Category: Visual Thinking

I used this photo of this specific artwork because it reflects my inspiration for my artwork in this class. A couple summers ago, I went on a trip through Europe and during that trip, we visited the Baptistery of Pisa, where this mural is located. I talk about this because it represents what I most love about art; symbolism. I love to theorize about the meaning of artworks and I try to make my artworks open to interpretation as well.

In Dana, there is a mixed media painting on the immediate right that I would pass by on my way to my visual thinking class. This painting is titled “Those People” and it was made by Larry Jens Anderson in 2002. The artwork itself is of a spray painted black rectangle with phrases imprinted into the paint. These phrases, from top to bottom, read as Arab people, Black people, Chinese people, Dumb people, Fat people, Gay people, Japanese people, Jewish people, Old people, Poor people, Rich people, Smart people, Straight people, White people, and Young people. I believe this is a social commentary on how when you break people down to fundamental concepts, we are all the same despite our differences in race, gender, wage, or ethnicity. This specific artwork inspired my topic for my final as well as my mid-term.

With my final six artworks, my main themes were duality, not judging a book by its cover, running out of time, and the problems with society. These themes came to me due to my frustrations with people not taking me seriously because of the way I act and how I view the world around me. Because of this, I have had many encounters with others where they act differently around me, which makes me upset. Therefore, I decided to use this project as a way to vent my feelings and dissatisfactions with the world through art.

 For this project, I used many different types of media. This included ink, colored pencil, graphite, charcoal, plastic covers, crayon, oil pastels, and sharpie. My main subject matter consisted of machinery such as metal pipes, clockwork, buttons, gears, and electronics being combined with natural and living beings such as flowers, people, eyes, and hearts. I did this because it showed the semi-fake and unnatural feelings people seemed to have towards me. Out of all of the six artworks, the black and white window one is my favorite. This is because I feel that it looks the cleanest and best out of all six of the drawings. Likewise, the heart one is my least favorite because it looks sloppy.

In this artwork, I used charcoal, graphite, sharpie, and ink. I also used a kneaded eraser and a paper towel to shade. In context of the assignment, I focused on the idea of shape as well as made it the focus of the piece. Compared to the last project, I played around a lot more with darker and lighter values. I also focused on the idea of reflection by flipping the graphite drawings into abstract sharpie shapes. Another thing that I did differently was that I used a bigger variety of materials instead of just staying with graphite. However, one thing I wish I could fix is that I would have filled in the two side triangles with drawings or even textures.

In these pieces of art, I used graphite and charcoal while also blending with a paper towel. I tried to keep most of my forms to the center of the page. In context of the assignment, I played it safe with most of my drawings. The only exception to this was my top left drawing, where I made the background completely black. The main problem with most of my drawings is that I never went too extreme with my shading. Rarely did I use very dark tones in my objects, which led to most of them blending together. Another thing was that I stayed with the graphite and charcoal pencils instead of using all of my materials evenly. However, one thing that I did do well was the variety of objects I used in my artworks. I tried to not use the same object in multiple pieces.