but don't worry!!! i've been looking up artists like a good little girl. and thinking about my senior sem project.... sorta. well obviously this week wasn't a monday blog post week, but on monday i was driving 22 hours to sanibel island, florida. where the water is calm and clear, there are more shells than you can find in a lifetime, the hot florida sun gives even the palest of gals a suntan, and you run on the beach as the sun goes down. aaaaaahhhhh paradise. it's been a wonderful break from my crazy month of may.
sigh..... but there's work to be done.
my first highlighted artist is in honor of my visit to the beach.
her name is marta penter... and i was immediately drawn to her over-life-sized black and white oil paintings. her minimal use of color is also very interesting, as you can see in these chair pieces. these three are from a series called "otium."
sigh..... but there's work to be done.
my first highlighted artist is in honor of my visit to the beach.
her name is marta penter... and i was immediately drawn to her over-life-sized black and white oil paintings. her minimal use of color is also very interesting, as you can see in these chair pieces. these three are from a series called "otium."
"Our artist, Marta Penter, was born in Porto Alegre, RS, in 1957. Since an early age she has been connected to the world of arts, having attended to several art schools and arts centers. She has currently dedicated herself to watercolor and oil on canvas. She has a contemporary realistic language which explores the domains of collective unconscious through images of personal antique objects and human figure through a time-space relationship. Such Icons, which derive from the strong influence of her background as a psychologist, acquire empowerment and expression through her works. Her usually large paintings feature the highlighting of light and shadow effects, thus creating a unique intimate atmosphere. In her last series she has been shedding a new light to man and his world, rescuing the feeling of intimacy which has been lost in a globalized and immediate world."
http://www.martapenter.com.br/indexi.htm
personally, i like her pieces because of the strong sense of realism in them, despite the black and white. she does another series called "shared intimacy," in which all her people are painted from a strange angle, like you are looking up at their butts. it is hilarious, and really invasive which i find interesting.
our second artist is someone i thought jen kapp would like, because some of his pieces are MELTING!!! his name is ric stultz. i found him on (trumpet sound...) stumbleupon. then i found an interesting interview of him that shed some light on his creative process that i would like to include here:
How did you first get into illustration?
My interest started when I was in college studying graphic design. I love to draw and illustration seemed like a commercially viable combination of my interests. I graduated with a bachelors degree in graphic design and applied the aesthetics to my drawings. I'm glad I carried through with my graphic design degree as it has helped me immeasurably with my website and marketing my work.
How would you best describe your style of illustration?
Hand drawn images with bright colours and hard edge line work
Please take us through your design process, where do you start?
Everything starts in my sketchbooks, I try to sketch for a few hours a day. It takes me a awhile to warm up before my drawings are lucid. Once I have a strong idea I draw a more detailed version on a piece of illustration board in pencil. Then I ink it in with india ink. After the ink dries I start to paint the colours with gouache. I am usually planning the colours at the sketch stage so when I get to painting there isn't any hesitation.
What tools do you use for your work?
I mostly use traditional tools and techniques: paints, brushes, paper, ink, and gesso. I also use Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop on a daily basis. When working on digital images I always draw my picture on paper first and then scan it in. I have a Wacom tablet, but its just not the same as drawing on paper.
When illustrating, do you sometimes get blocked for ideas? If so, how do you overcome that?
Yeah, I think everyone gets blocked sometimes. I usually sketch randomly in my sketchbook while watching a movie. That usually does it, the content on the screen transfers onto the page. My favorite TV show to sketch during is Nature on PBS.
Do you have any advice for aspiring illustrators?
Learn to accept rejection as part of the process. Its important to work for your own enjoyment.
What web sites would you recommend viewing?
