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.