Pickahu! I choose you! (Just kidding everybody).

Seriously though, it's a little hard to pick a medium of choice, since I have my qualms with all of them. But, they each have their own advantages.

Graphite Pencils - these are the cleanest of the materials we've used this semester, but they break in-two after being knocked around between travels. They're a bit fragile, being pure graphite, and they don't always act right in a sharpener, unless, of course, it's just my sharpener or the pencils I chose to buy. Other than that, they're pretty easy to work with, except for one thing: line variation. It's not hard to get those thinner lines, but even with 6B you have to put down a little extra pressure to get what you want sometimes.

Charcoal Pencils - talk about a mess. They don't always like to act right in the sharpener either, but there not as easy to break as a graphite pencil; that's not to speak for the charcoal tip. Besides that, they leave a big mess in charcoal gratings and all over the paper, with the ruler. They rub of on you pretty easily too, unfortunately. It's hard to get the light, crisp lines even with 2B charcoal (at least to me it is). And it is extremely difficult to erase if you mess up, as we all know. But once you acquire some skill, they make lovely drawings.

Conte - conte, conte, conte. This is the king of the evils. It doesn't smudge quite as easily as charcoal, but it still smudges. And it gets all over your hands as you draw. Worst of all though, you can't sharpen it like the other materials. I hate rubbing that thing on paper because it takes forever to get even edges. I've tried to expedite my troubles by sharpening it with an Exacto blade, but when it comes to the conte crayon, it's not always so exact. But it works -- to a degree, and it saves some trouble. This medium is the easiest too get crisp, thin lines from. Thick, dark lines aren't hard either, but they wear down the edge quicker, which is annoying. Conte also makes beautiful drawings, on the bright side.

When it comes to my medium of choice, I'll say charcoal. Despite my misadventures and qualms with it, it is pretty fun to work with, when I'm not working at the last minute.

Does anyone else feel slightly nostalgic?

It's been a while again folks, but I'm back (again again). Anyway, the semester's winding down and I kind of regret it -- only kind of. What I kind of regret is that I didn't reach my personal goal of making this blog and my sketchbook five-star, kick-butt material. Oh well, there's always next semester for me to be a better student.

Guess Who's Back? - Back Again.

Susan Rothenberg- According to Michael Auping, the Chief Curator of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth and longtime associate of Rothenberg, the art world began to embrace "figurative painting" anew via the New Image Painting movement, "a movement that would explore ways of re-engaging figuration"(11). Rothenberg's opportunity can be interpreted as the result of Georgia O' Keefe's innovations decades earlier, although their ideas are not related, writes Barbara Buhler Lynes, Director of the O' Keefe Research Center and Curator at the O' Keefe Museum (9). What these two artists do have in common is that they both work with "the opposing forces of abstraction and figuration" (8). That's just a little context for you: here's the nitty-gritty:

Susan Rothenberg, Cabin Fever, 1976

I guess this is oil on canvas. I like the resemblance it bares to cave paintings. Actually, the cave paintings in Lascaux are among her influences. The gestural quality, to me, is most evident in the brushstrokes. In Art History, we call this a "painterly" technique. Even though this painting is on a mostly monochromatic color-scale, the browns range from a light greenish-brown to a medium reddish-brown. The black, shadowy outline, stroked on the underbelly, under the legs and on the horses head and neck, give the horse a position in space, while intimating a sense of movement. And the shapes stroked behind the legs nearer us indicate the legs on the horse's other side as being in shadow.

I like to practice MLA-style citations, but I guess I should start trying to practice Chicago documentation.

Work Cited

Auping, Michael. Susan Rothenberg: Moving in Place. Ed. Stefanie Ball Piwetz. 2009. New York:     Delmonico Books/Prestel. Print. 8-11.