Painting 1, Fall 2019

Rutgers University, Taught by Anna Kristensen

[theartsyfartsypart]

END OF TERM SHOWCASE

For the second half of the semester, we worked on 4 different projects.

Colour Wheel and Albers Colour Mixing. This assignment was fun and a great interlude into the second half of the class. I am still in shock over the Albers exercises. I did the 2 appears as 1 (yellow) and 1 appears as 2 (red) on one canvas. I then did the ugly colour combination. My colour wheel came out great and was a great reminder of colour mixing, in my opinion.

Warm and Cool Colour Painting. This painting was fun but also a little unsettling. My original colour scheme wasn’t my favourite. BUT I did realize something just look at the two versions again. The purple Medusa appears farther away than the green Medusa. I don’t think I changed their sizes much but I went from a warmer colour to a cooler colour. I like both version but I think my eyes appreciate the yellow/green Medusa more than the purple Medusa.

Abstract Discordant Painting. This painting didn’t come out how I imaged and that is okay. Discords was easy when it was on a small scale just mixing enough to test the discord quality. Mixing discords on a larger scale is honestly the hardest or one of the harder things we did this semester. Once I got out of my head, this painting was less stressful and I got at least one true discord set of colours.

Reverse Plexi Painting. This is my favourite project from the second half of the class. I honestly finished this painting in less than 24 hours over the course of 3-4 days. That’s kind of how excited I got. But I would stay up back 1am and it kind of messed up my sleep patterns. I would painting in reverse on plexiglass again but I would have to get a better handle on creating thin lines with paint brushes. (Really struggled to get a good picture of this! After multiple attempts, I think these are the best three that shows the painting the best!)

[chelseadowney]

Holy shit! Your plexi painting is incredible. Love all of the different elements combined here that you tied together so well. Great job on everything ☺️

[chantalpcart-deactivated2023102]

Week 09/21: Oil Painting Exercise

This week’s exercise was a bit tough. I’ve done oil painting before but not in this manner with the slow dry. Working with the slow dry was quite challenging as I had to try and get the shades in whilst the paint was still wet. Also due to the paint not being fully dry while I was doing this I couldn’t get the darkest shade but I did the best I could. It was also difficult to get the details but I did my best using the different size brushes. Not my favorite way of working with oil paint but still enjoyed the challenge😅

[annas2019fallpainting]

aw you did a stellar job despite it being uncomfortable and new! Your proportion feels good and you managed to capture a lot of tonal detail in the lamp, and the weight of the table feels real and lifelike. One tip, especially when working with tone, and I think Push was finding this too, but try to avoid using line (or outlining). Look closely at how Celmins did it. She uses the shape of one tone up against the shape of another tone (or the background) to delineate the difference in form. I know line is tempting because it is a way of drawing something in, or to make something stand out, but it can be more realistic if you try to sculpt out the object by using various shapes of tone. Ugh its hard to explain!! look closely at Celmins and compare it to the parts of your painting where you wanted to use line - I think this could be really useful to you! And the class! 

[daughteroftheurbanmind]

Eve Fowler was born in 1964 and most of her art exhibitions are displayed in this most modern time. As for her word art, she used a 2 dimensional approach. She works with billboards, posters, prints and signs. And uses a variety of mediums: neon, paint, and vinyl (sound). In her collaborations with other artists, she ventures out into filmmaking, sound pieces and installations.

Sources: https://moranmorangallery.com/artists/eve-fowler/

[timk2019fallpainting]

Jon Campbell is an Australian artist who has become a significant figure in Australian Pop Art. He makes contemporary word paintings with bright colors and intentionally makes the letters large and illegible. His letters are primarily geometric and he uses the technique of color blocking create contrast. Different spaces have unique colors to make them stand out

[amm677]

Word Painting Inspiration

Tauba Auerbach 

Tauba Auerbach was a visual contemporary artist. Her earlier works were on word painting and calligraphy. I found it interesting that she grew up in a family of theatre designers. This impacted her love for art. Below I added a photo of an example of her earlier works with word art that lists “okay” vertically with different colored letters on them that are spelled different ways. She also believes that a fourth dimension of color exists. I find that very interesting that she looks at colors from a dimension point of view. 

