Concluding Thougths

 “Technique is only important insofar as you must master it in order to communicate what you see”


My main goal this term was to grow my skill in order to more easily and effectively communicate what I wanted through my artwork. The first part of the term consisted of me figuring out how to better use some of the tools available to me to create art and messing around with more restricted color palettes, as well as working out how to draw people more easily, especially faces. Around the middle of the term, I veered sharply into creating lots of landscapes as well as eliminating linework from the art that I was doing. At the very end of the term these two skillsets kind of came together - my most recent artwork is a landscape that I made with a color palette consisting of 5 shades of blues and greens, and I’m quite happy with how it turned out.



At the beginning of the term, I intended to redraw a piece of artwork in order to demonstrate how much I had grown my skills in the ten weeks we’ve had. I didn’t end up doing this, partially because I didn’t really have the motivation or desire to do so and partially because said piece didn’t really reflect the skills I ended up developing over the course of the term. In the end, I’m glad I didn’t redraw this piece, since I know I would have ended up dragging myself through it and ultimately not enjoyed the process very much. I’m much happier with the pieces I created instead, and I think my improvement is clear enough from those works, instead of needing a direct comparison.


As for the social media aspect of this class, I think it was helpful for me to have this sort of space to create and to reflect on my creations and how I shared them. A number of the landscapes especially actually did really well on the places I posted them, with one being my first to break 1,000 notes on tumblr. Overall, I’m really happy of my growth this term, both online and off, even if I do really need to post on Instagram more often.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Eyes and Texture

Image
  "Whether setting type or depicting a tree, the designer uses texture to establish a mood, reinforce a point of view, or convey a sense of physical presence."  Texture is something that I’ve begun to explore a bit more recently in my digital art. Usually, my goal in doing so is to emulate traditional art mediums, be that of graphite, watercolor, or acrylic. While this effect can be achieved in part using specific brushes, there are usually other steps involved. While rendering these eyes, I took extra time at the end to go in with a texturing brush and add some texture and interest that way. In the past, I’ve overlaid an image to give the canvas a paper or canvas texture, as if I had been working with that base the entire time. In these ways, I’m able to invoke more traditional artwork and add interest to my pieces.
Read more

Grid and Modularity

Image
  “A well-made grid encourages the designer to vary the scale and placement of elements without relying wholly on arbitrary or whimsical judgements.” (Doing this one this week because I’ve realized I’ve done the posts a bit out of order and I haven’t done this one yet) I’ve been doing a significant number of landscape drawings this week, which has been a really fun way to do something different and experiment with a few new techniques. One such technique that I’ve discovered I really quite enjoy is the perspective grid, which is especially useful for planning out more rigid structures. The grid in this case helps me plan out correct proportions and figure out where each element should go in relation to the others. The artwork I used this most for is the one in this post, which has a sort of gothic cathedral-esque design and is therefore relatively modular. Because of this, I did have a bit of trouble getting the proportions right and getting everything to be where I needed it, but it
Read more