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Daily Digital Wanderlust

Well my abstract paintings seemed to go over well today in our critique in class. We had a mini assignment in class before the critique where we had to try to analyze one of the pieces in a group. My analyticamorphasis abstraction was selected by one of the groups to analyze. The group of females thought that said painting was about the creation of the earth from the sun, or the dawn of the universe, creating order out of chaos. There was also stuff about it being female “fluids” interacting with the male fluids.

I was a bit surprised, as of the two abstracts, that was the least sexual in my mind. (My original concept for the piece, as I transmogrified my guitar hero controller into abstraction, was to represent the struggle in art that I have when I create–specifically, the left side of my brain versus the right side. The left was represented by black ink strokes of various sizes against the plain gessoed canvas, while the right was a yellow “blob” with blue and orange dissolving into the yellow body. (Thereby also representing the orange, yellow, blue, green, and red buttons on the controller.) I like their description–it wasn’t my vision for the piece, but certainly ideas along those lines passed through my head at various times as I created it, as it does have an aura of “order out of chaos” to it.

My process painting (an abstract painting using non-conventional paint delivery method) consisted of me filling condoms up with latex house paint, then pricking holes in the reservoir to create drip paintings. I got really lucky with my random selection of paints–the 4 colors I ended up using each had widely varying viscosity, and one of them even drained away, creating some really interesting depth to the piece. Pollock may have denied the accident, but I cherish chance. Unfortunately it’s probably going to look like crap when photographed–the depth will probably be gone. I wish I had come up with a good reason for the color scheme on it, but I just randomly selected paints.

As for the official logic for this creation? I had the idea of using paint in balloons, but not having any lying around, I went for the closest thing I had in my room–condoms. I then remembered a line Pollock retorted (from a clip of Pollock the movie we saw in Art Appreciation II). When he was asked how he knew he was done with a painting, Pollock responded, “How do you know when you’re finished making love?” I had my justification, aside from the whole drip painting being a metaphor for male ejaculation. (My joking justification in my own mind was that it was a metaphor to the first time I copulated–I was nervous, didn’t really know what I was doing, lasted about an hour, I gained a little confidence as I went on but realistically anything good I did was by accident, and it finished off with a bang.)

Prior to taking Painting I this semester, I had made a total of 3 paintings since k-12. One was a watercolor reproduction for the art for architects class; the others were crappy acrylic paintings I made in 2D design. I took zero art classes in high school (the closest I came to art classes were my drafting classes), and even in middle school I don’t remember painting that often.

I entered Painting I with a fair bit of nerves. My limited experience in painting gave me no reason to think that I would be any good at it. My initial forays into the medium tended to confirm my initial beliefs. On the first day of class, we had to paint from still life sculptures in the middle of the room. Mine… well mine sucked. After that, our first few paintings were from still life, fruit in this case. One was a 2-hour alle prima, the other a grey scale->colored glaze.

Then, something happened–I started to “get it”. Our next assignment was an emotive self-portrait. I opted to channel the low point in my life that ultimately led to me coming to school here six months later. I have issues looking at myself, and the human face is a bear to deal with. I still had no clue what I was doing as far as color went. However, by the time I had finished the portrait, things were starting to come together. I had saved what was, at first, a very mediocre drawing and painting. (Right now, that portrait is hanging in the temporary art displays in the main building. I cringe every time I walk by it.)

After that was the skeleton. I’m relatively certain that the prof is just trying to kill us–I mean, skeletons are hard, what with all the bones and weird angles. However, my initial painting in the burnt sienna was pretty decent, and layers upon layers of paint finally brought round a decent product.

Now we’re working on an abstract painting in class and a historical reproduction out of class. This is my historical reproduction after 6 hours. It’s not done–it will eventually look close to the image pasted on my board to the left (as you look at the photo). This is the underpainting, what I’m using in lieu of actually drawing with pencil upon the canvas. The toga is too high about the waist, and it needs folds in the fabric. David needs a face, and I need to work the dark tones into his flesh better.

Looking at what I did in six hours and looking back at how bad I was before, I think I’m relatively pleased with my progress in the class. During our evaluation for the skeleton paintings, my prof said that while my portrait was good, I had made the leap from a Painting I student to a Painting II student with the skeleton. I doubted that I would make the jump from II to III with this one, but who knows? So far it’s looking pretty decent.