Walters & Final assignment

First off, I wanted to say you guys rocked it in class today. Good stuff all around. Keep it up!

Walters trip:
This Saturday, 10 am. Meet in Cafe Doris or outside on benches.
Bring sketchbook/supplies, camera. Paint & food & drink are not permitted at the Walters.You will also have to leave bags larger than 13’ x 17’ at the coatcheck. If you get hungry, there is a café in the museum.

After thanksgiving break we only have 3 more classes left, so this is your final project. Sketches are due after thanksgiving break, and your finals will be due on the final day of class, along with the rest of the work you’ve been doing this semester. I

While you’re at the Walters, I’d like you to do 10 sketches in your sketchbook, approx. 10 minutes each (you can do copies of paintings, sculpture, or the spaces themselven). Also, you need to find something that inspires you which you will base your final project on. It can be a specific piece of art, or theme, or colors, or composition, or style of art, or story, it can be basically anything. I want you to use that inspiration to create 3 final pieces that go together in some way. It can be 3 posters, 3 editorial illustrations, 3 children’s book illustrations, 3 t-shirt designs, 3 paintings, whatever you like. So here’s some examples—let’s say you are inspired by one of the stories shown on the greek pottery or the Indian figurines. You could take that story and illustrate 3 scenes or make a sci-fi interpretation of it for your 3 illustrations. Or let’s say you see the painting of Saint Jerome in his study and really enjoy the theme. You could do more of a fine-arts type project and do 3 portraits of your friends or favorite literary characters in their own rooms. Or lets say you’re inspired by some of the art deco brooches, you could make 3 art-deco themed greeting cards or theater posters. You can also focus on something more technically-inspired, like a color palette or composition. The sky’s the limit here!

Before you leave the Walters this saturday, each of you need to come to me and tell me your inspiration and what you’d like to do for your final project, and show me your 10 sketches.
Our next class after the Walters, November 30, is when your sketches will be due for this final assignment. You should have at least 3 sketches for each proposed final piece, which means 9 total. No blog assignments.

I’m putting a list below of some types of projects you can start thinking about.

*I will say right now that I wouldn’t recommend doing 3 comic pages unless you’re really into it, because it’ll be a lot more work. I’m not banning it though.

*You can do a triptych (3 pieces that form one image), but each section of the triptych needs to be able to stand on its own, too.

*If any of the particular projects we had interested you, you can always delve deeper and do a continuation.

*3 scenes from a myth or story, re-interpreted in your own style or in a different setting/context

*Redesigns of bookcovers for 3 classic or favorite books (with your own twist)

*A more fine-arts project, like individualized portraits of your friends (trying to incorporate more than just their looks into their portraits, like the nontraditional self portrait project)

*1 page of 5 finalized character designs and 2 images of the finalized character in its environment (or 2 pages of 5 character designs and 1 image of finalized characters in their environment).

*Album or CD covers or posters for a band you're interested in

*Picking 3 news stories and doing editorial illustrations for them

*A product or graphic-design based project—- greeting cards, T-shirt designs.

*3 Tarot or horoscope drawings with a theme

*3 scenes from a myth, re-interpreted.

*You can do a project with a simpler theme, too. This is wide open for what YOU want to focus on.

Don't make things too complicated for you to finish… You have 3 weeks to get these pieces done (and finish up any redo’s of the rest of your work from this semester), and you’ll have finals coming up in the rest of your classes. Manage your time well.

See you this Saturday!


copyright Juao Ruas
Arum-- you requested images from the self portrait stuff I showed you guys last week.
Here's how to look at them all online:
Go here: IdeaFixa online magazine
Scroll down and click the "Self Portrait" issue. It's white.
A new window will open up, click "Self Portrait" again. It has an "8" below it.
Another new window will open up, click "skip" and start turning the pages!

self portrait

me.

Traditional Self-Portrait

Self Portrait

Self Portrait

15-minute Self

SELF PORTRAIT

Traditionl Self Portrait

Traditional Self Portrait

this is what i look like

im not bald btw

Traditional Self Portrait

Non-traditional self portrait!

