Final project and the End of the BS degree

 Final project

Self-portrait

30x30

Graphite

I have been working on the concepts behind my art  and the idea behind this piece can be taken in two ways. I wanted the piece to portray who I am as a person, as an individual, and an artist. 

The first idea is similar to being trapped by the expectations of others and given stereotypes. Everyone is stereotyped by the world and the people around them, just as I have been. I am labeled because of the things I do (feet panel), how I look (butt panel), and how I think and what I believe (head panel). I have been trapped within the stereotypes, and the walls that those labels have been placed upon me before and I want to break free. 

The second concept follows along the lines of an 'artist' block. When an artist reaches a point of being stuck and has trouble moving forward in their art. Our minds can't reach out of the box or 'think out of the box' because we are limiting ourselves, our thinking and our ability. We are getting in our own way of being successful.

Life Drawing and the Nude

Before I begin posting images, I’d like to clear the air about figure drawing and figure drawing classes. Figure drawing comes with the negative connotation that it is pornography (especially in Utah); that it is a group of people that go and draw naked bodies. They draw and focus on areas of the body that are deemed private and unholy (when in actuality they are sacred). They are sexual objects/parts, exposed and displayed for others to see in a class. This was a prominent thought in my mind when entering the visual arts field of study. I was secretly afraid of having to draw a nude model. It was uncharted territory and something that I viewed as uncomfortable and inappropriate. I had no desire to draw a nude figure, just the thought made me anxious. My first experience having to draw the nude figure was a lot better than I anticipated. Why? Because it wasn’t sexualized like my brain imagined it to be. It was, as all of my other nude figure drawing classes have been, extremely professional. 

The figure drawing room is not like the outside world. Those who are in the class are all there to learn and to study the body; to study the movement, the beauty, the muscles, the value, the shadows, shapes, forms, etc. Nothing is sexualized, which is apparently very difficult for non-art people to understand. Why is it hard for them? Well, everyone has grown up in the world where everything is sexualized, the body especially. The body has become so sexualized in the world today than any sort of nude display becomes a form of pornography. Yes, pornography is terrible and I am not saying that nudity should be accepted everywhere, but we were given bodies by Heavenly Father. Our bodies are sacred and beautiful. They shouldn’t become sexualized objects. They shouldn’t be used for pornography. Sadly, I cannot control the world and the people in it. 

With the attitude of everything becoming sexualized, it is difficult to show, display, or even discuss this type of art work with people outside of the realm of art, and I completely understand that view. Movies, magazines, television, even throughout art history the body, especially the female body, has been turned into an object to be desired, which is why it is difficult to view figure drawing a nude model any different, because that is what we are used to seeing around us. Figure drawing is not something that should be sexualized. I can’t share some of my work with certain people because I will be judged according to the worldly notion. They see the piece and it automatically becomes a naked body instead of celebration of the beauty of the human form. All they see is the nakedness.

With that being said, I share these images in the hope that they will be viewed maturely and appropriately. These are nothing but a study of the human form. A study of the movement, light, and beauty that we are all blessed with.

I'll begin with my life drawing sketchbook sketches

Head studies

Graphite

Foot and hand studies

Graphite

Value/no line studies

Charcoal

Quick drawing studies

Charcoal

This is probably one of my best drawings I have ever done.

Skeleton Study

24x30 approx

Charcoal

These are actually from my drawing 2 class, but due to the nudity, I placed them here.

Enlightenment

Charcoal

Trying out a different style

Charcoal

 *I'll update the sizes when I measure them out. None of these projects were small, by any means (except the sketchbook work-they are all on 9x12 paper

Color Theory!

Middle Mixture

Mixing colors using separate pieces of paper. Pretty awesome

Fluting!

Creating a gradient of colors where the middle color between to samples is exactly half of the colors it is placed between. The fluting occurs when a solid color looks to be lighter on one end and darker on the other due to the colors that are next to it.

Mixing dots to create a certain color. Oranges, yellows, blues, and greens make up the image. 

Playing with colors and light. It just the right light, all of these colors look like they are the same shade, but they are all different shades of blue, green, and gray. Nifty trick. The light was different this day so the right side is darker than it should appear to be.

