Guest Post: Leena

Andy Warhol



In this piece, Andy Warhol utilizes the technique of silk-screening. The hand-stenciled silk allows the silk to compose multiple patterns. By adding layers of the colored silk, the image of the final product begins to appear. These silk screens can be used multiple times, which explains Andy Warhol’s huge collection of Marilyn Monroe portraits. These pieces worked best if the subject were staring at the viewers with a distant touch to them. Andy Warhol was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art. He is famously known as the “Pope of Pop”. Warhol used “striking colors” to attract his audience to his work. These complementary colors influenced many other pop artists.

Sources:

http://www.tutorialkit.com/tutorials/Andy-Warhol-Pop-Art-Silkscreen-Effect-46894.html

http://history1900s.about.com/od/artists/p/warhol.htm



Guest Post: Veronica

Artist: Shinichi Maruyama

Shinichi Maruyama, born in Nagano, Japan, pursues the art of “Kusho”, or shooting ink and water into the air, and capturing the images with a high-speed camera. Focusing in on small areas of each photograph, he creates images full of motion and contrast. In this piece, Maruyama captures a circular images of the ink and water rushing into and looping around each other. Texture is created by the microscopic water and ink droplets mixing; this also creates a range of values, the clear water being the lightest and the pure ink being the darkest. The swirling technique bring the eye around the page, and creates the sense of constant motion.

In this second piece, Maruyama captures the ink and water at their time of collision. The smooth, calm streams contrast with their chaotic meeting-point, drawing focus to that area. He utilizes an asymmetrical balance, the left side being much heavier with the thick ink stream. Water and ink ripples again provide texture, and give the image a 3D-feel.

This technique is significant to the world of art; it exposes artistic beauty that cannot be seem by the naked eye.

Marayuma’s website can be accessed here, as well as a video of his technique: http://shinichimaruyama.com/

Guest Post: Esther

Frederic Edwin Church

Aurora Borealis

Artist Frederic Church is most known for his natural landscape pieces.  To give dept to his pieces, he paints in a panoramic view, capturing the sight not just from a front perspective but including the surrounding as well.  Unlike other painters, Church takes a “scientific approach” when painting nature, using sketches he has accumulated of the area.  His pieces are usually done with oil on canvas and are paintings of mostly the North American and South American landscapes.  In this piece, Church uses oil on canvas to capture the colors of the northern lights in contrast to the land, and water, below it, adding to the piece a bit of a sepia tint.  The darkened night is painted with naturalistic browns to show the solidity of the mountains, and against that, the vivid colors of the Aurora Borealis shine natural light on the distant mountains and rippling waves below.  The ocean includes several shades of blues, greys, and browns, adding to the translucence of the water and showing the effect of natural light on the foreground and middleground.  These features prove to make an aesthetically pleasing piece that causes the eyes to focus on contrasting points of the artwork.

 

Niagara Falls, From the American Side

Church also uses oil on canvas to create a panoramic landscape of the Niagara Falls from the American viewpoint.  He utilizes different shades of blues, greens, and greys to capture the flow and movement of the fall as well as its force.  From this view the mist of the fall disappears into an abyss of mist, creating a forceful yet serene appearance.  Church then adds to his naturalistic landscape natural occurrences, such as the formation of a faint rainbow where the rocks meet the water in the lower corner, to create a scenery that could be compared to the detail and realism of a photograph.

Sources:

http://www.1artclub.com/category/shop-by-artist/frederic-edwin-church/

http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/chur/hd_chur.htm

http://americanart.si.edu/collections/search/artwork/?id=4806

http://www.nationalgalleries.org/collection/online_az/4:322/result/0/4758?initial=C&artistId=1947&artistName=Frederic%20Edwin%20Church&submit=1

Guest Post: Stephanie

Georges Seurat 

A Sunday on La Grande Jette (1884)                                               Through the application of newly discovered optical and color theories, Georges Seurat transposed his images by placing tiny brush strokes (points) of different colors close to one another so that form a single hue in the viewer’s eye, also known as Pointillism. The composition of the piece is composed of various subjects that create a harmonious sum of parts. Although there is no dominant focal point, the piece moves from the foreground to background, allowing the piece to have a unique perspective of looking into the horizon. Most importantly is Seurat’s application of the dots and how he incorporates contrasting or complimentary colors to highlight certain areas.

The Eiffel Tower (1889)

Seurat uses colors that are not typically seen or noticed by the naked eye. Such as “The Eiffel Tower” piece where he uses colors such as red or green as a way to shade in shadow and create dimension. This contrast of colors is pleasing to the eyes as well as creating a greater sense of depth and variety. Seurat altered the direction of modern art by initiating Neo-impressionism, and is one of the icons of 19th century paintings.

Guest Post: Andrea

Artist: Natalie Irish of Houston, Texas

First Piece: Marylin Monroe

Jackson Pollock's drips have been surpassed by portraits painted with kisses. On a large scale canvas, Irish creates close-up portraits that tend to go no futher than the shoulders. Irish achieves a monochramatic color scheme by selecting only one shade and brand of lipstick per compostiton. The darker values near the right side of the face as well as the shadows under her neck are created through numerous, successive layers of the lipstick. Lighter values are achieved by varying the pressure of her kisses. To begin, Irish concentrates on the eyes and close facial features, then proceeds to build of the contour lines of the head, neck, shoulders, and hair.

Second Piece: Jimi Hendrix
 

Irish played a video of Hendrix on a TV set beside her canvas reference material. Her method requires her to stand and physically move around the canvas. The thinner or more curved lines are made by puckering out her bottom lip. Irish does not fill in the entire figure, but rather choose to employ thin lines of color to suggest some of the contour lines of the neck and shoulders. On some of her other pieces, Irish paintst the background beforehand. Then, on a small pallet, she mixes tiny amounts of pigment and when she has the right shade, she smears this on her lips and paints. With these type of compositions, she uses up to three colors. Her method also requires her to constantly shift from working close to the canvas to standing futher away to assess her progress.

Sources:


-natalieirish.com

-http://www.dailymail.co.uk/ushome/index.html

-http://www.odditycentral.com/videos/incredibly-talented-artist-paints-with-her-lips.html

Guest Post: Maggie

Jackson Pollock

Number 3

In this piece, Jackson Pollock used the paint-drip method to express a sense of chaos in his many pieces. He would put the canvas on the floor and used a new medium at the time, alkyd enamel; to “drip” the paint, he used stick, hard paint brushes, and sometimes syringes. The lack of focal point allows the eye to be carried across the page and not focus on one specific point; the colors and the lines would carry the eye. Jackson Pollock created a new method of painting, later known as action painting, where the movement of the media and the type of media was important, rather than the “intricate detail.” He also contributed greatly to the abstract expressionist movement in the 20^th century. 

Number 7

Jackson Pollock utilizes an asymmetrical balance with intricate detail which causes the painting to appear “heavier” on the right side. On the other hand, the left side is composed of enamel lines and splatters which contrast the chaos on the left side; it creates a dynamic composition.

Sources:

http://www.1artclub.com/number-3-by-jackson-pollock/

http://www.abstract-art.com/abstraction/l2_grnfthrs_fldr/g007_pollock_no7,1951.html

http://kathleen-duffy.suite101.com/jackson-pollocks-drip-paintings-in-context-a151464

http://www.jackson-pollock.com/action-painting.html

Pre IB Art 1 homework

Art 1 students, don't forget to print out a couple of pictures you want to use as reference from www.nikonsmallworld.com/gallery

Make sure you have them with you in class on Thursday.