ATTENTION: I'm looking for 3 more people willing to do artist presentations next week. Please comment on this post to let me know that you're interested!

This is an exercise in creative thinking...what defines you as a person? It can be one small aspect of your personality or your life, or an event or collection of things. It's not just your face! In fact, your non-traditional self portrait doesn't have to show a physical representation of you at all, but it can. The medium/size/proportion is totally up to you, as long as the final image is at least as large as 8.5x11.
Bring in any preliminary sketches/reference you did, in addition to your final piece next week.

For the blog, do a 15 min or longer traditional self-portrait. It can be B&W or color, any medium. Use a strong lighting source, I want to see shadows and highlights & not just outlines. Don't take a photo of yourself and then draw from the photo, it's an easy way out and it's a more valuable experience (though harder) to draw from an actual mirror.

Have fun with this assignment, I'm looking forward to what you guys come up with! See you next week!

Workers of the World, Watch Out!

Article for your in-class assignment!

NY Times Op-ed pages with example illustrations!

Get to it!

Mark Fredrickson and Maria Kalman.

Two artists I decided to compare and contrast in “Illustration Now” are Mark Fredrickson and Maria Kalman.  Both of the artists have distinct styles that caught my attention.

Mark Fredrickson’s works are very realistic but figures in his works are mostly caricaturized. He illustrates figures with big heads, narrow shoulders, small hands and tiny body. Upon first looking at Fredrickson’s work, I thought he used acrylic due to the richness of colors and heavy texture. However, soon I realized that he works in digital because of the range of values and the natural color blends. Maria Kalman’s works are also realistic but in different way. Although all the figures in her works are realistic in proportion unlike the figures in Fredrickson’s works, they are stylized. When I first looked at Kalman’s illustration, I figured she also uses acrylic as well but she uses gouache. Both of artists show their profound understanding about colors and their engaging illustrators definitely show it off.

The way Fredrickson characterizes what he draws is unique and from his style, I can tell how much efforts he put into his work because every artwork of his in the “Illustration Now” is unbelievably detailed. In contrast, Kalman simplifies everything by depicting highlights of the objects or including texts in her illustration. Also from Kalman’s style, I could immediately tell the illustrator is a woman. Bright colors, gentle line works and subject she deals within her works reveal that Kalman is a woman illustrator. Her works are feminine. She also states that her paintings are narrative, absurd, humorous and rely on her personal storytelling. On the other hand, Mark Fredrickson seems to satirize what he draws.  Overall, works of Maria Kalman’s are stylized and vivid yet pleasing and Mark Fredrickson’s illustrations are often dark undertone and extremely detailed yet entertaining. 

Compare and Contrast Artists

For my compare and contrast blog assignment I'd like to compare and contrast Izumi Nogawa and Mark Frederickson because of their approaches' similarities and differences that are both equally successful. Because of their specialized style and subject matter they both have a unique place in illustration that they cater to. Izumi Nogawa's style has diverse appeal and is more universal, lending itself to many different jobs, such as editiorial, advertising, and book illustrations. He focuses on female figures with floral illuminations and with the bright, saturated colors, his illustrations feel carefree and joyful. He plays with spacial depth by using line and shape and pattern to either flatten or deepen space. Because the faces of the figures are undescribed and iconicized they are open for the viewer to project themselves on, making them more universal. The dramatic poses and linework in the hair and flowers gives a sense of energy and movement to static figures. Mark Frederickson, an editorial illustrator and political cartoonist focuses on very specific characters in politics and entertainment. He exaggerates features to show his own interpretation of the characters for humor. He creates narratives in his pictures by selectively giving characters objects and actions to tell stories about themselves. His highly refined, realistic style allows him to exaggerate while still maintaining the specificity of the character. His colors fuse grungy flesh tones and greys with choice colors that pop, unlike Nogawa who maintains a consistent saturation. Frederickson also utilizes facial expression and makes the most out of it to communicate emotion while Nogawa does not. I feel that they are both equally successful because they work for their specific roles in illustration

