Drawing of My Hands

This project definitely failed me. I didn't do this drawing correctly. It was impossible for me to draw or sketch my hand. I absolutely gave up. But then I had another idea. I traced out my hand so I have some kind of foundation for me to work on. Then I worked out on my shadows then the fine details such as my knuckles. I used a pencil for this project and a whole lot of erasing. It was VERY difficult to draw with my left hand, which is my non dominant hand. With this little cheat it did come out pretty well. I don't know if this counts or not. I would NOT consider using my non dominant hand to work on artwork in the future. My knuckles were also a very complicated piece because I had no idea how to sketch it out. I did some research to how other hands came out and it seemed that a lot of shadowing going on.

Velázquez & Image of a Master

It is inspiring how these artists started when they were pretty young. Some were well known of ever since 16 years old. I was interested in both these videos because it shows how much potential any one can have. The video with Albrecht Durer was well known for his drawing of his hands, which we are actually doing for this module.

Velazquez when he was 24 he started being a court painter for Philip IV. He started painting when he was way younger though. His painting, Order of Santiago conferred his nobility. He captured the moment which includes the light, air and other elements that disappear in a trice not because they are fleeting but because they are timeless. The worst art is his had no friends except only one which was the king. He had only one love who was his wife. His consuming interest was painting, and this was his friend, lover of literature and patron of the arts. It is incredible how talented you can be but I wouldn't want to live all my life to have just very limited amount of friends and paint forever in my life. Velazquez was a man of good character not very interested in government. The king guaranteed his livelihood and his future as a painter. When Velazquez painted he was free of artistic compromise or unwanted commissions. Velazquez basically painted what he wanted to paint. Velazquez always saw the king as eloquent, speaking not with his lip but with work. When he was on his trip back to Madrid, he painted Mythology Forge of Vulcan. For Velazquez the life mattered and not myths. Velazquez painted slowly and was very educated.

Albrecht Durer was born in 1471. He exercised a powerful influence on the art of Northern Europe. He was very talented, and performed a self portrait at age 13. He loved painting hands, which connects to what we have to do in our module for this class. Durer examined the process of aging carefully. For example, the ruthless eye of paintings determines the process of aging. There was some scrutiny of narcissism which was an art of scrutinizing his own face. After he visited to the Alps he discovered the art of landscape. Durer was the first true landscape artist in Europe. Durer was asked for an altar piece for their chapel inside the church. The theme was the virgin angels that distributed garlands of roses to rulers of church and state. Durer always had something to learn. From the Venetians, he learned how to employ the first brushstroke without color to achieve the effect of solid form simply with light and shadow. The painter examines his model through a grid then transfers each detail onto sheet of paper scored with the same grid. His search was the perfect form possessed by the Ancient Greeks and since lost. An example of this was his own self portrait.

More Human than Human & A World Inscribed

I was able to look at the subtitles for these videos and were easier to understand. I was able to stop copy my notes down successfully and play it again!

For the first video, More Human Than Human

It was quite interesting for me to figure out why art was around for such a long time. It began way before I was born myself. Images make us how to think, how we feel and they mold and define us. They are very highly influential to humans. You see certain types of images that helps promote advertisements. We see it in T.V and definitely around our surroundings. They have such a powerful hold on us. What these whole images have in common is a human form. This type of form is primary.

In this video, it uses an example of a gull chick. As soon as they are hatched their brains are stimulated not by the mother gull, but actually the red stripe on its beak. There was an experiment done using a stick with one stripe to see if these gull chicks would notice it. Certainly they did! There were more experiments done including a stick with multiple red stripes and sure enough they were even more stimulated and excited over this stick with three stripes than only one. There is an analogy here with the Venus sculpture with emphasized on the hips and the breasts.

The brains of the hunter and gatherers of the Venus producers exaggerated what mattered the most. They were living in the Iced Age, so features of warmth and fatness were highly desirable so their brains compelled them to exaggerate these features above others.

Egyptians were first settled humans to use images of the body extensively in their Art. The bodies don't have exaggerated features at all. All arms and feet were about the same size. Each part of the body was at the clearest angle. There were red grid lines that were found in a tomb which covered the entire body. Researchers analyzed this Grid recording numerous details. The figure was 19 squares tall and the feet were two and half squares long. The pupil of the eyes were one square off the center line. This whole concept was very important to the Egyptians. The Pyramids were designed with absolute precision which is a symbol of order that had risen from the desert.

The second video that I watched, A world Inscribed,

describes how hard of a Monk's life was. At that time there were the local lord who offered protection and different monasteries where the monks produced most of the books. Very few people knew how to read and write and was an extraordinary skill at the time. Monks were producing bibles to spread the work. But this spread of knowledge was slow and each book was written by hand. Average monastery had only 20 books. Spelling mistakes and errors corrupted the texts after many centuries. Letters would look like other letters, there were ink blot and caused the writer to leave out a line or paragraph.

Shortly after, literacy was needed for social development. Universities sprung up where students shared their bible and took notes together. This way multiple of books were copied at once.

Its really hard to imagine living at a time like this, where there are only shorthand of books. This tells us that knowledge is actually a gift to us. The ability to read and write is incredible. Without this ability we wouldn't be able to learn about the past at all!

