The Final Touches on my Final Project for the Final Class of 2008

Here it is. A few minor adjustments (they appear minor, try making them yourself. For the amount of time it took me, I'll call them major) and I've successfully completed my Claddagh series. I enjoyed making such a personal piece. I have a claddagh necklace that my Grandmother left me after she passed, so the symbol and what it represents mean a lot to me. After my best friend died in a fishing boat fire, I had the symbol and his name tattooed on my back. So in its own way, working on and completing this project was therapeutic and helped me reflect on the friendship, loyalty and love of those two special people and everyone else close to me.

________________

^

Jerry, George, Cosmo Kramer and Elaine were all close friends who spent a lot of time sitting down, having coffee and talking.
_____________________

^
You wanna talk about being loyal, giving your life for someone or something is as loyal as it gets. Be sure to thank Veterans of Foreign Wars for their service
_____________________

^
Carving it in a tree says a lot more than a text message or an e-mail.
________________________

^
The Whole enchilada

FIN

So these are my rough drafts for my independent project. My concept is the Claddagh (friendship, loyalty and love). I came up with new ideas for friendship and loyalty. I also decided to use watercolor paint and charcoal pencil for a medium. At first I was satisfied with these pieces but after some time, i can nit pick some changes that i would like to make.

^

Friendship

^

Loyalty

^

Love

final scetch ideas

For my final project I have chosen to base my series of pieces on the Claddagh. The claddagh is a very old Irish symbol that represents 3 core values of successful relationships. Those values are: Friendship(symbolized by two hands), Love(the heart), and Loyalty(the crown). The symbol made its way across the globe via migrating Irish people from the Potato Famine. The claddagh is most commonly seen in jewelry.

my web chart

---------------------------------

This is what i came up with to represent friendship, a little boy and his dog on the beach

---------------------------

I decided to use the old fasion tree carving to represent love
--------------------------
For loyalty, i chose the most loyal thing possible(in my eyes) the unknown soldier monument. You cant get much more loyal than someone sacraficing their life for their country, without anyone knowing who you were.

Batik Project and Examples of Texture

simulated texture

This is a batik that looks cracked and swirled but in actuality it is a smooth surface.

--------------------------
invented texture

Van Gogh's adaptation of wind, moon, and star light is portrayed in this famous oil painting. There is no actual texture to these things but through imagination and creativity Van Gogh uses an implied texture to capture them.

--------------------------

actual texture

This is a Chuck Connolly painting. Chuck is known for using tons of paint on his canvas. Layers of paint and the way his brush moves through those thick layers of paint create a physical texture you can touch .

------------------

abstract texture

-----------------------

my batik:

It was a wild and humbling journey. When i started working on it at home i think i may have heated the wax too much, causing it to not work the way it did in class. Some of the die colors were not protected by the wax, causing excessive and involuntary bleeding. If my project were an Olympic figure skating routine and i were a judge, i would give my project an 10 for effort, 10 for degree of difficulty and a 6.8 for execution.

Color Theory and Interaction

Peter Max is known as a Neo Fauvist/ Expressionist painter. He uses color brilliantly in the paintings I researched.

This One here is called two vase of flowers
___________________________

I wanted to base my work on Peter Max's style but once I got going, this project took on its own style. I have always enjoyed the shapes and the character of fire hydrants. They kind of look like little people, so i took this photo of a hydrant...

Then i tweaked the picture in photo shop to bring out the shapes made by light and shadows.

It came out wicked pix elated and not as clear as i wanted...

So I printed it out, put it on my light box and outlined the basic shapes of the hydrant. After i got the hydrant right, I added some more shapes of my own to create some form.




Then I colored in some shapes in with a black sharpie.

Then I colored in some shapes with the three primary colors. For some reason this piece would not scan, sorry for the whack camera phone pic. I did my best.



This color scheme is similar yet different in its own way. I took the primary colors and swapped them for less intense colors.



For this one I went for 5 different High contrast colors. Crimson and Navy Blue (Dominant), Light Blue and Green (sub dominant) and Yellow (accent colors)

Value

These are three of the photos i took for the body as a landscape assignment.

You'll have to excuse my lack of photography skills and crappy camera phone.

I do think i did accomplish the whole paradox concept.


Above is the one i like the most. I will use this for the class critique.


For my color project I listened to a Beastie Boys Root Down single that has various remixes of the track (this is based on the "FreeZone mix". The song is an ode to everything hip hop-rapping, graffiti writing, clothing and break dancing.

Because they are from New York, I wanted to base my art on a New York artist from the 80's. So i based the figures on Keith Herring's.




I used green water color and adjusted value and intensity by adding black or white paint and water. Its three upside down break dancers if you couldn't gather that on your own.

Form Space Motion

For this assignment i sought inspiration from photographer Alexey Titarenko. He's quite the pro when it comes to photography and capturing form from one and two point perspective. He has mastered adjusting the camera's shutter speed to capture implied movement.

_____________________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________________

I also enjoyed the piece that was also on our class blogg titled, "The Red Tower". Its a simple 1 point perspective painting that uses simple shapes, shadow, and fading color to create implied space.

___________________________________________________________________

Here's what i came up with. I tried to take something from each of the above examples.

I'm not much of a photographer but i did the best i could. I wanted to use 1 point perspective, implied space with the staircase, and capture a moving car. After several tries i finally caught a white minivan zooming by.