Source: Hess, H. (2014, November 7). Tauba Auerbach. Retrieved November 5, 2019, from https://www.widewalls.ch/artist/tauba-auerbach/.

Jenny Holzer

Jenny Holzer is a neo-conceptual artist. Her works are using language as her art. She makes artworks in public spaces with words. I like how she projects words onto public spaces to make statements. My favorite works that she’s made is like the one I posted below where she uses light bars to illuminate words. I like how she comes across authoritatively in some of her works. I also liked her Times Square installation with her statements that don’t seem to make sense at first but when you read them it forces you to stop and engage with it. For example, in her “Laments” collection, there are statements that suggest things but by the simple combinations of words that your brain skims it makes you stop and double-take to see what it was you read. 

Source: Glennon, J. (2016, February 22). Jenny Holzer Art, Bio, Ideas. Retrieved November 5, 2019, from https://www.theartstory.org/artist/holzer-jenny/.

My partner and I decided to replicate a painting by Tauba Auerbach where it shows a washed grey background with colorful letters on top. It spells “OKAY” in different ways. We put our own twist on it by deciding to do the word “YES” using that same technique. We wrote “Yes, Yez, Yesh, Yas, and Yassss” to make it more relevant to Pop culture as well. 

Towards the end of the class, it was our turn to begin planning to create our own word paintings from the words we chose before coming into class. We received feedback from our peers and chose our words. The word I chose was “Jimmies”. Many people know this word as “sprinkles” and do not know it may have a double meaning. Some say only the true “Jimmies” are the brown sprinkles and that it may have started with a negative connotation to the minstrel song “Jim Crow” from the 1830′s. During this time, people started to refer to African-Americans as “Jim Crow”. Jim Crow was a slang term for anything having to do with African Americans therefore, people believe that it is directly related to the word “Jimmies”. 

Source: Staff, S., & Staff, S. (n.d.). Were Jimmies Named After Jim Crow? Retrieved from https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/jimmies-etymology/.

[amm677]

Masking Technique

I really enjoyed using this technique because it was oddly satisfying to rip the tape off to get that sharp edge. I love how clean and neat it leaves the art looking at the end. We also learned about tonal contrast where light and dark colors are next to each other in a painting that have different hues but are the same tone. Color discord is when colors contrast or clash against each other.

Original:

My artwork:

[annas2019fallpainting]

AHHH I love seeing these 2 different versions together. (collage and painting) So different

[adri6759-blog]

October 2, 2019

In today’s class we learned more about composition and the varied types of ways to introduce it in a painting or in a creativity project. These images show the process of composition and we used our paintings from our previous class to create a very abstract image of all the incorporated paintings. My classmate Valerie had very interesting pieces featuring her fiesta painting and i thought it looked pretty cool to post. Over all I learned that composition really does create different types of cool arts that don’t need to be organized or planned out. My over all piece was transitioned from this to this:

To This:

[ramilolc]

Here we did a couple of exercises to train our eyes to distinguish tones between different color with different temperature.

[annas2019fallpainting]

Ahh! worked so well Ramiro. 3 colours appear as 4

[creationsofthesoull]

Amy Sherald: at the Hauserwirth

October 16

Admiring great art andhaving knowledge about colors and different techniques really allowed me to appreciate it on a whole other level. In the past I would’ve walked past an art piece and not really understood why they chose this specific color or the possible technique behind it. Now I can’t help but wonder and think about all the possible techniques and thought processes that came before the whole creation of it. I stood there for a whole minute staring at the painting of the man with the striped pants. I was genuinely amazed by the detail in the pants and how real they looked. The way the different shadows casted over certain areas was so precise. Adri and I even pointed out that we could see that she might’ve possibly used masking tape. One of my favorite shows to visit of the day.

Vija Celmins:

We next came over to see Vija Celmins at another location interestingly enough i painted one of her works for class called “Explosion at Sea” she’s a very detailed artist so I enjoyed examining all the precise details of work she put in.

Anni Albers:

Another very calculated artist but in a more mathematical and technical way I would say. Her work was different in some sense than the rest but I enjoyed it.

