I got some inspiration!

Here are some videos about recycling that I found on YouTube.

There's nothing like using humor to advertise a good cause.

This one is just fascinating. It's not boring, so please watch it!


This one's good too--informative, entertaining, brings up important points, covers the basics--you get the point. It looks a little cheesy though, but that is purposeful.


It's like chicken soup for the soul to me; now I can see how humor can definitely get the message across.

Young Adults' Interactions with Media (Section 1)

Since I'm always ranting about young people and how much time they spend with media, especially social media, and since I'm always complaining about the sorry state of movie theater attendance and non-Internet connected television set usage, I am finally going to start gathering eclectic "research". Although, I assure you the articles I'll link to will be from sources I deem trustworthy, I am not writing a paper or any other such formal endeavor, hence the quotation marks around research.

Hopefully, if I find myself in another one of my 'rants turned to debates' situations, I won't be talking out the side of my neck. And, hopefully, any stats I gather will both correct my preconceived notions and ascertain and support some of my assumptions (because even though I'm never absolutely right, I'm never absolutely wrong either). Then again, who is? That's a rhetorical question, please don't ponder it.

http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2011/12/radioheads-how-students-listen-to-music/

dancing clips via YouTube

Stylistic Reference: Ti Watching a Hippopotamus Hunt

If I choose to run with a complete Egyptian style composition, I will use Ti Watching a Hippopotamus Hunt as my reference. Of course, I'm not going to copy it; I will probably deviate from it, since an artist's take on anything naturally embodies something of that artist. The main purpose of this reference is actually the treatment of space on a two-dimensional surface. Again, my animation is not a copy of this space, but would merely be informed by it. (That way, I wouldn't be accused of drawing off the top of my head or pulling something out of my nose at the last minute.) I've had this particular artwork in mind, as a reference, for a couple of weeks now.

Collage Animation Resource

After chatting briefly with a classmate, I brought up my home to describe some trees (I changed my subject to a dry land nature scene), and I decided to do some image searching for general Mississippi 'treescapes'. So, I'm thinking of using tree types and a other general land properties to compose my setting. As I know, even the best imagined scenes are not composed off the top of one's head. I need pictorial references, so I'll place those in a folder on my desktop. Here, is where I'll collect links to articles about my home state's land that I find relevant.

http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/ar/archive/jul09/fungus0709.htm

http://msucares.com/crops/soils/

http://jeffreysmithart.com/cloudy-day-on-the-mississippi-river-plein-air-painting-on-the-rivers-edge/

Also, I would like to express a student's indebtedness to common license images and non-copyrighted image references for personal use. I would particularly like to thank the generosity of blog sites, which allow you to use images for non-commercial, non-copyright infringing projects, as they now so often comprise such a large percentage of Google Image search results.

I'll also throw this link in:

http://federaltwist.blogspot.com/2009/12/mississippi-delta-landscape-reading.html

Octupi (from YouTube)

I don't know why YouTube has to be at the forefront of everything, but you have to do what you have to do.

All right! My first permalink.

I've never had an active hyperlink on my blog before, so I'm a little excited about testing it out. Hopefully, it will work, and I won't have to try to rediscover the article I'm linking to on the original website. Until now, I've had no reason to use the "permalink" feature, but I need this article for research for a speech, and I'm not in the position to print it at this point. If this works, I can print it at school tomorrow without hassle. Hurrah!

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/01/science/earth/01forest.html

Shoot! Just my twisted luck.

Well, since I can't print these images in color to reference in my sketchbook, I'll just have to post them on my blog. If no one else is aware, or if just already have your images printed and ready-to-go, the color printer next door needs its toner "replenished", and since it's Sunday evening, there is no one here to do it. I am royally peeved about my misfortune with this.

I've been meaning to post this...

This is a picture of a page in National Geographic magazine featuring the National Geographic photo contest winners for that month. I forgot the names, but I remember that the guy who did the top image manipulated it in Adobe Photoshop, which is why I'm posting this:

Stop Motion Video Clips

There is one video I found to be neat; I've been thinking of doing something that involves the properties of geological processes. An here also is my in-class practice video:

A Bit Overdue, but Better Late Than Never

I've finally worked out the basic format that I will be following for the fronts and backs of the bills. I decided to make 'black history' currency, with images of significant/well-known Black historical figures in the United States. It's all up from here.

Money, money, money, money

This is my true research:

These are simply some European 

coins I quickly snagged from 

Google, to get started with.

This image is probably similar to the one that one of you has, but I found out that these bank notes were issued in the countries that Japan had conquered during the WWII era. So they most likely are a combination of the countries' original currency form and the Japanese government-approved redesign layout, but I speculate. It's not a journal entry.

Here is the actual Japanese yen.

I was curious to see what 

Canada's money looks like.

The Collage as Fine Art

Max Ernst

This image doesn't relate exactly to what we are doing in class, but I think it's a good example of the way collage can be used to create artwork. One thing Ernst does here that I find successful is divide the space into five "frames": two large rectangles that take up most of the space, two smaller ones toward the bottom, and a single circle that is placed near the top of the picture plane, but is connected to the largest rectangle by a piece of something (cardboard?) and a bow. Although the piece is mostly collage, some drawing/painting is evident. The pattern on the two large rectangles and in the circle have some volume in themselves due to the slight change in value on the diagonal strips: a one-step gradation to darker blues. Another useful thing Ernst did with the space was to overlap some of the elements, creating a pseudo-layer of space. The precision of his cutouts is nicely counterbalanced by the places where Ernst chose to draw jagged lines.

