Ideas, schmideas

At the moment, I'm trying to think of ideas for the fourth nine weeks, or possibly to replace some from this section. I'm not really doing that well. I do sometimes come up with interesting plans, but that's usually at midnight when I can't sleep, but I'm too lazy to write them down, so they never truly come to fruition. I do know that I want to do some self portraits though. I know they need to be in color, possibly muted or bright depending on what statement I'm trying to make, but I was thinking I might use crayon. I'm no t really sure if that would work. I plan on playing around with it at some point in the next few weeks, but we'll see.
Also, I've been watching a lot of the Oprah channel, because I can't find the remote, and there was a show about children with schizophrenia and it really got me thinking about how little we deal with problems like that as a society. When we think of diseases like that, it's usually over dramatized and they're all crazy chanting nonsense, but that's really not it. We also don't think about children having these problems because we have the naive mentality that all children are happy and perfect beings of rainbows and butterflies. I'm not really sure how that will be incorporated into a project, but yeah. That's what I've been thinking about.

100% Concentrate is good in this situation.

Coming into the third nine weeks of AP Art hasn't started off extremely well. I feel as if my river of muddy ideas has suddenly been damed. I still think that I've stuck to my idea of innocence pretty well, but I'm not sure how the rest of the year will flow in relation to the beginning. I've been trying a lot of different things in order to get ideas or feelings, but some of those methods have also dried up just as my idea river has. Some things that have really helped me are surprisingly the two things that hurt me the most in other classes; TV, and the interwebs. I find that watching Disney and Nickelodeon helps me see what children now are like, what they're 'innocence' is. I watch those silly shows that make me chuckle and I wonder if that is really what nine year olds are going through. Do they really wonder if so-and-so thinks they're pretty enough? Skinny enough? Dumb enough? And I have all these ideas flowing from this, but nothing seems to be making it onto the paper in the form of written, detailed, projects. The second thing that has been a great help to me is the internet, especially sites like Pinterest and Tumblr. On the internet, I can get a real feel of what other people of my generation think of the concept of innocence. My proposal of the fictional, barbie doll, body-type and how that mentality is ruing the minds of our young women actually came from photos I found on Pinterest. I'm just hoping that I can keep up my work ethic and not get distracted by the thrills of the interewebs.

Personal Research Article, also I'm an insane Harry Potter nerd.

For the article I'm talking about, click here.

This article is entitled Vietnam War Stories: Innocence Lost, but I'm only really looking at the second chapter Innocence, because the full article is about 233 pages long.

I typed that and went back to the article's tab in Safari and now it wants me to pay for the website, so I'm just going to talk about what I actually got to read.

The first few pages were all about the Vietnam War and how these men where so young that they had to grow up in combat. One quotation stood out to me immediately, "innocence savaged and destroyed". As soon as I read this small phrase, I saw the image of a young boy in an army uniform too big for him with a helmet falling over his eyes shooting a gun. Fighting in a war. And in many ways, I do believe that's what the draft did. It took young boys, not truly even men yet except by the the legal age, and thrust them into what I could only call perdition. I assume that going to war would take every scrap of youthful vitality out of you, leaving an empty shell of a person, totally different from the one that left home. Sorry to be a dork here, but in my mind I relate it back to Harry Potter. For Tom Riddle to become the immortal Lord Voldemort, he had to create these Horcruxes. To do this he had to kill people, in the books it was called 'splitting his soul', I mean that's why he didn't have a nose anymore, because he had dehumanized himself. By making those young boys become soldiers, forcing them to kill, are we not doing the same to them? Dehumanizing and splitting the very soul that keeps them together? I think this article will stick with me because my concentration is about innocence and how you can lose it. Most likely, my next piece when we come back from Christmas will be that small boy who doesn't know what he's doing but is fighting nonetheless.

Art Director type things

An art director oversees the art (the photographs, drawn images, sets, costumes, props, and locations) that appear in newspapers, magazines, ad campaigns, TV, film, and on book covers. The Art Director is responsible for the entire design department, working with photo editors and editors to coordinate what images will match up with what words/ideas. In this job, you do more than hire people to do the art, you work with them to come up with the concepts to create an overall image. There are many different types of companies that use Art Directors, advertising, in book publishing, TV, fashion, film, and at magazines. The type of work they do depends on which subset of job. Most art directors have degrees from art schools, where they’ve studied graphic design, photography and drawing; a background in graphic design is usually essential for most art director jobs today. In today’s job market art directors also need to know various computer programs that allow them to work with everything from photographs to font sizes. While photoshop is a standard program all art directors should know, this is just one of many. For a portfolio, Art directors, who often work up to that title (from assistant positions), need to show examples of their work. Someone looking to work as an art director in an ad agency, for example, needs to show a potential employer sample ad campaigns he’s created. To get these samples, you need to have experience from an internship or from your art school experience. The average salary of an Art Director is just under $100,000, but this also varies between subsets. The only start up expenses you really have are your computer and college degree, after that, most likely, you’ll have a firm or large company to work for. 

