The Fall (Tarsem Singh)

The Fall is a beautiful movie and not only did the locations they filmed at were beautiful but the way that Tarsem Singh had filmed it created lots of different meanings. If this movie was made directed at me the message I got from it was that the story and way you perceive it is within the mind of the beholder. This would apply to my work since the message that I may put into my art may be different than how the audience may view it. What I took away was that sometimes the effort and process adds beauty to the movie. When I found out how Tarsem took 20 years to look for locations it was incredible how many years he had dedicated to this project and it seems to be something that is very close to his heart since not only did he dedicate so many years but the way he created a certain atmosphere while filming. The most amazing thing I found out about in reading up about this movie would be the fact no one knew that Lee Pace could walk except for Tarsem and Lee himself. It was genius that no one in the crew knew because it would have had a different affect on the way people would treat him and how the little girl would have acted, which is also another amazing part finding out how she had improvised most of the scenes and was just herself. After watching this I most definitely  want to go to all of these places (in the blog below you can see where it was filmed) and especially India and I really want to find this movie to watch it again.
http://thefall-locations.blogspot.com/

Core Values

1. Balance
2. Individuality
3. Freedom

Questions 2

) How much time did you spend working?
   I spent most of Stac everyday painting with breaks to let the paint dry but spent five hours at home threading the pieces and thirty minutes gluing it to the box. 

2) How much time did you spend thinking about the work - sort of sitting there and staring at it, or listening to it over and over again, etc.?
   Ten minutes were probably spent during each break just staring at the work since after a while it doesn't begin to look like an eye and everything looked wrong. 

3) How much time did you spend doing other stuff that seems like work to that make you think you're working but you're not?
    Five minutes outside of the Stac Stac room to take a break from painting but ended up talking to Michelle on how to measure with charcoal. 

4) How much time did you spend socializing?
   Five minutes during my break

5) How did you use your community?
    I used my community to get a different view of my painting that I might not have seen. I talked to Caitlin about the colors of my work and we came to the conclusion it was to warm so I tones some areas down with blue and talk to Michelle Li about ideas on how to thread the pieces together. I also asked John his opinion and he stated that the pupil needed to be larger and he was right since it looked disproportional. 

6) Rip apart your awful project and how did such a disaster happen?
   My painting most definitely could have been a lot better if I measured out the proportions better and if the eye brow wasn't to close to the eye and to small. I should have measured out the paper instead of immediately painting to get a better idea of how large I wanted to cut it up since I ended up cutting the pieces to small and decided to thread it instead of overlapping layers. 

7) You've completed a step on your path. What is your next step?
   My next step is to research about how many different colors are in an eye since a brown eye isn't all brown. 

Questions 1

1) You've worked on a group film and on your own. In which situation are you most comfortable - group or solo? Which do you work best in?
    I am most comfortable working solo since I can make my own ideas but I also enjoy working in a group since it can be easier to get things done and it is interesting to get other people's inputs on ideas. 

 2) What did you learn that you expected to learn?
     I learned how to paint an eye but also detail and shadow the eye area with charcoal which made it more interesting to look at. 

3) What did you learn that you didn't expect to learn?  
     What I didn't expect to learn was how fish wire doesn't thread easily through water color paper if you want it to hang straight but threading surprisingly works very well. 

4) What didn't you learn that you expected to learn?
     What I didn't learn was how to make the eye more realistic.

 5) Praise your amazing achievement and explain your brilliant plan for pulling it off.
     I love how my painting turned into something that isn't just a painting but a structure. It is amazing how threading worked so well to keep the square pieces of the picture together and how it became even more interesting when attached to the box. The box give the dark lines in between the each piece since there is space and provides a puzzle feeling from all the individual pieces . It was also a good idea to get rid of some pieces to fit the box since it was not necessary to show more than the eye. 

Final day of Intensive

 Day 2                                                  

 Day 3

 Day 4  

After two days of painting and a day with charcoal and cutting my project, it is finally done. I think my final outcome came out better than I had expected it to come out but I have to admit I was scared to cut my piece and definitely made a mistake by cutting some a different length. Although it could have been executed in a better process I like my final piece. 

