I noticed how everyone around me was perpetually exhausted. So I began to think about routine, tediousness, fatigue, and how our device culture plays into it all. This painting began with the image of a man sitting and eating cereal. With five days left until the deadline, I decided I hated my original idea and I painted over that image and completely restarted, this time focusing on the face, which I thought to be the most interesting part. After a talk with Coach, I decided to photograph myself and make it a self-portrait, which I had not originally intended. At this point, critique was three days away and I had nothing more than a dark blue canvas. So later that night, I finished the actual painting in about an hour and a half.
This is perhaps one of my favorite works so far. There's something to be said about subtleness and the application of the "less is more" philosophy into art. I had originally planned a more complicated and ultimately worse subject; but when I thought about what is actually important, I focused and created an amazing painting. I'm also really pleased that I chose to take an image of myself as opposed to appropriate from the Internet like I was originally intending. Part of the work is composing and lighting the shot and now I can say that the entire process has been entirely original. I'm also happy that the painting is recognizable as me - I do not have much experience in portraiture, especially through paint. To summarize, there were various decisions along the way, which in hindsight I'm happy I made the decision I made. This is a piece that I am genuinely proud of. In the future, I want to do more portraits in paint and charcoal. More like this to come.
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Ms. Freyer's lecture gave an interesting look into the world of filmmaking. She presented filmmaking as an art, another form of "visual poetry" along with the traditional visual arts. In her career, she has worked on both sides of the filmmaking spectrum, from avant-garde experimental films to news-style documentaries. Listening to this lecture, I was able to draw similarities between filmmaking and traditional arts. Art is essentially making a series of visual decisions in order to achieve a certain aesthetic result. Boiled down to this level, filmmaking is no different. Ms. Freyer talked about the effort that goes into decisions like camera angles, lighting, subject, composition, music score, cutting, and special effects. Experimental filmmaking is more recognizable as an art form, but documentary-style filmmaking also follows this same concept.
Another theme was artistic thinking. It's unlikely that very many kids in a high school art class will grow up to become professional artists. But practicing art does develop a way of thinking that emphasizes creation, ingenuity, communication, and grit. It takes skill to transform an idea into a product effectively. These artistic values give artists the upper hand in any field they choose. In Ms. Freyer's lecture, she described the process of documentary filmmaking as an artistic process. Documentary filmmaking sounds to me to be a relatively left-brain sort of process with research and interviews. But this lecture reminded me that, just like all art, the creators make specific aesthetic decisions in order to achieve a specific visual result. Ms. Freyer's lecture showed how practicing art can change and expand the way that individuals think. |