I think I would be well suited for this job because I think I have the conceptual skills to come up with ideas for ads or book covers or many of the other things Art Directors need to do. Also, I find this job to be really interesting because you could really go anywhere; from desk job, to traveling the world. 

Response to history.

"And behold a great red dragon, having seven heads, and ten horns, and having seven crowns upon his head. And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them to earth." (Rev 12:1-3 KJV)
"The Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed in Sun" by William Blake

Elements:

Line: Blake uses line here to contrast between the biblical red dragon of hell and the woman of heaven. He juxtaposes the dragon's harsh, bold line with the light flowing contours of angel. 

Color: The color of the piece is used to emphasize the difference between good and evil/heaven and hell. He uses the dark, muted colors for the red dragon, but brighter, more hopeful, golds for the woman. 

Shape: The dragon's form is so huge that it overpowers the whole piece. I'm not sure if the artist meant it this way, but looks as if the dragon is winning almost because he is so gargantuan in comparison to the other figure. 

Principles: 

Balance: I feel that the piece is pretty well balanced because the top portion is so dark, it seems not to take up as much of the overall space as the bottom half. 

Emphasis: Obviously, there is emphasis on the woman. She is the only true highlighted feature in the painting, unless you count the highlights on the back of the dragon. 

Contrast: I think I've already stated that he has contrasted the two figures. 

Btw, I didn't choose this for any particular religious reason. I just really like the Hannibal Lector movie, Red Dragon. 

Response to a contemporary artwork - Libeskind Piano

     I'm not really sure how to go about evaluating this piece of art because it is an architectural piano, but imma try.
     Daniel Libeskind is a Polish-born American architect who is widely known for his 'unbuildable' designs. In 2008, he began working with the German company Schimmel Pianos to design a jagged, working, grand piano.

     This is the famous (or infamous to some architects) Libeskind Piano. As you can see, it definitely isn't what you think of when speaking of normal grand pianos. Upon looking through the principles and elements of art, I realized it was a lot different with 3D pieces than with 2D. 

     Obviously, line played a big role to Libeskind in designing this piece. The basis for all of his buildings or furniture, is the jagged deconstructing of everything. He uses line to create those sharp, uncomfortable edges to enhance the fact that this is not your usual boring piano. 

     The colors of the piano, though it may have been just a coincidence being the normal colors of a piano, are another element which I think add to the strange, awkward feeling you get when looking at (and probably playing) the piano. It also serves to relate it to a normal piano by being a bit similar but then it tares down all normalcy at the same time. 

     Form is another easily relatable element to use here. To be a little bit more redundant, Libeskind has succeeded in emphasizing that fact that this piano is ridiculously weird and unnatural. 

     I can never tell whether I truly like Libeskind's designs or if I'm just simply amazed that they could be built in the first place. Like I said earlier, he is known for his almost unbuildable blueprints. Here are some of his other buildings, maybe you can make more of a decision than me.

Extension to the Denver Art Museum, Denver Colorado

The Ascent at Roebling's Bridge, Covington, Kentucky (greater Cincinnati area)

New York Tower, New York, New York

So, the Nazis really like Gustav Klimt.

This is an art related article review of the piece on BBC News, "Klimt painting fetches $40.4m"

So, as my title so aptly tells, a 1915 painting by the Austrian artist Klimt was stolen by the Nazis and recently sold at a New York auction for $40.4 million. In July, Salzburg's Museum of Modern Art returned the piece to the owner's grandson, who is now 83 years old.

The artwork, Litzlberg on the Attersee, a painting of a lake in western Austria, was originally owned by Austrian iron magnate Viktor Zuckerkandl before being passed on to his sister, Amalie Redlich, when he died in 1927. In 1941, Redlich was deported and the Nazis seized her collection. The painting went for the most money of all the artworks at the auction, which included works by Gustave Caillebotte ($9.3m), and Tamara de Lempicka ($8.5m). Surprisingly though on the same night another auction house failed to find buyers for quite a few famous works of art which included a Picasso and Degas' sculpture of the teenage dancer. 

Degas' sculpture

I chose this article because I find it very interesting, as a person who likes art and is interested in WWII. I'm just truly surprised though, not that the Klimt painting sold for so much because I love Klimt, but that the Picasso and the Degas' sculpture did not sell at all. In fact, the bids on the sculpture didn't even get to half the price it was expected to sell for. Even more so, it was the only sculpture he ever exhibited in his life time. To find the BBC News article on that auction, click here.