     

DAY ONE!! : Intensive week

A problem with my watercolor painting is that when you stare so long at the painting everything begins to looks wrong. Now that I am seeing this as a picture it didn't seem as bad as I thought it looked before. Another problem that I keep running into would be the top lid of the eye and the shadow underneath the eye. Both are very dark in the photo but when I make the color it doesn't seem to be in the within the color theme of the skin tone. Tomorrow I am willing to take the risk to go all out with charcoal and maybe add a bit of blue to the darker shadows.

Intention statement

Iris is going to be a blown up painting of an eye that will be painted with watercolor and detailed with charcoal. The painting will then be cut up and altered to show how what someone chooses to see can be not what is actually present. Someone can be blinded to see reality when they deny the truth. Iris (might change the name) to me means how many people chose to blind themselves from the truth.

Creative Questions:

• 1. What is the first creative moment you remember?
• The most creative moment I could remember would have to be when I was around the age of four or five and I was sitting on the carpet inside my apartment drawing with crayons. There was a piece of masking tape on the paper to I peeled it off and folded the tape. I tried to bend it into a rectangle but the sides wouldn't stay together so I went looking for more tape to tape it down. I taped the side down and decided to make more rectangles and put them together. It eventually started looking like one of the tiny people from Legos so I made tiny figures out of tape. 
• 2. Was anyone there to witness or appreciate it?
• My mom was there and saw me folding tape so she didn't think much about it until I started taping paper together to make a house like the ones for my barbies. 
• 3. What is the best idea you’ve ever had?
• The best idea I ever had was to not listen to my sculpting teacher in my school and made figurines instead of vases because it lead to my interest in art and thinking outside the box. 
• 4. What made it great in your mind?
• What made it great was that even though someone tells you to do something you always have a choice to not listen and think with your own mind. People can't control the way you think, you can chose to think that way or chose to build off that way. 
• 5. What is the dumbest idea?
• The dumbest idea I ever had was to listen to my cousin about making homemade perfume by putting conditioner and water in a spray bottle.
• 6. What made it stupid?
• What made it stupid was that I accidentally sprayed a kid in the face and got into a lot of trouble, but the kid was a jerk to begin with. 
• 7. Can you connect the dots that led you to this idea?
• I had first thought about metal slides that use to be in my old elementary school and on a hot day it was the dumbest idea to go down a burning slide but then I thought about my old school and then how I got in trouble with spraying a kid. Whoops. 

S.T.A.C. Year: Number Three

Even though it is hard to believe that I am a junior it is even harder to believe that this is my third year in Stac.  I look at my old blog posts ,even though I admit I'm not the best person to kept up with it, and it is crazy how much Stac has changed me.
I read my first post from freshmen year and it is honestly embarrassing to read since my grammar was, and still is, absolutely horrid. The bad part is that I remember writing it and remember how crazy everything in Stac seemed to me. "When I first walked into the room everyone knew each other and there was so much stuff going on. As I looked around I saw everyone was so different but they all had this one thing that flowed trough all of them and that would be the talent. I guess thats what STAC is all different people that come together to learn from each other."  Stac to me as a freshmen was a chance to prove myself and little did I know that it became not only that but it changed the way I viewed everything. I had went in for an interview with a mentor and the topic ended up talking about this show that I had watched in Stac. My mentor and art teacher had never expected me to understand and know what Myths by Joseph Campbell was and were impressed. That was when I realized how much Stac has changed the way I thought since Stac teaches what is used in reality not what needs to be used in high school. Some thing that Luke had brought up again this year was how interesting it was to see the oldies instantly know what to do while the newbies are a bit more hesitate. This had happened last year to and this was what I had said about it: "He said that the oldies seemed to breeze through the activity then the newbies and it has got me thinking about what has changed from thinking like a newbie to thinking like a stacie. Or about how my mind set has changed because of S.T.A.C. it seems like a light switch has been turned in your head. After a year being in stac , you learn how to think like a stacie. You just learn the expectations." 
Something that I have regretted last year is the fact that I was not as productive as I was the year before. I had grow to comfortable and lost a sense of self motivation. This is something that I am most definitely working on this year. Junior year is said to be the hardest year but I won't let the regret of last year affect this year. Maybe this year I'll reach out of my comfort zone and try other things besides art. There is always something new to try in Stac........

