this class, and though big projects were sometimes frustrating, they have been overall rewarding. I'm not sure which art I will be taking next term... probably not clay, because clay is a challenge for me that I don't really enjoy. As cliche as it sounds, after this class I try to see art in everything, which will be useful for broadening my creative spectrums later in life.

Collaborative Mural Project

So far, things have been going great in our collaborative mural project. John, Eric, Daniel and I have agreed upon an idea that has a lot of potential to add greatly to the cafeteria. We have decide to dilute paint and dip round sponges in said paint. We will then drop the sponges onto our canvas, cut a piece of realistic plastic fruit in half, and match up the color of the paint spatter to the color of the fruit. In a perfect world, this will look like somebody has thrown food at the canvas. Otherwise, we could try to pass it off as abstract. We are hoping for the former, but out painting techniques are risky and we could easily end up with the latter. Eric, Daniel, and I have already tested this method on paper, and the effect created is excellent.

Term 1 Art Principles Reflection

This term in Art Principles has been terrific. I've been able to hone my artistic skills dramatically. Before Art Principles, I was able to draw with a steady hand, but I only saw what was in front of me, and copied it. I learned to take what I was given, and make it into a real work of art, exemplified in the Found Object Project and the Found Image Project. Also, rather than starting out precisely, I learned to take a mess of pencil marks and shape it into a realistic picture, Like in the Drop Everything and Draw with sticks. These are just a couple of skills I've honed or acquired this term. Though I've been extremely satisfied with my work, I now see that many of my Drop Everything and Draw projects are incomplete due to running out of time, but I will try to put in extra hours in the future. I'd like to thank Ms. Roberts for a great term, and I'm excited for next term.

Chair Drawings

This project was the combination of almost every project we've done. We had to get the shininess of a vinyl chair, as well as the sturdiness of its wooden base. In addition to that, we had to draw a wrinkled coat on top of the chair. I spent too much time on my chair, so I wasn't able to finish the project, but if I had more time I think it would have looked really good.

Fabric Drawings

This exercise started out difficult for me. It required us to make vague shapes which we would gradually transform into fabric. I guess the concept of vague shapes didn't compute with me while drawing fabric, because of all of the intricate folds. It was different than drawing the sticks, because rather than adding clarity to a mess, we had to use shading to make folds out. Rather than shading specific parts, it was more comfortable for me to shade all of the cloth and use an eraser point to make the drawing appear to have shadows. Overall, the end-product was good, but unfinished.

Sculpture Reflection

The idea of this project is not to have an idea and find materials that work, but to get inspiration from the objects you are given. John and I had a big box of technology and random objects, and we were told to look for objects that looked like something, objects provocative of ideas. There was a piece of a scanner in the box that one of us said looked like a gun. I took this scanner, and hot glued a phone battery case to the bottom, a piece of a hanger to the middle, and something that looked like a trigger in between. It came out looking exactly like a gun.

Extended Pour Painting

For my extended pour painting, I took the element of drip-painting from my original pour painting. I used this concept to create a log, with brown paint. I went over the drips with further diluted paint, so as to preserve the lines made by the dripping. It was a fun project, but the log alone seemed plain. Over that log, I stuck on non-dry clay to make a hatchet, and covered the head with aluminum foil. The end-product was mostly good, expect for the yellowish oil that seeped through the paper directly around the non-dry clay.

Stick Drawings

Today's assignment was to put aside our perfectionist sides, and start out scribbling. We had to draw a pile of sticks, and add shape to the mess. My endproduct felt good, because the process took so much revision. The middle, where the sticks crossed, comprised of probably about 500 layers of graphite. On the outside, I drew sticks that were realistic, eventually shaping the entire clump in the center into a realistic-esque scene.

Found Photos Collage

Title: God Bless America

This was an interesting project. I came back to art class/school from having a bad but brief case of mononucleosis, only to be told that I should make an image with photos that I found looking through magazines. I was immediately drawn to a section in a magazine about a multiple-statewide flea market. The photos taken were colorful collections of toys, clothes, and guns. I liked several of the photos, so I cut them out. The image of all of the mint-condition toy cars was particularly colorful, so a picture was taken on a digital camera and printed out. Once that was out, I layered the original image in the corner of the larger print-out, and another bright collection of toys in the other corner. In contrast, I cut out an assortment of rifles out from another collection, and had them strewn across the bottom. In the center, a cutout of the back of two babies sitting down, with an action speech bubble from one baby, saying "YES!" I'd say that this image represents children in America, growing up in a land of luxury, toys, and violence.

The Changing Still Life

What our class did today was definitely not the most fun exercise we've done. We were crowded around a blue box, with easels in front of us, armed with charcoal and pieces of eraser. The box started out with just a jar on top of it. Simple goal: draw what you see, from your perspective. This seemed easy, until things started being added. We had to start erasing, which doesn't turn out well with charcoal. Things were added, then taken away, and we had to keep up with what was going on. The only real-life scenario I can pair this activity with is one of those people who draws defendants in courtrooms, since photos can't be taken. The end product was messy and sloppy on everyone's part, even though we have a class full of meticulous detail-artists. This shows how challenging the test presented to us really was.

Pour Paintings

For starters, I liked the base of my pour painting because it was simple, neat and involved virtually no pouring. I guess that was my downfall, because I had nothing to work with when I realized what the project was actually about. My paper had been stripped of creativity, but I was determined. I thought it looked like an birds-eye view of roads, or a map, so I drew dots to represent cars. Red splotches came to become car wrecks, drip starting points became rotaries. I felt pretty confident until I realized, "Something has to be causing all this chaos." That motivated me to draw a monster that had been eventually taken down by military efforts, but wreaking havoc in the meantime. Bad choice. Bad bad bad bad bad choice. After that had been added, it looked like a crappy doodle from third grade. I couldn't bear to look at it anymore, so I put it away. I really regret adding the military scene in the middle.

Talk and Draw

Today's activity was particularly challenging. It was called "Talk and Draw" where a set of items were set behind us and we essentially had to draw a still life based on the description of the picture by a partner. In my case, I had a group of 3. The drawing was quick and easy, and didn't turn out too bad. However, come my (and my partner's) turn to meticulously describe the scene which was set up, trouble arose. We argued over who were to describe it. I personally thought I should, because I described quickly and accurately, and so I did for most of the ordeal. The end product was decent.

Collaborative Drawings

I'd say that my experience with the collaborative drawings didn't teach me a whole lot, considering the way  my original picture was created. Before we knew we'd be switching pictures, I happened to have given my picture a fairly strict story line through words, signs, etc. Therefore, after two people had drawn on my work, the only thing that happened was color added, as well as some other small details. I wouldn't say I was disappointed, considering that my picture wasn't ruined or made a mess of, but I found it interesting how confining a story line to art can be. I'd say that if we did anything along these lines in the future, I wouldn't add words, as to spoil the freedom of a lucrative canvas.

art principles 2010-2011: Reflecting on Picasso quote.

art principles 2010-2011: Reflecting on Picasso quote.: "Today we read this quote by Pablo Picasso: 'Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.' On your blog..."

It seems what Picasso is trying to stress is that all kids have massive creativity. What he's communicating makes a lot of sense to me because in my mind, we, the students of Ms. Robert's art class and art classes all over the world, are the theoretical kids. As we grow up, our creativity is stifled with manners and assimilation into adult society. Picasso is saying that true artists keep the spark of creativity handed to them at birth, and use it to make a metaphorical fire: the art we recognize as masterpieces.