Project 2 Self-Critique

Today we presented our second projects for critiquing (but you wouldn't know that since I had accidentally neglected my project notes) and I believe that the critique as a whole went very well.

Our projects were wearable creations based on the idea of consumption. some people brought in such things as "a designer feed-bag", a mask meant to mimic the wind turbines used for energy production, or a top hat made of bacon (seriously.)

Mine wasn't so very impressive, though it was RATHER LARGE. I had scrounged through my closet and located an old and falling apart portfolio folder full of my newsprint and practice drawings from art classes I took two years ago, then scotch-taped them into the form of a cape. Overall it was interesting to see: a large, fairly rigid cape that looked like an amalgamation of various artist's leavings, including some nude studies and one or two finished drawing works.

It symbolizes a few things: first, the rate at which art students consume paper and media. In my figure drawing and anatomy class alone, each student is expected to go through two large pads of 22x30 newsprint paper over the course of two months or so. Each pad has from 40-60 pages in it I think. There are twenty students in my class.
Over the course of one semester that will be around forty pads. Perhaps 1600 to 2400 pages of 22x30 paper. That is a LOT of tree, my friend. And that's not even regarding the textured, colored, and higher quality papers used for projects or drawing with other media. Artists 9except for perhaps digital artists) go through so much paper i can't even imagine how much all the classes in one single room would go through, much less all the classes in all the rooms, and hell even of rooms in other buildings, such as with the architectural students and graphic design students!
Funny thing is, there are tons of artists in these classes who will draw small on their newsprint papers or draw multiple figures on a single piece of paper in order to save, and the teachers will chide them and encourage them to draw larger, one per piece of paper! Yes, this method IS more effective for learning the arts, but it is also a prime example of how they burn through their materials sometimes. And usually they are left with newsprint drawings they couldn't really care less about. Most of them just get thrown away (at the very end of my piece I threw mine away after class. It wasn't really part of my presentation but it had occurred to me on the way home that it could have been.)

And second, artists are so often consumed by their desire to create, to progress, to achieve, that they rarely stop to look back on their old works and appreciate how far they've come. It is not unusual for an artist thus consumed with a desire to be famous to change the way he draws, conceives, presents, and discusses his art, just so that it will please the sensibilities and minds of critics and potential buyers. There are plenty of artists out there who think of it more as a commercial industry than as a spiritual pursuit or desire to express their ideas.
Some artists also become so consumed by the idea of being a skilled artist that they never consider the possibility of criticism or artistic block, two dangerous obstacles that once overcome show themselves to be not walls but doors onward: they just have to be opened first. The criticism or inability to create just crushes their initiative, I've seen it happen and it's a sad thing to see. They had been so consumed by the possibility of being great that they never prepared for defeat, and never learned how to handle it. I've seen many good artists stop drawing for reasons that would seem silly to anyone but them.

Unfortunately I do not have a picture of my project to provide: I threw it away after class. But the finished cape was a piece that rather commanded attention: long enough to drag on the ground when hung from my shoulders and wide enough (due to the rigidity of the paper+tape) to make moving through narrow doorways difficult, if not impossible, this piece certainly attracted attention (but probably not as much as the bacon hat). Unfortunately I believe most of the people were rather underwhelmed with it, aside from a laugh or two at it dragging on the ground or getting caught in a door. I'm certain they thought that since all I did was find old drawings and tape them together, it couldn't really be considered a particularly interesting piece or something. Well, that's too bad then!

As for what I could have done differently?
Seeing two of my classmates doing a large performance piece with their collaborative work, I feel now that I could have made my piece impact more strongly if I had attempted something such as performance with mine. I'm not entirely sure what I would say, but I would want to incorporate the cape being bestowed on them, much as in a knighting ceremony of sorts. This might help symbolize that while being an artist means you have freedom to do whatever you wish with your art, there are always things to be careful about, and they would need to steel themselves both mentally and emotionally before they venture into the art world.
(That sounds silly, like something from a videogame or fantasy novel, but I'm not really sure how else to say it. damn.)

Daily Notes 2/10

Well in terms of what we discussed in class this week, it was as much about our ideas for our next project as anything. Now, I missed the class this wednesday, but from what I know they were going to the Mint museum, most likely to look at art. Or to buy souvenirs.
But I think they went for the art, personally.