Video on Architecture

I watched a video on prairie style and architecture: The science of design. There were truly both a fascinating videos. The first video was really intriguing and got me thinking about what kind of houses that I wanted to live in permanently in the future. The second video showed me different kind of apartments, especially a smart apartment.

All these video links to the textbook because architecture is a type of an art form. It depends how to want to layout a house according to nature and integrate the organic aspect into the clients' home.

Frank Lloyd Wright was an architect, and a very well known for the prairie style of homes. It was mainly composed of 7 feet tall houses but spread out horizontally. His main idea was the box like homes to wide open horizontal living spaces. Wright designed lots of single family houses in Chicago where homes should reflect time, place and landscape. The front door was mystique and not just slammed right in front of the house.

My favorite part of this was how Wright integrated the organic relationships between the house and its surrounding. The Vancouver landscape was also a inspiring creation. It is a landscape of mountains and trees rather than flat prairie. It consists of water, stones and plants that make it look like a quarry where the stone came from. The spaces of the house all flow out into the garden. The best design is total integration between the furniture, the house, the site, the client and the way they live. This the idea of Frank Lloyd Wright so he became one of the best architect in the western culture.

In the second video it was really cool to see the smart houses. I knew about this already. In the beginning it really defined how skyscrapers came about. The urban cities was the important spot of growth. There were no more vacant lots in urban cities so people needed to build up. New materials such as concrete and steel brought about the construction to build skyscrapers. A skyscraper is made up of super structure, which is all that stands above ground and underground subculture. Wood sticks are put in ground, then immense slab of concrete is extended out beyond the perimeter of the building.

Wind is important in considering for foundation. For example, wind in a 100 story building will be 4 times more violent than it is around a 50 story structure. When the wind swirls around a tall building, it usually breaks up into whorls or vortexes which alternate on the opposite facades of the building. It makes the building sway. A high rise with flat surfaces and right angles reacts very badly to wind.

A smart apartment is a computer, linked to the houses various appliances, ,the switches and electric plugs, the security system, and the unites that control humidity and temperature. Circuits converge onto the relay board and the board ids equipped to microprocessors that are in calculators or watches, that activate the relays and the real stats on computer's orders.

This was a really cool development and shows how advanced technology has become.

Reflection of Others

1. http://justuscr01.blogspot.com/
2. http://demiflynn.blogspot.com/

I really enjoyed the elements and principles of others. This was actually one of my favorites since i get to look at others and compare it to mine and see how they were thinking and their own views. I do agree with the different elements and photos.

Yes there was one that was the same as mine which was the acrylic color wheel. I really liked it because it showed different colors but very bright. I'm guessing we went to the same art gallery but there was one that I wanted to get a photo of but wasn't able to. It was a picture of giant chairs. That really intrigued me because I just imagined myself how grand I would be feeling if I sat in that chair.

There was one in Demi's blog, It was the fourth picture from Karin Davie's which really interested me. It actually made me focus on what the artist was trying to draw and made my head turn and twist.

I really enjoyed looking at other people's blog. This is actually one my favorite assignment that I did for this class. It really let me see the classmate's perspective on art. Not only was I able to see just these two projects but what interested me was the logos on how people represented themselves.

There weren't that many comments that I had on my blog except only two. It was helpful because it gave me insight on how my comments and my point of view affected theirs and agreed with me.

Through the Eyes of Sculptor and Glass making

The video Through the Eyes of the Sculpture enabled me to really see being a craftsman is very difficult but truly an impressive skill. This video talks about the daily life of Emmanuel Fillion who is from Italy and enjoys being a sculptor. He began sculpting lime stones and became a master at it. Lime stone started to develop at the bottom of the ocean and seas. The stone is heavy when wet when it comes out of the quarry.
Emmanuel Fillion started as a restoration artist which is where a sculptor works on an area of a monument such as the hands, the face or a foot. In restoration, a stone carver has geometric shapes and a plan to follow. The sculptor must use his feelings to carve life back into the shape. In order for you to know the limestone is good is to check the stone's sound to make sure there is no cracks. If there is a crack it sounds like an old pot. A sculpture comes alive in clay, dies in plaster and is reborn in marble. Marble is the product of limestone baked and squeezed and crushed together when tectonic plates collided over 50 million years ago along the Mediterranean coast. There is no waste in marble. Marble can be used for paper & pharmaceuticals.

The second video was pretty short. It is called the Glass and Ceramics. It is fascinating how glass is really made. Glass is made of sand, on of the most abundant substances on the surface of the sun. The properties are actually different from sand. It is a viscous liquid which stiffens when cooled. This miracle of glass occurs in fire of a furnace in a refractory earthenware crucible, the glass maker which prepares mixture which contains 60% to 75% of silica sand. Sand is mainly composed of silicon dioxide or silica. This compound forms crystals, extremely well ordered, atomic networks that are united by regular bonds. Glass makers adds fluxes which can be soda, potash, limestone or oyster shells. These components are used to improve fusion which occurs around 1500 degrees Celsius also prevent from being too fluid at high temperature.

It was really interesting how you really do blow into the glass to make the shape that you want it to be. Through the first video it showed how precise the limestone needed to be for each sculpture. Everything the sculptor had in mind needs to fit with every single part in order to make a master piece.