Home Breadth 4 - Longing

For this week, I wanted to do a piece inspired by Corpse Bride. I chose to do a watercolor painting because I wanted the colors to be soft. 

I wanted Emily to be the focal point, so I made the choice to only show Victor's arm. I wanted to show a divide between the two. Victor is torn because he wants to be with someone like Emily, but his family and society feel otherwise. Because of this, Victor and Emily's hands are almost joined, but there is still a gap between them.

After I'd finished the piece and had looked at it for a while, I thought about what it meant from Emily's perspective. I chose to give Emily a welcoming expression because she certainly wants Victor to be with her and is open to the idea of loving someone again. But also, I feel leaving Victor completely out of it represents a fear of the unknown. The forest I chose for the background is the same forest that Emily was murdered in by her first "love." Though Emily appears to be very open and welcoming, I think she still has some fear of what would happen if she grew attached to another man. Another betrayal would be crippling for her to live, well, un-live with. 

~ Crayola Watercolors on Strathmore Watercolor Paper ~ 

Class Breadth 2 - The Snow Queen

Using tin foil, wire, a motorcycle magazine, fake flowers, hot glue,and red sand, I decided to create my interpretation of a snow queen. I wanted to convey a strong and confident female figure. 

Cindy Sherman

I chose to research the self-portraiture of Cindy Sherman. She stood out to me in the video we watched because of her movie-like approach to self portraits. 

Upon further research, I found that Cindy is very unique to other approaches to self portraits that I've seen. Instead of always portraying her real self, she very much likes to dress up and become someone she's not. 

She's dressed up as women, men, clowns, famous celebrities like Marilyn Monroe, as well as using makeup to make herself look older than she is. I found it interesting that she tends not to wear makeup in her everyday life because she wears so much makeup when she is taking her photographs. Cindy said that when she was in college, "I was really ambivalent about it because I still liked it, but you did not wear make-up, you did not dye your hair, you didn't wear a bra – we were all natural. Don't shave or anything. In some of the really early work, you can see my hairy legs." I find that to be fascinating that she can take on such an alter ego in her portraits.

I also found it fascinating that she failed her first photography exam. It amazes me that people can build their craft so well over time to the point where they eventually become well-known. All of her portraits are photographs and she enjoys using her own face and body as her canvas. 

~ Article ~

Home Breadth 3 - Felt Face

I wanted to try and sew fabric onto paper just to see how it would look. In this piece I used felt. I think the end product looks very Picasso-inspired. 

Display

I feel our display falls under Honorific because we we're trying to praise and bring attention to the comic art style. 

For our display, we chose to take inspiration from pop culture and comics. When creating our display and deciding how to fill the space, we chose to group each category of artifacts into their own little section of the display. We chose to use a variety of artifacts, ranging from posters to action figures. A point of cohesion within our display is the repeated use of thick, black lines. This is often used in the comic art style. 

Home Breadth 2 - Endorable

Despite being an Ewok, Wicket listens to Leia better than her own son. 

~Prismacolor Colored Pencils on Strathmore Toned Gray Paper~ 

Home Breadth 1 - Butterflies

My inspiration for this piece came from a blog post I wrote last year. This was fully the result of my tendency to over-analyze the smallest of details in movies. 

~Koi Watercolors and Prismacolor Colored Pencils on Strathmore Watercolor Paper~

Class Breadth 1 - Waiting in the Wings

For my reconstruction breadth, I chose a framed image from a NPR calendar. I was drawn to this piece because, from my perspective, it looked like a mother and daughter. I was also drawn to it from the colors of the background. The background was the component I chose to keep from the original piece. 

Because of the colors of the background and the mother/daughter dynamic, I chose to take inspiration from a scene from The Hunger Games: Catching Fire of Katniss and Effie backstage before Katniss' big Quarter Quell interview. I greatly see Effie as a maternal figure for Katniss and so I chose to show that in my reconstructed piece. I am happy with how the piece turned out.  

Inspiration

Original Piece

Reconstructed Piece