Blog #5

I think that my most significant accomplishment in this class has been my midterm. I think it is the most significant because it is very meaningful to me. After presenting my project, I realized there was probably a lot more I could have said about it. My midterm's meaning is very clear to me, but probably not as clear to others. I took a quite literal approach to it, but I also have some pictures that are broader and different people could interpret them different ways. On the left I have images that represent not only dreams that I have had while sleeping, but things I want to accomplish, things I consider related to future success. I also have some dreams I have already accomplished, such as graduating high school. My dreams side basically portrays that I want to get married, be happy, have a family and a successful job, grow old with my husband and have the whole "white picket fence" American dream. On the right side I have things I associate with nightmares which are bad dreams, fears, and things I am afraid of. I have a phone because it reminds me of the night when we got the phone call that my grandpa had died. I have a picture of 9/11 because I was only in 4th grade when that happened and I couldn't really comprehend what was going on but now I know it is definitely something evil that I hope is never repeated. I have symbolic pictures of mazes and a fork in the road to symbolize that I am afraid I will never know where I am going in life or what my purpose is. The clock symbolizes that I am afraid of running out of time. I have a picture of a volleyball because although I played all through high school and love the sport, I frequently have nightmares of having to play again and the stress it brought me. There is a picture of me and my ex boyfriend which is a reminder that I never want to have that kind of terrible relationship that I had with him. There are also pictures of guns, being alone, drowning, and clowns which are things that I am afraid of. On both sides Although not everyone may look at my Midterm and see what I see, I personally think it is very meaningful to me.

This quiz was definitely the most challenging project I worked on during this class. While brainstorming for this quiz, I had no idea what movies to pick, and had absolutely no idea what tools I would use to merge them together. Honestly, this project turned out a lot better than I expected it to, even if it still wasn't the greatest. I had to experiment a lot and use a lot of the different Photoshop tools to put the two pictures together. I think it made me better at using some of the Photoshop tools such as the cloning tool, paintbrush tool and selection tools. I wouldn't say that I have mastered really any of the Photoshop tools just yet, but I think that I have made progress and gotten better with using them over the quarter.

I think my biggest improvement was between Quizzes #3 and #4. On Quiz #3, I had no idea what I was doing. I picked a random picture off the Internet, messed around with a lot of Photoshop tools, and this was what I got. Sure, it is a picture of the kind of dog I have, but that is really the only meaningful part of this piece. I was actually almost embarrassed of this project because I had no idea what to do to it. However, I had a lot of fun on Quiz #4. I knew exactly what I wanted to do with the picture, and I think I made it look a lot better than the original. I felt much better about turning this project in because you could actually tell what I had made changes to and improved. I had more confidence in using the Photoshop tools and what they could be used for.

Blog #4

Although I am not sure what exactly I want my Big Idea or Final project to be, I am leaning towards making an event poster to advertise a Lady Gaga concert. Therefore, my Big Idea would be music. Music plays a big part in my life. I think it can bring people together, and can get you through the toughest of times. I chose Lady Gaga because she is extremely unique and does her own thing. She is definitely not a follower. She encourages others to be themselves, and I think she is a major icon of today. My goal is to make the poster very creative and very reflective of her style. I think it will be a fun project and I will be able to incorporate a lot of Photoshop tools and different styles of pop art. I envision my work to be used in advertising to promote Lady Gaga, her music, and concerts.

Of course, my main artist (musical artist) that is influencing my work is Lady Gaga. After watching an interview of her, I realized how different she is and how proud she is to be that way. Her style is very out there and she is over all just a very creative person. I want my artwork to reflect her uniqueness and individuality.

I also think I may want to create some kind of pop art such as work done by Andy Warhol. I have always liked his work and found it very visually interesting. I think since Lady Gaga is a pop artist and he made pop art, the two may go together well. I also think I want to mess with the colors a lot in my final, to make sure it is very visually stimulating and bold. Andy Warhol uses a bunch of different colors in his art work.