Nicolas Party: Pastel

I would say that this was my favorite show to visit overall and it was our last. I think partly what’s influencing my decision is the way that she purposely set the mood by painting each room different colors. The colors of the room were very inviting and warm. When we first entered I saw the first picture on the left side that is posted above and I was really engaged by the intensity of the colors. I also liked how she even painted some murals on the wall. I thought her paintings were different but interesting they made me question them. Overall great artists, great time. :)

[annas2019fallpainting]

Valerie I so loved reading about your experience of the field trip. Some of what you talk about is stuff I think about often so its really lovely to read you thinking looking about these things more in depth

[timk2019fallpainting]

Class 12 Reflection

In class 12 we talked about hue as value and how different values can create the illusion of transparency. We did several exercises to explore this concept. For our first exercise, we chose six hues at random and arranged them such that the lightest color was at the top and the darkest was at the bottom. To see the variation of the hues in their purest firm, we photographed the column and then desaturated it.

Another exercise was exploring boundaries, where we created two columns without regard for hue or value. We paid close attention to the boundary line at the top two colors and tried to replicate it for the remainders. This was the result.

Our final exercise that we did was making 3 colors appear as 4. To do this, we created two overlapping shapes and painted one a dark and the other a light color. We mixed the two colors and used that as the background and overlap color. We ended up with this.

[annas2019fallpainting]

Articulate summary of the exercises Tim! Thanks for sharing :)

[nms2019fallpainting]

Composition Collage

In this exercise, we cut up our textured paintings from the blindfold activity and explored different kinds of compositions with our scrap pieces of art work. I found it difficult to cut up my paintings because i liked them the way they were and thought the marks i made were too “nice” to be cut up. To find a middle ground where i was able to not destroy the art completely and still make it useful for the next step, i cut them into strips keeping the stokes of paint still evident. I tried to create an OPEN composition, CLOSED composition, CHANCE composition, AWKWARD composition and SYMMETRICAL and ASYMMETICAL compositions. ultimately I went with the second one below that was both balanced and symmetrical and also closed.

[annas2019fallpainting]

Love seeing these options. Collage is so ideal for working out composition possibilities

[nms2019fallpainting]

[annas2019fallpainting]

Great post Nilay showing variations of the Josef Albers exercises. Annotation woudl be awesome! the colours do seem to shift when surrounded by the varying outer backgrounds, and fab example of the boundary lines between colours

[samiajahangiri]

~

PAINT, COLOUR, TONE, + TECHNIQUE.

Part of what we did in class was to explore working with acrylic paint, after having initially learned about the properties of oil. One of the first lessons we had, was understanding colour theory and the “mathemetics” if you will, of colour ratios. We used a warm and cool shade of each of the three primaries, combining these to make mid-tones of each primary colour, and then ultimately curated a combination of our new three colours to create as close of a black as we could, with the understanding that student grade colours (which we were using) had more white in them, and additionally, acrylics tended to dry a shade lighter. The properties and techniques used are explained in more thorough detail below:

ACRYLIC vs OIL.

Acrylic paint is water based, whilst oil paint is.. well, oil based. In comparison to oil paint, acrylic dries much faster, as darkens by a shade as the colour dries. It is also more difficult to mic a specific shade for this reason, also requires a greater quantity to be able to paint the same surface.

COLOUR + TONE.

Every colour, including primary colours has a warm and cool tone. For example, pthalo blue is the coolest, and closest to green is a cool blue, whilst in comparison, cobalt blue or ultramarine are warmer blues. Paired v ariously, the three primaries make a secondary colour – either orange, green, or purple. And lastly, all the three primaries together in varying quantities will produce tertiary colours. These include browns, skin tones, dusty pink etc. For example, red + white makes pink, which is very saturated, however, if you’d like to decrease the intensity, you “reduce” the colours by adding the opposite of the primary (in this case, green), which will balance out the colour. A tint on the one hand, is a colour or hue mixed with white. It is also important to note that a mid yellow, mid red, and mid blue, theoretically make a black, however, student grade colours will not do this as well, as they contain larger quantities of white in them which mess with the intensity of the black.