On monday, though, we viewed another Art 21 video, this time featuring various artists whose names I can't possibly remember right now. I'd love to list who they were and what they did, but I have not slept soundly in over two weeks and frankly I can't remember more than a black man who used the old blackface ideas in his works to bring attention to the issues of race and racial relations, a woman who spent her artistic career designing and creating her versions of efficient isolated living areas, a performance artist who made a number of rather strange videos, and a (asian?) man who took things that had been destroyed or damaged and made them useful for other such things, such as an abandoned house that had been burnt during devil's night, and had been now made to be on a pivot so that the entire house could swing to the side and reveal a hatchery for fishing bait, or his attempt to cure the barren soil through the use of certain plants that would eat the metal particulates in the soil, and which in turn could be burned to produce super-pure metal ore.

I need to get some sleep now.

Self critique of Identity project

Well the showing for the identity projects our class did came and went, and alot of people came up with some really impressive works. In fact, I was rather surprised as to the extent in which some people told so much about themselves to the class. And then there was my project. A somewhat crummy attempt to paint one of my cartoon-like characters onto a mirror for a piece, which didn't end up looking exactly visually stunning.
heres two views of the final project:

















It's not exactly stunning (I'm absolutely god-awful with paints in general. But I figured I should take a try with a media I'm not familiar with.) but this is what I ended up with. All things considered it really could have been worse, but I feel like I could have tried something different than painting on a mirror - which, I find out now, is really, really hard - and maybe come up with something a bit more creative.
But nonetheless, this piece in general was special to me for various reasons. I'll try to sum it up quickly:
Ever since i was a child I've wanted to draw: cartoons, comics, or just little character or scene creations, it wouldn't matter; I'd have fun drawing it. And I wasn't that awful at it, but for some reason for about 6 or 7 years after I turned 8 I just... stopped. And during that time I happened to undergo a severe depression. Now I'm certain I don't need to explain the sorts of depression - I'm sure people have a good idea what depression is usually - so instead I'll jump to the next part. Around my sophomore year of high school I had gotten absolutely sick of being so damn depressed all the time. I didn't really even know why, I just was! So one day I sat down and thought about what I used to do that would make me happy. The answer wasn't really long in coming, I suppose all I needed was to actually ask the question: I was happy when I was drawing. So I started back up. I decided to try making my own characters, something I had always wanted to do, but never knew how to. I learned while drawing my little cartoons and comics that characters designed themselves as much as anything, many times the jokes felt less like pre-planned and blocked out ideas and more like some sort of genuine interactions between the characters on the pages. And after a while I also learned something else about my drawing: it had struck me that many of my characters represented different aspects of myself, even if they were originally based on people and friends I knew at the time. I realized that in many ways I had been using these comic strips and drawings as a way to physically think through and deal with problems that had been bothering me on an extremely personal level, and I was using them also as a way to vent my various fears, anxieties, and angers. Even suicide really didn't seem like an option anymore, once I took drawing and art back up. It was as if the whole world had opened up and for once since my childhood I was actually able to just step outside and appreciate how completely beautiful the world really is. I owe a lot to these silly little cartoon characters I created, but it's just so difficult to explain.
Hell, when I got up in front of the group to explain mine I pretty much forgot almost everything I wanted to say. I never was very good at communication.

So... self critique:
My project is one of my characters, in this case an anthropormorphic cat, painted onto a mirror in a position like he's drawing on something on the desktop. There is a sketchbook placed in front of him with an unfinished cartoon drawing of myself penciled in. On the opposing page, but oriented in the manner in which someone would be drawing on it (if you're right handed, turn it upside down so the binding is on left, etc.) with a few doodles of three of my characters, the most prominent one being of the cat character in question. The idea was one of a non-representational self portrait drawing itself in a way, while on the opposing page it itself is in the process of being finished and detailed. A tough idea to portray effectively, though. I probably could have done something different.
I don't really know what to critique here. I suppose if there was something I would want to improve it would be that the painting on the mirror could be a little cleaner, maybe something that seemed more like a finished painting than a quick toss of paint onto a surface. But that's really more of a technique issue, not a conceptual one. I think the piece would also bee a bit stronger if I had inked the little drawings in the sketchbook, making them more visible to onlookers. As a whole I'm not exactly happy with how it came out, I just sort of feel like I didn't do that great a job.

I'm not really sure what else I need to be saying about it.