Scattered

I am going to admit that I have been avoiding my final project. Maybe it is the fear of messing up but also I have no idea what I want to do in the background. I have my community that I turn to when I get stuck but recently I just haven't been going to many people for inspiration or I just haven't found inspiration for my project. The most recent person I have turned to for advice would be Emily and I don't really talk to her much but I do respect her point of view because she seems to be a person full of ideas. Also because I trust her to say what she thinks. What she viewed from my painting was a sense of transcending and Danny got a sense of melting away.  Something that really caught my attention was how Emily talked about the sense of transcending. I have been seeing this painting not as something that mean more but just forcing something in the back to finish it. The message that I wanted my painting to have was the sense of being free and Emily had the exact word to sum up everything I wanted my painting to be. The definition of transcending is to go beyond the limits or range and that is exactly what I want to achieve but it seems to be impossible since I still have no clue to what I might want the back to be. How do I present a feeling of washing away the past in a painting? Is is possible to even show leaving the past or maybe there is something else. I notice that I keep on talking about what "I was" going to do throughout my posts but the real question to myself would probably be what am I doing now. What I going to be doing In the background? What I'm going to be doing tomorrow? How am I going to finish this when I don't feel any motivation to actually accomplish this painting? How can I paint something that I have a meaning for but no image to match it? Everything recently has been in such a haze that this doesn't apply to just the painting but how I am seeing everything else. I don't know what I want to do in the next couple of years, I don't know what my goal is, I don't even know what I am working for anymore. I guess you can say that I am all over the place and because of this I found my side salad, well if it even counts as a side salad. Which i figured I'll talk about in my next post after I get it approved.

Project for Hope

It has been really hard to settle on a final project and I am not sure of what is keeping me from just making something work. When I bought this 24 x 36 canvas I was excited to get something on it but trying to fill up a huge white canvas does have its pressures. So to avoid painting on the canvas I look through a photography book and found this image of a boy. He was wrapped in rags standing in front of  the water and buildings that had a certain quality about it that I couldn't stop looking at. It was difficult to try to draw this image with charcoal on a index card but it came out to be an okay sketch. but what I like that most was when it had faded out on another paper that I lay on top to prevent it from smudging.  Somehow I like the way that the image had faded and the reflection of this piece. I had wanted to incorporate it into the large canvas painting I had on top but what would be the message? Would it be PHOT?
My original plan for that canvas was to have overlaying faces that were washed out. Each overlaying face on top of another would show different layers of personalities that people have. It shows how sometimes people are confused about how they are or who they want to be. Also it would be a opportunity to just practice painting faces. I don't think I can explain how many times I have gotten frustrated and just pored a whole cup of water on the painting to wash it away.Then I came across a picture of a woman with her head thrown back and it seemed as if she was free. Without any limitations and with every flaw having a beauty to it, even the curve of her neck seemed beautiful according to the photographer. So that was how I developed a meaning to start with. I wanted to paint anything on the canvas that may seem free or without limitations. anything that may bring joy but also just show hope. It seemed throughout this whole process I had been so hopeless in trying to find a project but that sense of hopelessness and frustration had turn into my project itself.

Cross-Hatcheting

Since I haven't bought a canvas and extra paint yet, today I decided to try to learn how to cross hatchet. I remember hearing the term when I was younger but never knew how to do the technique of cross hatching. Mr. Ganes was working on a piece one day that was a self-portrait he drew using cross hatcheting (I think that is how you refer to it). In his work the cross hatcheting was neat lines and never seemed out of place. It seemed to be a sort of print with how straight the lines were, unless he used a ruler and I didn't know. So today I tried to experiment with cross hatcheting. I started drawing windows that were outside the dance studio and trying to get shadows is harder then it looks. With pen lines don't always turn out clear and with cross hatcheting the shades may look to similar. When I had tried getting a shadow it would merge with the object itself and every line that was put in would just have the shadow remain the same shade. Cross hatcheting is a skill I most definitely need some work on.