THE MONOCHROME.

A monochrome artwork is one that only contains one colour, and monochrome abstraction is the use of a single colour over an entire canvas - an idea that has been explored by contemporary artists as an attempt at challenging the traditional idea of what a painting should be. The monochrome serves two purposes: firstly, to reduce the artwork to its simplistic form, and secondly, to explore the tranquility of a single colour.

Shown below, my black, and grey tint (center square on both canvas sheets).

[daughteroftheurbanmind]

I want to make this post as minimal, because there is no way to encapture what I experienced today. These paintings by Amy Sherald held so much power and complexity, I will answer these questions for each. I want you to think about my thoughts compared to yours.

Picture 1 (Amy Sherald)

What did I notice? What did I appreciate? What made sense?

The softness of his hair matching the softness of his facial expression. This all being against the striking but calm background.

I appreciated that she was able to accomplish such tranquility with such a strong black man.

The strokes of his hair displayed the softness of his character. And the verticality of the painting keeps the focus on everything.

Picture 2 (Amy Sherald)

What did I notice? What did I appreciate? What made sense?

I noticed a tint of color in the gray skin which was an interesting play against the dress.

I appreciated the complexity of the hair. Each curl was perfectly designed.

The blue and yellow played allowed no portion to be more important than another in a piece.

Picture 3 (Amy Sherald)

What did I notice? What did I appreciate? What made sense?

This was my favorite portrait. The colors blend so well. The orange pops out immediately and played against the other colors it is highlighted. And although the blue fills up most of the canvas, it is not overpowering.

I appreciate the detail, especially from the clouds at the bottom because of the skyscraper his is on.

What made sense was the seriousness of his expression and the fact that he is on a skyscraper. It created an atmosphere that depended attention and scrutiny.

[annas2019fallpainting]

I am SO glad you the work resonated with you so much. I also thought it was a really strong and moving exhibition

[daughteroftheurbanmind]

Ed Ruscha is an artist, but people debate whether he is a writer or a painter. And through looking at his work, I would say that it is a little of both. Just as a painter could also be considered a social activist. Ed Ruscha become widely known around the 1950’s. Ed Ruscha uses different approaches to complete his collages. He integrates painting, drawing and printing onto canvas. And he also uses very interesting materials such as blueberries, egg yolk, tobacco juice, mint leave stains and gun powder. This definitely reminds me of our first creative exercise of the class. A quote from the artist himself explains that he uses the “noise of everyday” which is powerful. He doesn’t search for a complete meaning of words when he works. He places down what comes to him and then it is up to us to feel or experience what is expressed. And that perfectly describes everyday life. It is just noise that we must listen to and act accordingly. Overall, Ed Ruscha’s work speaks to both pop art and conceptual art. It catches the eye and uses everyday language. My favorite play on words that I have seen so far is, “I am dead serious about being nonsensical”. And although the painting itself is very toned down and bland almost, it speaks to the color of life. I can really relate to it as it is my goal in life to keep the child in me alive and not be spiritually killed by the everyday. So, in addition to the words themselves, the presentation of the words is important. Some words are bigger than others, like the word “HONK” which makes sense as a car horn is extremely loud. Even his painting with “90% angel” being a larger font than “10%” devil which shows that almost superiority of the statements. And again, very relatable. Ed Ruscha’s work reminds me of the social media craze of 2013 where everyone’s feelings were expressed via a bunch of words on a picture of a sunset. It is cool to see his influence in my generation.

Sources:

https://www.phaidon.com/agenda/art/articles/2015/december/09/whats-ed-ruscha-saying-with-his-word-works/

https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/edward-ruscha-1882/ed-ruscha-and-art-everyday

List of Words:

Blue

Over It

Blah Blah

Equality Equity

Insert Here

Read

Do Now

What Is

Yawn

Colored Boy

[annas2019fallpainting]

great post Kira. interested to see what word you choose in the end!

