Weekly IP Blog#6

What I did

Sat. 10/15/11: 2 hour and 1/2

Read poems and online articles about storm forms and symbolism.

Mon. 10/17/11: 3 hours 25min

Sketched and drafted whirlpools, tsunamis, and volcanic eruptions.

Tue. 10/18/11: 1 hour and 1/2

Watch video game remakes of storms and online clips about natural disasters.

Thur. 10/20/11: 3 hours

Had small discussions on my sketches, presented them for feedback. Reflected on the feedback I got and worked on my blog. Started sketching more in depth vantage points for my tsunami/hurricane.  

What I accomplished/discovered/encountered

Relaxing over fall break was ok; I had to study for midterms so completely relaxing did not happen for me. I did get to sketch when I took a break from studying and I also got to explore some symbolism and poems about natural disasters. I found an odd website called crystalrivers.com, and it featured a lot art and articles about “the many forms of symbolic imagery”, such as waves and other storm elements. It mentioned some ties between mandalas, waves, mediation, religious symbols, and dreaming, to storms and imagery about nature.  This was all very interesting to explore, especially the images because they were all very expressive. I also read about the symbolism of Gods and storm elements, and learned things such as the eruption of a volcano can mean that something has triumphed or been let go.

A nice thing about the break was that it allowed me to let lose in sketching out new compositions and representations of whirlpools, tsunamis, and volcanic eruptions. I enjoyed working more this week because I was not rushed in the way I usually am with classes. I even got to watch some of my friends play video games during the break and see how storms were recreated in the game to look realistic but cool. That got me into looking at some clips on Youtube, but I did not find anything more interesting than the website I mentioned before. 

The small discussion group on Thursday with my piers was very helpful this week! It reassured me not rush so much in getting all my storms sketched out again, but to instead consider new vantage points from witch my natural disasters can be represented. We talked about the scale of my work, how it can be immersive for an audience to see, and how I should try to view my sketches in different places like the ceiling or floor. All this helped a lot because it keeps me exploring new and perhaps better ways in which I can create my natural disasters, in capturing their paradox of being beautifully terrifying.  I need to capture more intensity and severity in the sketches I’m making, they maybe are becoming too abstract or nice to look at. I also liked the idea of maybe combining storms, such as a whirlpool being represented within a tsunami and hurricane or a sand storm within a tornado.

What I think I should do next

For this coming week I plan to stick with one natural disaster, a tsunami/hurricane, and to come up with ways and sketches of vantage points in which in can be designed in. I also plan on working with ways to immerse my viewers in the work, so I’m going to try to push my sketches in being more fierce and severe. I want to try placing layers of some of sketches over on another for effect and maybe place them on ceiling windows, such as the kind in cars. Also combining the water storms into one piece would be fun to try this week. I really want to find the level of intensity, beauty, abstractness, and reality my work should have in order to be the most successful.