I love jumping around on Tumblr and seeing what people are putting into the world. I don't look at very much art online, I feel like it negatively influences my work. It puts other people's images in my head, which is good up to a point, but can easily become misleading in my own work. Most of my time online is spent looking at music and film related stuff.
http://www.theartfuls.com/interviews/ric_stultz
below are a few of his melty ones.... i'm a fan of the simplicity. and i would like to somehow incorporate the simplistic ideas into my own works, obviously not in the same way... but i'll take any sort of inspiration i can get at this point. the other thing he does that i ABSOLUTELY love is his use of maps in the designs. (girly squeal) how cool is that?? i am a fan of multimedia type things. when i was at the reston art festival a few weeks ago, every time there was some sort of collage or multimedia booth, i had to go in and infuse the inspiration.
artist number three is a loaded pistol who likes piña coladas and getting caught in the rain..... just kidding.
his name is Kehinde Wiley.
wiley is a new york based portrait painter whose work is highly naturalistic... but weird.
he specializes in oil paintings of contemporary african american, afro-brazilian, indian and ethiopian-jewish, men in heroic poses. this basically means he paints a very contemporary african american man sitting on a throne posed like an old english king portrait. wiley is from los angeles originally, but his father is from nigeria. his mother is african american. he went to art school in russia, and traveled to meet his father in nigeria at age 20. he has a bfa from san francisco art institute in 1999, and an mfa from yale in 2001. (good for you kehende!)
people have compared his works to that of titian, based on the high realism, but it's weird! titian's paintings are supposed to look the way they do because they were painted hundreds of years ago. the mesh up of culture and style is bizarre to me. he places contemporary themes and images into traditional poses and settings, an odd yet compelling combination. his purpose in painting like this is to address the african-american image and status in contemporary culture.
i chose to look at this artist because i will be painting african children... i wanted to see where he went with his african roots and how that has effected his work. i am usually drawn to a more traditional style, like the old masters of the renaissance... however... i don't particularly like his work as much. like i said.... it is weird. here are a few examples for you to decide for yourselves.
http://www.kehindewiley.com/
artist number four is super duper exciting. his name is Matthew Cusick and he ALSO works with maps! just like ric stultz. what a cool dude. working with maps. being a boss. and just because he is so boss, i thought i would include a snippet from an interview of him as well.
What got you into creating portraits and landscapes with maps?
About nine years ago, frustrated with paint and brushes, I just started experimenting with some maps I had laying around the studio. I found that maps have all the properties of a brushstroke: nuance, density, line, movement, and color. Their palette is deliberate and symbolic, acting as a cognitive mechanism to help us internalize the external. And furthermore, since each map fragment is an index of a specific place and time, I could combine fragments from different maps and construct geographical timelines within my paintings.
Maps provided so much potential, so many layers. I put away my brushes and decided to see where the maps would take me. I think collage is a medium perfectly suited to the complexities of our time. It speaks to a society that is over-saturated with disparate visual information. It attempts to put order to the clutter and to make something permanent from the waste of the temporary. A collage is also a time capsule; it preserves the ephemera of the past. It reconstitutes things that have been discarded. A collage must rely on a kind of alchemy; it must combine ordinary elements into something extraordinary.
see? what'd i tell ya. this guy is boss. he makes me want to work with maps. i think i might try something with some maps actually... just to see if he is right. here are a few examples of matt's work:
here is another question from matt's interview that i found helpful....
What's your creative process like? What dictates who or what you'll create next?
I am always thinking about new creations. Usually my best ideas come to me as I'm working on something else or just keeping busy in the studio. Whenever they come I jot them down in a notebook. Then, when I am ready to start something new I look through these notebooks. There are deadlines, and commissions, and sometimes these can lead to your best work as well, but my creative process is very unpredictable. I typically don't commit myself to anything but the few pieces that have made it from my notebook to hanging in my studio as works in progress. The next pieces are determined by the outcome of the ones that proceeded them.
http://www.mymodernmet.com/profiles/blogs/more-magnificent-map-collages
http://mattcusick.com/
keeping a journal = keeping it real. hey! i bet that's what these blog things are about anyways! that is motivating. i'm super excited to get to working on my senior sem project.
but right now.... i'm at the beach.
