Collagepalooza!

WOW it's been a long time! But I think you'll forgive me because it's time for...(drum roll please)...an Art Update! I finally got back some of my first pieces from my art class, so why not put up some pictures to balance out all those words of the last post? So without further ado...collages!

The concept of doing a collage was really weird to me at first. I mean, isn't that what I did in like third grade? But after getting that skepticism out of my system, I realized that it was actually a very cool opportunity to re-examine the elements of art. And some of my favorite elements at that! I'm a very texture oriented person in everything I do (clothes, food, you name it), and art is no different. I'm also a big fan of lines. Pretty ground-breaking, I know.

Anyway, the process was pretty cool. We started by just making pages and pages of shapes, lines and textures out of a variety of different media. Then we cut them up and created two compositions: one with a defined figure-ground relationship, and the other undefined.

Funky!

This is my defined piece! As you can see, the figures kind of have a flow to them--the heaviest, darkest and roughest figures create the foreground and the rest kind of fades off. I really dig this one, because while it's defined, it still has a little ambiguity. And for me, ambiguity = more visual interest = more fun to create AND view!

Funkier?

And now the undefined! This one took much longer to do; as artists we really tend to take for granted the ingrained tendency to create some definition and order even in a piece with abstract subject matter. And at first this collage does look like it's relatively ordered. It's only when you continue to look at it that you notice that certain elements just don't add up: a kind of subtle ambiguity, I guess.

I also had to make another collage that was based on recreating the emotion of a single color. It actually turned out really well, but unfortunately the coloring in the pics I took is kind of terrible, so I'll have to upload it some other time. (Maybe I should invest more time in developing some photography skills).

So that was my first college art assignment! Overall a very surprising experience in both the assignment itself and the time it took to place the elements exactly right. And of course, an inspiring one in its re-evaluation of certain elements and artistic tendencies. Inspiration that has led to some more pretty cool pieces (at least for me to create!), so stay tuned for more art updates!