[mary-g-paints]

Texture Paintings Part I

For this class, we were blindfolded and paired up with a partner. Each person was either blindfolded, or was the person picking out the random object and asking descriptive questions to their blindfolded partner. After we got a feel for the object, we were asked to take black and white paint, some modeling paste, and various tools to portray how that objects texture made us feel and how it may have given us some familiar memories of that object.

My Paintings:

A. This object felt like a handmade candle holder. It had a lot of different textures like the smooth top and beaded necklace towards the bottom of it. In order to get the texture of the necklace, I took a smaller fine detailed brush and made stippling like strokes onto the canvas paper.

B. This object felt and smelled like an air freshener. It had a hard plastic rounded base, a squishy middle, and a strong odor when smelled. In order to show the hard plastic bottom, I used harsh strokes with one of the brushes to portray a feeling of stiffness and hardness. The middle squishy part, I used a smooth mid tone color to show that it is soft to the touch. I added some dark black streaks here and there to give the object a surface to sit on.

C. This object felt very light, round in shape and spikey all around it. These spikes were not sharp at all, they were very soft and dull to the touch. I had a feeling in my head that this was definitely one of those spikey balls that I always see being sold at little kid stores. I used a small flat brush to give the object a spikey look. Also, I added some large dark strokes next to the object to give it a sense of movement.

D. This object felt very soft, light, and airy. The texture at the top of the object felt like a synthetic flower. Once I felt the very bottom of the object, it felt very sharp and pin like. I used a small fan brush in a light airy movement to make the object look the way that it feels. For the pin like portion, I took a spatula knife and dipped it into some white paint to give it an edge and sharp look.

E. This object felt very interesting. It almost felt like a door knob of some kind. The flat top portion of the object was smooth and felt like wood. The bottom portion felt like a long metal nail spiral. To paint the top flat surface of the object, I used some paint with a regular flat brush, and a paper towel to wipe away some of the paint that was applied. For the screw part of the object I took some black paint of a small fan brush and did small circular strokes to give it some texture. After making a nice grey shade, I filled in some spots of the nail where there would be lighter portions of the screw.

F. This object definitely felt like it had scales/sequins on it. I felt a zipper on it and was able to unzip the object. This object reminded me of the little coin purses that I had when I was a little girl. The technique that I used to make the sequins on the object, was that I took a small flat top brush and stroked mini circles to mimic the overall feel and texture of the object. For the zipper, I used black paint to represent that it had a different texture and feel compared to the rest of the object.

Partner’s Paintings

My partner’s paintings were really cool and abstract. She was able to guess some of the objects, while others were a little trickier to figure out. She did a really good job feeling the overall texture, shape, and size of the different objects. Each of her paintings had a different textured element. I also really liked how she used an avocado to make her marks in one of her paintings. By using fruit, it changes the way we think of the tools that we use in our paintings. My favorite of her paintings would be her representation of the carrot. The way she painted it, almost looks like it’s a 3D image. By adding in texture, value, and tone to her piece, it really made the object stand out.

[annas2019fallpainting]

excellent post Mary! Omg I love that carrot painting 

[mary-g-paints]

Figure Ground Painting

On Monday’s and Wednesday’s class, we learned about figure ground and perspective. We also learned about how to sketch and paint with correct proportions with the help of the sighting stick.

Figure ground allows us to decipher between our subject vs our background and shows us about positive and negative shapes as well.

During Monday’s class, we painted our white canvas with a tumeric colored acrylic paint mixed with some water. After the background dried, we took pictures of what we wanted our composition to look like. I chose to do the composition below.

Once I had an image of my composition, I lightly sketched in the different shapes of the various objects with a lead pencil onto the piece of canvas paper.

I then placed multiple dollops of different oil paint colors onto my palette and gathered up various brushes and palette knives. I then began to mix multiple colors that would be useful for my painting.

In my opinion, at times it was pretty tough trying to match up the specific colors to the different objects. It was also difficult to get the proportions of each of the objects correct too. The sighting stick did help with making sure the objects were in their correct spots. Also, by adding the grid lines to the photo I took on my phone, it helped me get a sense of where the different objects should be placed on the canvas paper.

By the end of the first class on figure ground, my painting came out to look like the following:

By the end of Wednesday’s class, my painting looked like the following: