Five Artists

1. Fountain by Marcel Duchamp

I like this because it's unexpected. It's not something you would think of as art at first.

2. Day and Night by M.C. Escher

I especially like the geometric nature of Escher's art. I am particularly interested in tessellations and geometric designs.

3. Starry Night by Vincent Van Gogh

I like the way Van Gogh used his paint brush. This painting makes me sigh and I think it is beautiful.

4. Migrant Mother by Dorothea Lange

I especially like this photo because it captures the emotion of the mother so clearly. Her face is saying so much about how she cares for her children and how desperate her situation is.

5. Stravinsky by Pablo Picasso

I like how Picasso chooses to exaggerate little things and somehow makes the whole look more real, but not in the sense of what we see with our eyes.

Three Videos

     The first video contained interviews from people that looked smart. They were worried about whether or not traditional art students would be able to find a place in the ever evolving world of technology. I think that the artistically inclined people will not have a problem adapting. They are probably the ones who are pushing things forward creatively anyways.

     Video two seemed a bit new-agey to me. It started out scientific like, but then shifted to this whole "the earth is our mother" sort of thing, which is fine. Whatever floats your boat. However, I thought the experiment they mentioned about the monkeys learning something and then observing that the next generation seemed to have this knowledge innately was fascinating.

     The last video was pretty silly. I don't think the people who created it really knew what they were talking about. I didn't think they showed the difference between the two halves of our brain very well. The host duo was weak and underdeveloped.

What did I learn from each drawing exercise?

     The first drawing was a self portrait. The only thing I have retained from any art class I've taken ever is this: a person's eyes are halfway up their head. So the first thing I did was to draw the head shape and the eyes right in the middle. I found that it really is quite hard to draw what you see. I would want to just draw an eye instead of my eye. I found that getting shading right is difficult. Because there's more to my face than just the shapes. There is depth and color. I don't think i got any of the shading right.

     I was pleased with how my hand turned out. I think I improved from the first to the second drawing. I took more care to observe the shapes and curves and angles. I tried to draw a hand that looked alive. I found that it helped to figure out where one part of the hand was relative to another, so that the hand looked proportional when I finished. For example, I noted that my thumb nail was directly across from the corner of my wrist and right below the tip of my index finger.

     I decided to draw a full person for my person from memory instead of just a face. I drew my grandfather. I found out that drawing clothes is difficult. It's hard to get the grooves right so that it looks actually like clothing. I learned that you really have to take your time and draw carefully, because I can tell which parts I hurried through and which parts I took time on. I found that when drawing from memory it is even easier to just draw an eye, than to draw the eye "symbol" you have in your head.

     I did not have time to finish the Upside-down Portrait of Stravinsky. I had fun with this. I enjoyed just copying random lines instead of trying to copy a representation of something. I learned that I need to judge sizing better, as my Stravinsky, if finished, would not fit on the paper. I also learned that if I concentrate to hard, the drawing just ends up looking worse so I need to learn to "flow" better.