This class was a blast! I'm sure it was because of the people in it, because I would not have survived this class alone. It was tiring on the eyes and I would have been content to stare at a white wall for hours after this class ended. Staring at colored paper and manipulating their colors for hours was exhausting, but it was fun to see and experiment with colors. It is definitely a science.

Drawing 2 (Spring 2015)

 First Assignment

Self Portrait
9x12 or 11x14 (I don't remember and I am too lazy to get up to check right now...I'll edit it later)
Graphite

Hogle Zoo gesture drawings
24x30
Charcoal

For one of our assignments we were to draw animals from life and were given extra credit if we went to the zoo. My friend, Chelsey, and I took a trip to Salt Lake City and had a blast. I honestly loved drawing in public and seeing and hearing people compliment and discuss my drawings. (It is something that I'd love to do again for fun).

Story time. We went to the Gorilla exhibit and the silverback male gorilla was sitting against the wall with a blanket wrapped around his shoulders. It was so incredibly funny and human-like. As we were drawing Tino (the gorilla) he came over to the glass and was right in our faces. He looked at me and I showed him my drawing. He glanced at the paper, then back to me, then back to the paper. Can I just say that he was ridiculously huge. His head was the size of a tire and I felt so tiny. He eventually walked around in front of the glass, got angry and pounded on the glass and scared the crap out of all the visitors (there were a bunch). A few months later I saw in the paper that Tino had cancer and had died, so this quick gesture drawing is now a tribute to him.

Theme: Charity and Compassion

9x24 (2 pieces)

Charcoal pencil

I wanted to do something a little bit different than the theme, but still portray charity and compassion. I have many sketches of different idea that I thought could work, but the idea of loving, manipulation, and vulnerability kept coming back to me. When we love someone, we would do anything for that person, and sometimes that includes things that we normally would not do. We can be manipulated by love and we can manipulate for love. When we see someone who is less privileged than us, it pulls at our heart strings, we want to help them. When we give our heart to someone, we are giving them the ability to hurt us, to control us in a sense. All of these ideas were thoughts that pushed this piece. I leaned towards two separate planes because we are in fact separate individuals connected and tied together through experiences; through our compassion, and our love for one another.

Axial Modeling

This is something that I struggled with and spend two or three days trying to master because it difficult for me to comprehend. It is a technique that only uses lines to create shape and value. I had to think about every line, whether it could bulge, dive, curve, or define. One wrong angle or direction and it would change the shape of the figure. It was fun to really look and problem-solve between what my brain was seeing and what my hand was drawing.

In class model drawings

24x30

Graphite

*Due to the fact that many times our models were nude, I will not posting very many of my in class drawings. I want to keep this blog post 'G'-rated. I will have a post dedicated to figure drawing later, to spare those of you who are sensitive to nudity in art.

  

Master study

15x24

Mixed media: chalk pastel, colored pencil, acrylic paint, pen

Original: The Great Wave off Kangawa

Katsushika Hokusai

Woodblock print

My drawing is on the left while the original is on the right

Final Project

24x30

Charcoal

I had seen some of the inverted drawings online and thought I'd give it a try for part of my final project. I wanted to create a dichotomy of childhood/adulthood, purity/impure, dark/light. I had a very difficult time with this project and I am still not quite pleased with it. Proportions are off and it just doesn't quite hit the threshold of awesomeness that the original idea deserves. I spent hours upon hours drawing, erasing, and redrawing, then shading and more erasing, and I am sure there was blood, sweat, and tears in there as well. I don't think I pulled it off as well as I wanted to, but the inverting was fun to manipulate and play with. There were a few things that I was proud of when I drew it, but they are small details that very few people would catch onto (like how when the image is inverted, I created a light source on the left that lights up the adult on the right), but those small details don't add up to pull off the effect that I wanted the whole piece to have.

Overall, I learned a lot in this drawing class. I learned how to not become attached to work and how to let go and be free in my drawing instead of just strict and detailed like I used to be. It was very freeing and exciting!