Does a meaning exist?

To be honest, every idea that crossed my mind I had doubts about and thought it was a waste of time. When I started to think about why I would do a project or  what was the meaning of it I just never came up with a reason. At first I had wanted to do an installation but what purpose would it serve? It would lie on the border line of being there just because it was just interesting or it would be FOT. People devote so much time into something like and installation when it may not serve a meaning at all. This also applies to why do people live life? They work so hard on trying to be successful and stay alive, devoting all efforts to being the best when in the end death reaches all of us. The basic question that crosses my mind is if all of this effort is worth it? A artist that I use to mentor had a Buddhist idea for a project I was helping  on. She had spent around a year making collages on a huge roll of paper demonstrating how girls have expectations to be like models in magazines. It took so much work to cut glue then arrange on this roll of paper that was longer then the room. One week when I walked into the studio I heard a paper shredder and walked into the room seeing the huge roll of paper being shredded up. The point of the project was to show how art can be amazing and everyone admires it but instantly when it became shredded, it lost the value it meant in people. If someone where to see it they would instantly think it was trash even though it was the same art work if it was whole. but her practice was to put so much effort into something but having the ability to make all that effort worthless in a sense was what she had wanted to do.
Therefore for my individual project i had thought of doing a painting each day on a large canvas. That feeling when you have so many little insignificant scenes that you want to paint but their value doesn't extend to becoming a full on painting. On this large canvas I would paint small paintings that I feel like painting that day and make it into one large artwork. then maybe I would practice the Buddhist practice and find a way to shred all of the effort and learn that not everything has to have a meaning. This might be a fear I have now that i realize it. The fear of making something without a meaning or sense of worth. This fear is what I hope to overcome this quater through my individual project.

Individual Writing

Something that occurs often when drawing a still life or face is the fact that it may not look like the image at all. Then you realize that all of measurements are all wrong and you have to redraw everything to get the measurements right. But what happens when it still doesn’t look like a face or bottle? You drew all the measurements right, so what else is wrong? Something that people don’t realize is the fact that all of these lines and measurements must be in a relation with each other. They must work and be proportional to each other for you to get the image right. As an artist, this is something I often forget. I forget that you always have to take to account the relationships between those lines. That was the skill that I had to work on.

            During the workshops we had to learn relationships. Relations between lines, color, and features are essential to understanding how to paint or draws as well as learning how to work with flatten pencils. With flatten pencils it had helped me see relations in the face better. For example, I was drawing an image of Grace Kelly.  Her jaw line had certain sharpness to it and her cheek bones stood out. When using a flatten pencils to draw these features you must make sure that each line is proportional because the whole point of drawing these faces were to be quick and as precise as you can get it. As quick as these 30 second drawings may be you begin to see how the eyes align with ears and how the darkest shadows tend to be under the chin.  One of the hardest things for me to draw or get right during this portion of the workshop was to get the side profile of a face.  Relations between features vary since the eyes may be at a different angle and getting that angle seems to be the hardest part for me to get right.

            Relations between colors seem to include more basic color theories. I have never learned color theory before so learning this topic was all new to me. I have always been use to mixing colors and never took to account on how putting an opposite color can make a perfect gray. If you were to make a shadow for a red cup you wouldn’t make the shadow red. You would have to add in to opposite color which is green. The green would be a contrast from the red cup, showing that the green tint is part of the shadow.  It doesn’t really sound likely that the green tint and red cup would go together but it makes a shadow more distinct. I had tried putting this technique to use while first using oil color and I can’t really say I was as successful as I wished. I had gotten so use to using watercolor and having the paint apply on the paper so easily, that using oil felt so foreign. Oil felt so thick on the paper and it was hard to find a balance between not making it watery and not having the paint run out. Mixing the paint also make it quite complicated since the paints contained a lot of pigment the littlest drop of color could turn out darker then you would imagine. The main conflict is to find a perfect balance between the paints and oil.

