Wednesday, June 25, 2014

Tuesday, June 24, 2014

Final Project: More Process

 The white areas are gel transfers waiting to dry...the paper will be rubbed off and just the ink will remain over the paint.
 Detail of a collaged area next to gel transfers.
 More "old fashioned" collage.


Final Project: Process Photos


 This was the original unfinished painting I began working with. It's a stain painting on unprimed canvas to give the colors a soft bleeding effect. My first step is build up a richer, more solid surface so that the transfers would have somewhere to sit instead of bleeding right into the fibers of the canvas.

 Above is the piece with the first two layers of paint over the original. I'm trying to punch up the colors, using more primary hues blocked in with larger brush strokes. When I get enough activity going on the canvas then I will start to apply transfers and push and pull from there to accentuate certain areas and subdue others.
These are some of the digital pieces I will be working with as transfers. Some are more detailed and rich, others are simple with the assumption that they will combine with richer, more chaotic areas of painting.

Friday, June 20, 2014

For the open project, I have been researching the paintings of Robert Rauschenberg (see below) and would like to use photoshop to make several digital pieces that I can integrate into a larger, painted, and collaged piece. I've posted a photo of an old unfinished painting I have with pieces of paper sewn onto it. I will use it as a starting point to build up layers of texture, paint and transfers of the digital pieces I make. I would like to continue with the floral imagery I started working with last project, but maybe with simpler images so that they will transfer more clearly.



Robert Rauschenberg:

Monday, June 16, 2014

Photoshop Tutorials

 I chose three easier Photoshop tutorials to try. One covered a smoke dispersion effect that used mostly layer masks and brushes, one was a simple lighting effect exercise, and the last one invovled more practice using dispersion effects that we learned in Friday's class.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnyEZtfteAY


http://abduzeedo.com/beautiful-water-effect-photoshop-cc




Friday, June 13, 2014

The Cyclical Nature of Things: scannograms









Scans of handmade paper, dried flowers, and stones that I will use as elements of my final image.

The Cyclical Nature of Things: process photos


These are contact sheets with photos I am drawing from for this project. There are old photos, photos of old drawings, and new photos that I have compiled as my sources for the project.

The Cyclical Nature of Things



My idea for this project is influenced by my interest in art therapy and the spiritual and psychological life of people. I want to focus on the cyclical nature of beauty/joy and pain, focusing on how humans have the ability to experience both at once. I think that in life beauty and suffering comes in cycles, but it's the ability of the human spirit to acknowledge their existence simultaneously that really interests me. My intent is to use botanical and natural elements as symbols for both suffering and beauty, utilizing both images of plant matter and pressed, dried flower scans. I would like to use flowers and other natural subjects to make an image that is beautiful, but somewhat haunted.