Being afraid of Art

Drawing classes used to scare me. Just the thought of other people looking at my work and not having them like it made me nervous. Even the thought of having to talk about my work or even participate in a critique to share my opinion of someone else's art made me anxious. And what do I do? I decide to get a degree in art. I decided to do the things that scared me. I don't like to be forced to participate or to talk. If I have something to say, I'll say it, but having a grade depend on me verbally voicing my opinion made me anxious. I was scared to take my first art class in high school. I was scared that I wasn't good enough. I was afraid that I would fail. I was afraid that everyone else was better than me, but the beautiful thing that I have learned over the years is that I don't need to be afraid of making art. I don't need to be afraid that someone won't like what I create. I don't need to be scared to try. I don't need to be scared to do something that makes me happy.

As I continued to do art through high school and later on in college, a switch was flipped. I began to understand lighting and value. I began to see things differently. I noticed the details that were more often than not ignored by others. I noticed how beautiful the details could be. I began to see the world with different eyes, noticing things that very few people saw and wanting to capture those details and show others what they were missing out on. Once I started actually seeing the world around me, the hard part came. How was I to capture the beauty and make others see what I wanted them to see? How could I overcome the fear of being judged for what I saw as beautiful? Would I become good enough to become confident in my skills and my opinions? 

I slowly became more confident the more that I drew and the more that I created art, but the nagging feeling of not being good enough to succeed remained. The drive to do my best kept me going. I was pushed to become better. I was challenged by my peers and teachers/professors. I grew to enjoy critiques and voiced my opinion when I felt necessary. I still want my art to speak for itself, but I am more than willing to discuss my thoughts to clarify and to expand on my work (although I still don't like being forced to speak...or be forced to do anything at all really.)

The biggest thing that helped me overcome my fear of art was how my attitude changed. In the beginning I was comparing my art to the work of those around me. Everyone's work was better than mine. "This person did this better than I did" or "That person is just all around a better artist than I am" I wasn't comparing my work to the progress that I had made. Once I began to compare my work to my own, I was able to see how far I have come and how much I have improved through the years. I have come a long ways in my art skills and my way of thinking.

I love looking at other people's art, those who claim that they 'can't/don't draw', and more often than not (if they know that I draw or have seen my work), they always degrade their own work. But they are comparing their work to mine, not their own. They don't see the beauty of their work, they only see what I have done. They don't see what I am able to see. They don't see their progress or their potential. They are like me; afraid of not being good enough and looked down upon, so they down-play what they have accomplished. I am definitely guilty of doing this as well, but why do we do it? We shouldn't compare our weaknesses to other's strengths. It only makes us see what we cannot do instead of what we have done. We should be proud of our accomplishments. We should strive to see our potential, seek to improve on our weaknesses, and always remember that there will always be someone who is deemed better than us, but we shouldn't let that stop us from wanting to progress whether it be in life or in the art world. We are all great in our own way and the fear of being critiqued shouldn't stop us from creating  and succeeding. We shouldn't be afraid of art.

Drawing 2 Sketchbook

Here are some images of my sketchbook from my drawing 2 class (Spring 2015) I had a blast being able to draw whatever I wanted for my homework.

                                                                          

                                                                         

 Graphite

9x12

There is always the debate on whether zebras are black with white stripes or white with black stripes...but what if they were just striped all the way down to their bones???

Some misshapen animals

Lion                                                                                        Giraffe

9x12                                                                                           9x12

Charcoal                                                                       Ball point pen

Reminiscing about an old sculpture project. Cartoon-izing and drawing geometric animal skulls. I am going to do a series of these skulls in the future. They were fun to imagine and play around with. 

Graphite 

9x12

Our model didn't show up for class this day, so we improvised for class. It was one of the funnest drawing classes that I have had in college. We had three options to choose from for a 15 minute drawing. Each of the options were two random words that we chose as a class. For each drawing session, we had to incorporate the words into a drawing. It was fun to see how different every one interpreted the words and to see everyone's style emerge through their drawing.

Richard Simmons and birthday cake

Zombie and Shark/Aliens and commodes

Broccoli eating junk food

Here are some more of my sketchbook drawings. Three of these were studies of how an object looks when you change the angle and the other two were random designs.