Some summer art

Over the summer I took a drawing class, and here are some of the pieces I completed during that week. There are more, but I haven't documented them yet.

We did some oil pastel work focusing on contrasting colors, complimentary colors and so on and so forth. I did several, but when we were allowed to just use all of the pastels, I liked the result a bit more. Here are the ones I feel turned out.




I'd never really had so much fun with oil pastels before, I think I loved it because it was closer to paint.

Some work with charcoal. Again, I'd never worked with it much before, definitely not at this scale. I like the first one, the second...not so much. The trees didn't turn out in my opinion. Too curved and a bit flat looking.



And then there was the color pastel... Enjoyed a bit, since I'd worked with color pastel before, but not my favorite piece in the end. It kept smudging everywhere and it was frustrating balancing the board I was drawing on while sitting in the sand with ants crawling around... I'm not a fan of insects (dragonflies the only exception)


You've probably all seen this piece, taking up room on the tables...then taking up room on the cork board... etc. Well, it was my final piece for the class. I originally was going to do the whole thing in oil pastel like at the bottom, but I soon was frustrated with using one medium and started mismatching. Several parts weren't even drawn as part of the whole landscape and were only incorporated as an afterthought. I intend to keep this piece growing (I'm imagining underground tunnels beneath the roots, mirroring the break from reality that happens at the top)


Lastly, a random pic... I was trying to focus my picture and realized I liked the way my feet looked in the picture. Anyway... who doesn't take a photo or two of their feet?

Oh no! I forgot... (Research on Richard Pousette-Dart)

So... I forgot about posting this. Well, better late than never:

The artist I responded to was Richard Pousette-Dart, the piece that specifically caught by eye being Desert. I loved the colors and apparent randomness of the image and after few clicks I also found another piece of his, Fugue Number 2, that looked crude from the overall picture, all piece meal and kind of blurry, but when I clicked for full view it showed layers and layers of texture and pattern within the shapes. I liked the idea of all these strange images that didn't hold any real form at first, coming together to portray a kind of mood or image that was almost open for interpretation. I saw a village, a water front, houses, etc, all in something that at its base was shapes and colors.
I looked up information further through The Museum of Modern Art's site. (http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?criteria=O%3AAD%3AE%3A4716&page_number=1&template_id=6&sort_order=1#bio specifically) and they informed me that Pousette-Dart was exploring a synthesis of Cubism among other influences. His focus seemed to be on the abstract and he was a sculptor and photographer as well as a painter. It is listed that he was influenced by an interest in Jungian primal consciousness (Which might explain why I felt a clear mood connected to the pieces...) and it was also influenced by “archaic pictographs and indigenous American and African art.” I'm not sure if he was part of a specific movement, though he connected with cubism, and I did not find any listed artists associated with him.

Desert


From:
http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?criteria=O%3AAD%3AE%3A4716&page_number=1&template_id=1&sort_order=1

Fugue Number 2


From:
http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?criteria=O%3AAD%3AE%3A4716&page_number=2&template_id=1&sort_order=1

Anyway, that's what I found. I kind of have always wanted to try an abstract piece that in the end kind of did have a form to it still, a greater image, if you were far enough away to see it. I'm not sure what final image I want to work towards, and I'm thinking to just start making the abstract and change it to match whatever image starts to come out.