Mark Fredrickson and Silja Gotz

Fredrickson and Gotz have very distinct, yet different styles of artwork. Fredrickson specializes in creating charicatures of famous people, in a hyper-realistic, yet over the top manner. Most of his work has people with extremely large heads, with tiny bodies in comparison. His colors are also realistic, and he seems to specialize in dramatic lighting on the characters. His work also has a somewhat gruesome quality, as the people portrayed are not really portrayed in a very flattering way. He uses a large amount of detail in his work, not through lines, but through his shadowing technique to bring about this hyper-realistic quality. This is not just in his people, though. His backgrounds have the same amount of extreme detail in them that his people do, which helps emphasize the characters. All of his work is done entirely in photoshop, but it has somewhat of a painterly feel to it. In contrast, Gotz’s work focuses on elegant linework and use of flat color. The people in Gotz’s work have more realistic proportions, but the overall effect of them is not realistic, but instead beautifully characterized in simple lines. Her colors are usually limited and have a low saturation. There is also a reliance on the original white of the paper, and not everything is colored in. Gotz also has a lot of detail in her work, but in an entirely different way than Fredrickson. Her detail is in her linework, as she uses many thin lines to give detail to hair and feathers. Although she does also use photoshop, she also uses a combination of cut paper, ink, and pencil to create her works. Gotz’s work, to me, has a very elegant and simple feel to it, which I enjoy much more that Fredrickson’s over the top work, which is more gritty.

Compare and contrast

Chris Gall and Stephanie Augustine both have very distinctive work. Chris Gall makes heavy use of line, creating both shadow and texture with rows of horizontal and vertical lines. This kind of style makes a lot of sense in regards to his dominant materials: “engraving on heavy masonite board”. Stephanie Augustine’s style is completely different. She rarely uses contours: instead, colors indicate where lines could be. Her work is “entirely handmade” out of “paper and fabric” and acrylic paint. As far as content, Chris Gall’s work focuses on rather more figurative images- his illustrations represent what they are literally supposed to be. While they might be fantastical, it is easy to understand what “Out of Control Media” is trying to say. Stephanie Augustine’s pieces are more abstract. Just looking at “A Heated Debate” without the title will not exactly explain what is happening. When you look at the title, the meaning becomes clearer. Her work requires more explicit interpretation.

Looking through their pieces, there really is not too many similar aspects to their work.. Both focus on images of people. Both use stylized representations of the human form (albeit very different from each other) Both have a distinct color palette: Chris Gall uses warm golds and Stephanie Augustine uses pale colors. Both artists have a heavy use of dark colors. Even though they are very different artists, the two do have some similarities

Compare and Contrast Artists-

The two artists I choice to compare and contrast was Lisel Ashlock and Gaston Caba. Upon first glance of these two artists, they appeared to be complete opposites. Lisel’s work is fairly realistic and all of her paintings are mostly composed of earthy, muted colors. Gaston Caba on the other hand has crazy super stylized cartoons that has every color of the rainbow wedged in there some where (not including the countless rainbows already on the image!) Another thing that is clear difference between these two illustrators is the choice of medium. Lisel Ashlock is clearly working with traditional media- acrylic paint and wood panels, while Caston Caba is using Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop to create her work. Another difference I get when looking at both of the artist’s pieces is the mood. I get a really calming, yet eerie mood from Lisel Ashlock’s work because of her subtle colors and in almost all of the illustrations I have seen of Lisels, there is atleast one character staring right at the viewer which personally gives off an unnerving feel, but when I look at Gaston Caba’s work it is charged with a really happy, bubbly atmosphere created by her awesome characters which reminds me how fun it was to be a kid.

Although Gaston Caba’s style is very simple colorful cartoons, in some of his illustrations he places them in photo’s and creates a surreal affect with this real version of his cartoons in reality. This quality of Gaston’s work is similar to Lisel’s work. Although Lisel Ashlock’s work is realistic, there always seems to have some aspect that doesn’t belong creating a semi surrealistic quality to her pieces. Despite appearing to be completely different, even these two illustrators, Lisel Ashlock and Gaston Caba, have some common ground that one can relate their work.