As part of senior year art, we will be exploring the theme of "cultural resistance," or the opposition of a current socio-economic or political movement expressed through works of art. Below are the art pieces that I have made in class.
Shading Excercises
Self-Portraits
For our next step in art, we moved on to tracing self portraits of ourselves by taking selfies, then tracing the outlines of them onto paper. The first picture I took and traced (on the right), I wasn't happy with. So I tried again with a different pose, and it turned out considerably better in my opinion.
Collages
After we completed our self-portraits, we moved on to exploring other art forms that didn't include pen and pencil: collages. After viewing some example, we were tasked with creating an abstract collage and a representative collage. My abstract is on the left, and my representative is on the right (the represented topic is clear, I hope.)
Cultural Figure Parody
For our next project in cultural resistance, we were tasked with taking a well-known figure and making it our own as a parody or as a way to comment on important social issues. My figure represents the skewed and dysfunctional education system that we use, and the mold it creates for consumerism in schools.
Fine Art Mash-Up
Following our Derivative Characters pieces, our next project was to find two fine artists and combine their work in our own interpretation of them. For my artists, I decided to take a painting from Brendan Monroe (left), an a Rolling Stones logo made by Andy Warhol (top). The picture on the bottom-right is my combination of the two art pieces.
Lyrical Resistance |
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After our Mash-Ups, we moved on to our Lyrical Resistance art pieces. The goal is to represent a resistant idea or phrase expressed from song lyrics through art, hence Lyrical Resistance. I selected the simple lyrics "I'm only human" from Rag'n'Bone Man's song "Human," and ultimately came up with art that started out as abstract doodling, but turned into what I call a "human." The detail on the left arms and legs represent hard muscle, violent action, and tension, while the right arms and legs represent the nurturing, caring and the desire to grow bonds. They both form into a balance in the center, where there is both violence and love, and where our humanity is born and takes hold.
Wash Portrait
The second-to-last art piece that we made this semester was a Wash Portrait. A wash portrait is a style of portrait done by first shading in the darkest parts of the subject's face with black paint, then painting the finer details in a diluted black-grey paint, then going over each line with the final "wash," or a very diluted mixture of black paint and water. For my wash, I chose Peter Dinklage, more specifically Tyrion Lannister from Game of Thrones.
Multi-Medium Assemblage
For our last art project of the semester, we made Multi-Medium Assemblages. This form of art is an assemblage of multiple mediums of art, including markers, paint, pencil, wood, pictures, etc. Our Assemblage was related to our theme of Cultural Resistance, and I formed mine after the criminalizing of drugs, specifically marijuana. It is meant to draw attention to the demonizing and negative stigma of marijuana, despite it being a low-risk and nearly harmless substance.