            The skills in this workshop that we have learned to develop have helped me learn to see what was never there before. When I now see faces I instantly look at the relationships between all the features on their faces. Same as when I look at the color of a wall. I instantly think about what the color was based off of and what would be complementary to it. This workshop has been applied to a lot of the daily things I do and has most definitely help with a lot of art projects. I have learned to see things differently and I think that contributes to what I think the definition of art is. Art to me is to train the eye to see what may not be there at first glance.

If Life were a movie

What would happen if life was a movie? Would we realize all of our mistake and realize everything that we can't now? Could we see if we were being stupid or silly? All of these questions were running through my mind today as Luke gave out sheets explaining plot points and how they affect everything through the movie after. Is there a point in our life where we have our own plot points?
I started thinking back to a point in my life where there might have been a plot point and I definitely remembered a time in third grade where a girl use to bully me and call me stupid names that my innocent mind didn't know.That point in my life was definitely when I had became really loud, out-going, and being confident to stand up for myself. So basically I had became really aggressive. But I started thinking how in movies the plot points weren't really the obvious but they were the simplest and subtle actions. Maybe there was a point in my life where it was the fact that the girl bullied me but more of the fact that maybe I was just shy. How movies can be affected by the simplest action of throwing tacks mind boggles me but also gives me an appreciation towards film. Being able to make everything from plot to characters' actions alter because of a subtle move is powerful.
As every aspect of film that Luke had mentioned was familiar to me but when I turned around and saw the look on Matt's face you could see everything running threw his mind.  My respect for film directors and any person that has to do something with film has increased to an enormous amount. They have to be one step ahead of everything and it is a really useful skill. Props to you film people!

Intense Art Week

This week I have to say has been really successful. Drawing people's face has always been my downfall and I don't tend to practice it since I am not good at it and as Luke said "People that suck at something don't tend to do it". My case exactly! Drawing grids also help a lot with seeing relationships between the eyes, mouth, nose, and ears. I have been able to draw faces more realistically and proportionally too. Also I have never learned color concepts but just tend to blend colors that seem complementary.  I enjoyed this week a lot even though it has been brain frying. It doesn't require a lot of work but it tends to just fry your mind when you start to grid the points.  Thought the results are successful I think this had helped me improve on seeing relationships.

MIchaelangelo

After reading what fresco is and how famous artist would use this material I have actually became very interested in how this material works. Since it was considered to be "only for men" I really wonder how it would feel to actually use this and what makes the feel different than oil. Since it dries really fast it is interesting how artist adapted to using this type of material. Also it seems that back then the artist reputation was to see who can outdo each other like Leonardo Da Vinci .and Michelangelo. I was also surprised by how much they were respected but earned very little money. With the exception of Michelangelo earning 3, 00 ducets which is equivalent to 301, 456 U.S. dollars. I thought that the packet actually wasn't half bad and help me learn about the history of some artist.

What is Expressionism?

I think that expressionism is a way of art where the artist expresses emotions in radical ways. The video of the Japanese form of dance had a creeping and disturbing way of emotion through the body where as  in the operas you could hear the singers' pain in their voices. Expressionism seems like a form that is settling but more dynamic in the sense of death.
Also I had realized the haunting use of space in the performances. any prop being used was simple and also the colors that were used contributed to the feel or the performance. The dark light helped make the space either feel vast or small. Expressionism to me seems like a way of expressing emotions through a intense and torturing way.

STAC Live

Now with STAC live approaching it is amazing how different this show will be and all the prepping  is from last year. It is very interesting how a single thought can connect to all different videos, movies, and pictures. It seemed really difficult to find a connecting aspect between all of these different projects without changing the very project itself but to dream is the very core subject in all of these videos. Last year the prepping for Stac live was with all the dancing and more promoting the idea of stac, stac, stac. But it seems different this year since Stac live has became the chance for us students to really make what we want and weave it into each other. For example, I really wanted to make an installation this since I was able to make on last year without it turning half-bad. With all of the school regulations and rules against fire hazards it turned out to be quite difficult to go through with the original idea I had. I had spent two hours deciding on different ideas and every way they can or cannot work until a saw a picture on Ashley's laptop of a subway tunnel  with two people. So in that five or somewhat second I whipped out an idea that turned out to be the best one. Weird how things turn out but sometimes there is no need to over contemplate something.