I also did a little research of Lady Gaga for this project. While looking through her pictures, one of her photo shoots really caught my attention. It was named the "Hello Kitty Photoshoot" and the photographs were taken by Markus Klinko and Indrani. They were very different photographs, very different than any other photographs I have ever seen. They were very visually interesting and sometimes distorted. I want my final project to be very unique and creative and make a statement.

http://www.fashionising.com/pictures/s--Lady-Gaga-Hello-Kitty-Photoshoot-3942-1.html

While doing my last blog entry, I came across the work of Markus Berger. His use of lighting and color made his images very sharp and very clean. I liked his use of color and how some of his pictures were mostly black and white with little parts of color to attract attention to those areas. I may want to use this idea in my final project and mess with the color and black and white to create a very interesting piece of art.

http://www.markus-berger.de/

Blog #3

http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com/archives/2010/10/baghdad-5-march-2007.php

Jeremy Deller

Bid Ideas: Destruction, War

This artist appeals to me because he has taken a real life object, a car destroyed by a suicide bomb, and put it on display in an art exhibit. Like the article said, the news reports suicide bombs on TV all the time, but the images quickly fade and are forgotten about. His art is a very important reminder of what is going on overseas and is prevalent to society today.

This particular piece of art is inspiring to me because it is a reminder. I think that most people here in the U.S. seem to forget that our military is fighting a very important war overseas. This piece of art is not fleeting as the news reports are, but rather is stationary and constant. I also find this piece interesting because it is not a typical piece of art and has a lot of significance behind it.

I wonder if this artist, Jeremy Deller, has any other pieces that represent destruction and damage. While searching him on the internet it seems he has a lot of different subjects of art. This makes me wonder if his Big Idea is destruction, or rather it was just the theme of the one piece. I am inspired by the Big Idea of this piece because I think it is a very important issue in the world today and is an eye opener to death, war, and other themes related to destruction.

This piece of art inspires me for my final project because it makes me think outside of the box and inspires me to use more creative images to portray Big Ideas. However, I can't really take any stylistic components to enhance my final project because this particular piece of art was not done on the computer.

http://www.digitalartsource.com/pages/artist.shtml

http://www.markus-berger.de/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/markusberger/

Markus Berger

Big Ideas: Life, People, Destinations

This artist appeals to me because I think his images are very visually interesting. There is a lot going on and I think he really captures the essence of life and people interacting in their environments.

I find his artwork inspiring because I feel like his images clearly portray aspects of life. I love his lighting in some of the pictures, and some of his pictures are all black and white with one color, which draws your attention to the color. I also feel like he portrays certain emotions and themes throughout certain pictures, like loneliness and serenity.

By looking through his pictures, I wonder what big idea he is really trying to portray. I really think it overall has to do with life, because most of his pictures are of people and places.

The use of his lighting and coloring inspires me to be a little brave and maybe add some black and white or different light sources to bring attention to parts of my art. He portrays his themes very clearly which is something I can work on in my midterm and final project.

Blog #2

For this image I had some difficulty selecting all the parts of her face. I used the magnetic lasso and quick selection tools, and the paintbrush to add color to her lips, hair, and skin.

I also used the selection tools to select the parts of the monsters body and to color them green. I tried to select the "spikes" or whatever you want to call them and made them a shade of purple with the paintbrush. I messed around with the hues and saturations of the green.

Next I painted the rocks and the sky using the selection tools and the paint brush. Lastly I painted the ground that the girl is sitting on a light yellow.

I also used the dodge and burn tools to make the sky and rocks look more realistic.

Problems I had editing this picture:

• Getting the selections to be exact
• The worth 1000 in the bottom left hand corner
• Getting the colors to look perfectly realistic

http://effects.Worth1000.com/contests/26055/color-me-33

Connotations and Denotations

Justin Goodyer

http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com

arup.com

flickr.com

www.facebook.com

Denotations: Big white flowers, Black background, lines of flowers, blooms, closed buds

Connotations: Happiness, joy, cleanliness, love

The above picture was taken from a piece of art called "Adaptive Bloom" by Justin Goodyer. The photographs above and the photographs I found on the other sites are not just pictures, but they are photographs of a piece of art that responds to motion and the flowers bloom and shut. Computers are not used to edit the pictures such as in Photoshop, but computers are used to make the art work move on a pixel grid. The flowers also can be choreographed to bloom with different pieces of music. This piece of art is now located in London at the Bartlett School of Architecture, where the best pieces of work from the Postgraduate Certificate Course in Advanced Architectural Research are now on exhibition.