Warhol assignment - Marilyn Monroe / Scarlett Johansson

For a couple of weeks now I've been taking a M.O.O.C. from coursera.org on Andy Warhol. This week, an assignment was given to create a Warholian kind of work based on appropriation and repetition, subjects found often in his work. I'll post the description I created for the assignment below...

Choosing the theme of Celebrities, I thought about a possible actress of the 21st century that Warhol might have been interested in, similar to his fascination of Marilyn Monroe. In the end I selected the actress Scarlett Johansson, and found an image from Google to appropriate in my work, much like Warhol might have done from a magazine or newspaper.

 I selected a digital method as it was the method most readily available to me. Unfortunately, this hinders the result of subtle 'mistakes' and differences in each repeated image, of which Warhol was quite fond of in his own work. 

Looking at some of Warhol's work as reference, I cropped the image close around the face. I chose a grid of 3x3 to give the prevalence of repetition, but also so that I could easily mimic Warhol's work in which he altered the color scheme of each repeated image. Each of these aesthetic decisions are meant to either reflect the subjects of appropriation or repetition, both being very famous in Warhol's work.

So far I've been enjoying the course, and I'm eager to see the work of other members.

The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain - Chapters 1-8

While I have glossed over this book before, I'm going through again (and doing all the exercises) from Betty Edwards, The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. I'll admit I'm skimming over most of the text (mostly because I've read it before, and the earliest chapters contain more principles I've heard time and time again in the past). But I can appreciate any artist at any skill level going back through the foundations, hence why I'm doing this now myself. The chapters I've gone through so far pertained to contours, negative spaces, and perspective (and a lot about preparing the reader for actual drawing, 'shifting' from left to right brain).

I really like this book. I can tell a lot of meticulous time and effort have gone into combing out and presenting every single aspect about the fundamentals of drawing, so much so that I believe that anyone who believed they couldn't draw put the effort into going through this entire book, would come out the end amazed. Then again, I don't think I have to attest to the importance of this book, since many artists and art educators have used its lessons for a long while. And while one certainly wouldn't need this book to grasp, what this book refers to as the five basic skills of drawing (edges, spaces, relationships, light & shadow, the gestalt - or whole), it certainly is packed neatly together in one place.

 Contour Drawing

Negative Space

Perspective Drawing using 'Sighting'

(I tried using color toning with a Prismacolor Art Stix I had laying around and was met with mixed results)

An Introduction - Entry 4/20/2014

After long neglect, I've returned to this blog and intend to repurpose it. The original use for this blog was as a temporary portfolio I used to present to a college major I applied for... Anything posted before this date you should assume it was for this intent.

However, I now am giving new life to it. It will serve as a couple of functions;

1)      As an art blog, where I may post work that may or may not end up as final work in my real portfolio.  This being to document my work and progress, and as a nice and neat place for anyone to casually glance at.

2)      As a journal of sorts, where I may post goings on in my life, my thoughts and feelings, and my various opinions. Hopefully they may be as artistically-related as possible, but since art does encompass so many various subjects and issues, I imagine almost anything I write about will be appropriate. As a side note, I do also have a tumblr that I also post my work on and reblog things I find amusing. It’s a bit more disorganized (as Tumblr tends to be) and I don’t post or reblog text (since it tends to get lost more easily in the confusion. I find it to be more of a place to casually glance through rather than sit and read). Therefore, this will be an outlet for that.

Happy Easter.