   

Georges Braque

I had to choose the two pioneers of Cubism because I felt their work a perfect example for artists who use collage elements. Unfortunately, enlarging these kills the resolution, so to the analysis. The collage elements in Braque's piece are very simple yet the contrast in value is what makes it work so well. By carefully placing three pieces of yellow-brown paper and using light variations of black to define planes and objects Braque gives the illusion of shallow depth while integrating the collaged paper into the piece as a whole.

Pablo Picasso

What can I say, this one is exquisite. The compression of objects into an ovular frame emphasizes the composition, and the use of a burnt sienna border complements it further. Picasso uses a outline to define the separation between objects where the values become similar and to make the collaged pieces seem like part of the surface. Even though the space is flattened by the line work and pattern, the overlapping and use of warm and cool shades lends to this piece's elegance.

James Rosenquist

 This is a "thumbnail collage"; I like it most for its colors. The cool green and green-blues of the grass and treetop push back in space, especially since the paper collage object is complementary to the cool light-blue sky and the grass and treetop edge. The collage object is actually a pastel hue and has a pink-to-red-to-purple value range. Its edges are smooth and soft, contrasted by the projecting spikes of the collage paper from the right and left edges of the picture plane and the negative space they create. The icicle-edged "V" mask on top of the mid ground object creates another layer of space while emphasizing it. 

Kurt Schwitters

Last but not least, is a collage piece by Kurt Schwitters, a German artist. He was very famous for his collages and "mirtzpah" (I'm not sure about the spelling). Unfortunately, Hitler had all his mirtzpahs destroyed, but the photographs of them still exist. Anyway, here we have a piece that combines newspaper clippings and pieces of objects, for example a washer. Since this piece is nonrepresentational, the angular clippings and crisp edges give the piece a sense of unity, as does the presence of text in the top, bottom, left and right areas. The use of myriad objects contributes a sense of variety.


Finally, I have included a link to an article about another artist who uses collage in some of his work; Robert Rauschenberg.
http://www.brooklynrail.org/2006/04/art/robert-rauschenberg-combines

Astounding!

Albert Bierstadt, I've just discovered, was a Hudson River School artist, so those beautiful images of his on our 2nd blog assignment were not done by photographs, but painted.

The Jackson Pollock Experiment

     Jackson Pollock, born in 1912, in Cody, Wyoming, had a short, rough life.  He grew up in California and Arizona in the 1920s.  Amazingly, he became one of the highest-regarded artists of the 20th century, even though he was troubled drunkard since he was eighteen.  Pollock is best known for pioneering gestural painting; he also occasionally used Indian symbolism in his paintings, inspired by his childhood explorations of Indian mounds with his brothers.  His success landed him a feature article in Time magazine in 1956, which named him "Jack the Dripper."  In his later years as an artist, Pollock preferred to use sticks, trowels, and knives in his later, mural-sized works as well as dripping paint onto the canvas.  He started painting these large pieces, laying canvas on the floor, in 1947 because he "felt closer to his work" and "declared that easel painting was a dying form."
     After dropping out of high school, Pollock joined his older brother Charles Cecil Pollock, at the Art Students League in New York.  There he briefly studied under Thomas Hart Benton, who had a lasting influence on Pollock's work.  Benton taught Pollock "theories of rhythmic balance, dynamic sequence, and 'muscular action painting.'  Benton believed that the act of creating the painting was more important than any finished work.  Pollock was also influenced by Mexican muralists Diego Rivera, Jose Orozco, and David Siquieros.  He also drew inspiration from non-traditional artistic movements such as Cubism, Abstract Expressionism, Surrealist automatism, and the "biomorphic forms of Joan Miro."  Eventually, he married the Russian Jewish artist, Lee Krasner, who became his best source of inspiration, influence, and encouragement in the mid-1940s.  Inspired by her theories, Pollock began using a technique of painting with "drips, smears, and giant circular motions over smaller geometric shapes."
     Although Jackson Pollock met his demise in a single-car accident in 1956, at the age of 44, his work continues to have a "monumental influence on American Art."  Ironically, the fatal auto-accident was a result of his long-standing addiction to alcohol.

Source:
"Biography from the Archives of AskART."  AskART: The Artists' Bluebook--Worldwide edition.  AskART, Inc. 2000-2010.  Web.  26 Feb. 2010.  
     Artnews.  May 1999.
     Baigell, Matthew.  Dictionary of American Art.
     Landau, Ellen.  Jackson Pollock.

Whew!  I had to test researching an artist for a blog.  I've always found Internet research annoying anyway because there are so many results to look through.  I wish I were a search wizard, but maybe I'll get better at it sooner or later.  I didn't want to post this blog without crediting the source first, so I attempted use of the MLA documentation style for the source listing.  Due to the structure of the website,  it was extremely annoying and time-consuming, and it's probably not even 100% correct.  But I gave the information that was available for the article I used.  I don't think I'll use AskART again; it doesn't seem to be student research-friendly.