Tuesday, June 1, 2010

The World is a Carrousel of Color

OKAY. Here I am, updating the blog finally. Sorry for the delay, there's just been lots going on. But in turn I have lots to show!! This post is going to be about color, because the past few weeks that seems to be the main focus of two of my classes. I've been using pastel for the first time ever, and although I do like some of the effects it has overall I'm pretty much done with it. Way too messy, smudgy, and difficult. But I got some fairly good stuff out of it so there you go.

This first piece is just my first experience with pastel done from a strange still life involving cloth and parasols:


After that we were given an assignment to do a series. The series had to consist of five different images that all relate in some way, while also using specific color palettes. So I decided to do a series based on basically how men's clothing and style is kind of a lost art innit of itself. The result came out kind of pop art-y but that's alright. Below each image I'll put which color palette I had to work with.

Colors I Hate

Colors I Love

Primary Colors

Harmonious Colors

 Nocturnal Colors

I got really good feedback on all of them and overall I was pretty happy with how they came out. Only thing I'm not satisfied with is that on the colors I love one, I wasn't sure which color to do the skin tone in, so I just did it in regular flesh tones. But I'm not sure if that was the right choice. Suggestions?
 
And now, another naked person. In my life drawing class we also have been using pastel, and for one of our projects we had to do this man in pastels but without any flesh tones, black, white, or gray. So this is what came of it:
 

And now lastly is my least resolved piece but colorful nonetheless. First I have to set it up though. I went into my Concepts in Drawing class and my teacher told us to cut a piece of this butcher paper as long as our height. So we did that and put them all on the wall. Then she told us to:

1. Paint a metaphor of ourselves, the first thing that comes to mind.
2. Go to the piece to your right and divide it into thirds using abstract shapes.
3. In one of those thirds, draw something your mother would like.
4. Turn it upside down.
5. Go back to your first piece and destroy the part that you think is keeping it together.
6. Unify the piece.
7. Go to the piece to your right again and get rid of any trace of the artist that preceded you.
8. Now go home, ask a friend for an idea for a self portrait for you, and do the exact opposite on it.

Needless to say, this exercise was exhausting. I asked my friend for a self portrait idea and she told me to do my self looking into a mirror with a mirror behind me, and show all the different reflections. So I thought the opposite would be me between brick walls...

It's strange but I guess interesting in a way. There's so many layers. I decided to do it a bit abstractly since that's what the background seemed to call for. Anyway, that's all for this post. I'll post more often I promise! Let me know what you think....

-Liam



2 comments:

  1. Yay! I'm so happy you finally did a post! It's awesome to see the finished projects I've heard about but hadn't yet seen also! I really love the outcome of your pastel assignments Liam - I'd love to see you do more with pastels, but I understand about the mess :/ Love the series you decided to do. The funny thing is, the colors you hate most is my favorite piece! LOL! And it was great to see the finished piece from your Concepts in Drawing class - you between brick walls was a FAB idea :) Keep up the great work Liam - and keep sharing it!

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  2. Thank you so much!! Yeah, a lot of people's favorite is the colors I hate one haha. Probably came out well since I was so focused on making the drawing better since the colors were so horrid lol. I'll probably will work with pastels again, just not very soon haha. Thanks again!!

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