Appropriation Project: A Pair of Pears

1. Artists create original artwork:
As a table everyone was thinking of ideas, but independently. At the end we collaborated and shared.
My ideas were butterfly, (a butterfly made of butter, but on a pan so that it its gliding across the pan). Mine were also a gun made of candy, a terrorist made of cotton candy. As a group we thought of things like surfing the web, where there was a surfboard on a spiderweb.
I was thinking about a play on words, when I thought of homonyms. I thought of a pair of pears! I think its goofy and hilarious even though its really basic.

2. Artists collaborate:
We all try to bounce ideas around. Collaborating can be tricky because some people may disagree with you and not see your vision. Explaining your idea thoroughly helps the communication among the group. Having everyone add to the conversation is important. I think collaborating ideas is fun and very effective!

3.  Artist develop art making skill:
As a group or class, if we have good communication and everyone makes an effort we can think of innovative materials to incorporate into our work. As a table we mentioned using materials like balloons, wax, candy. What is interesting is that when we talked about these mediums, we also thought about covering these things with the innovative material. What I analyzed was that we could carve the candy. We can, for example, take a giant gummy bear and carve it into something that goes with the idea/theme/subject. Actually carving into these mediums makes it more special, not just covering the piece in it.

     2-11-14: For my Appropriation project my final is a pair of pears leaning against each other. I will try to make them curve with each other in the picture so that the audiences eye doesn't steer away from the piece. For my medium I am going to use acrylic, and a palette knife to get a good texture and application. For the pears I will stay with a palette of greens, yellows, blue/purples and brown/tan/black. For the background I will have peachy colors, with orange, red, and light pinks, with nudes. This will give a good complementary colors. I like incorporating and showing as many colors as I can that work together. This helps show more vibrancy and it gives off an abstract feeling to the piece.

Sketch & plans:

My attempt:

The red is too over powering so I think I'll leave the background just white with shadows OR experiment with a light orange-red. What I didn't realize was that I was painting with complementary colors that were still wet. It took about three to four quick attempts and some help from the art teachers Mr. Sans and Mrs. Rossi to help teach me how to bend the colors together without mudding or harsh bands. Also I ran into a problem when I didnt like the look of the painting, Mr.Sans figured out it was the light source. I painted on top on the right pair with a lighter green to balance out the light source. I am still working on it!

3-1-14 I have finished my pairs, I added a shadow, but I am debating about the background. So far its just white with shadows.

The base ->

almost done, not quite there ->

added a light blue and shadow, trying to control painting w/ just one/ two light sources-->

zoom in-->

march 14th-->

Looking at the pictures now I feel like changing the left shadow and making the background color more of a happy and bright blue. I ran into a problem towards the end of this project; I realized my light source was off. Next time I have to remember to think about the light source when planning out the design and composition.

Art3: Tension

With the tension theme I chose to go with a circus setting, and having people balance on a tightrope on one foot while having two people on their arms juggling chainsaws on fire. So far my materials have been wire, black yarn, fabric, printed paper, and acrylic. I tried to show a symmetrical compositions but putting elements in it that would throw off the balance. For example, the person on the top right is positioned to reach something, because I will later draw/paint in chainsaws on fire, but this juggler lost balance and drops the chainsaw, creating the tension. Also the elephants have different patterned fabrics. The elephant on the left has three arms but the elephant on the right has three legs.
Later I am going to add two more people on the left and right of the tightrope. I am debating where to have them positioned as semicircles or at about 45 degree angles in so their bodies would point to the bottom center of the picture to show the triangle in the composition.

Still working.. its taking FOREVER!!

 I added glitter glue, and made a candle sort of thing for the ring of fire. Maybe I can change Mr.Sands perspective on glitter.

The first try on the candle idea failed... :(

To fix this I tied strings around the ring and went through several coats of wax. I also made sure to make the string wicks longer to make it last and have something thick for the wax to adhere.

Yay finally; the fire element worked!



1. Artists take risks:
While in the process of creating the design, I loved the idea of the ring of fire. I feel that the ring of fire at a circus adds so much tension. I really wanted to add it to my piece, but I didn't think it was possible. After I finished the actual painting, I thought the project still needed something more. Fire! I went back to thinking more about the fire element. Birthday cakes inspired the design of the the ring of fire. Using wax, wire, and string I made a candle sort of piece to be the ring of fire.
This was a big risk because it could have burned my whole project. I had never used any other type of medium than things I could control. Controlling fire can be very dangerous, but it all went smoothly.

2. Artists communicate through their work:
Conveying the feeling of tension can be taking different routes. Typically disturbing or odd pictures can cause tension. Other times you could paint things thats a big problem. One of my ideas was painting a scene from a third world country, or poverty. Those tense subjects would definitely be see through the art piece. But then when someone mentioned "tightrope"  ideas starting coming. A circus, fire, 5 foot animals, chainsaws, representations of the thrill and tension in a circus. They all create tension in a busy circus that leaves an audience in awe.

3. Artists solve problems:
As mentioned previously the first attempt on the ring of fire didn't work at all. This didn't make me feeling like quitting on the ring of fire, because there had to be someway to make it work. My motto is "What like its hard?" so I just needed to make a new one. I just melted some wax, got some string, and with the help of Mr.Sans (an expert at candle making) I was able to make another ring of fire before class ended!

Art 3: Sketch idea 1

For this idea of incorporating text into art, my group and I thought of many ideas. We thought of painting a person spray-painting a brick wall, but having the colors from the spray can come out as colorful words like "art", "inspire", "express", "color", "orange". There was also the idea of training dolphins to jump at certain curves and positions so that when they would all jump a word would appear. Then there was the idea of using shoelaces to spell out a word on converses, which lead to the idea of the sketch above. The idea of using string or laces to wrap around objects. So an example of doing this was sketched out. The way this would work is to have the supporting strings the same color as the object to let them camouflage, but having a bright color standout but only have this color on the lines and curves that would spell the words.