Weekly IP Blog#12

What I did

Sat. 1/7/12: 7 hours rendering and exploring a new “sublime” digital style. Sketched a new tornado and researched 18^th century British paintings about nature and the sublime. 

Sun. 1/8/12: 2 hours improving and exploring my new tornado and “sublime” digital style.

Tues. 1/10/12: 1 hour and 45min continuing to read Landscape and Memory by Simon Schama and analyzing my digital style. 

Weds. 1/11/12:  About 5 hours redoing another version of my tornado, exploring new brushes and tecniques. Researched Australian sublime landscapes and Landscape and Memory by Simon Schama

Thurs 1/12/12: Had in class group critique and great feed back. About 1 hour and 45min writing my blog and reflecting on what my digital style and tornado needs improved.

What I accomplished/discovered/encountered

I worked a lot this week in creating a new sublime and cohesive digital style in painting my natural disasters. First I had to tackle and research the question of what is the “sublime”, what it means to me, others, and how could I create such an awing experience that’s both beautiful and terrifying. This is something I really want to capture for my project and am doing all I can to do so. I looked at other artist’s work such as Caspar Friedrich, Cy Twombly, J.M.W. Turner, Lebbeus Wood, Color field painting by Rothko, Helen Frankenthaler, Hiroshige prints, and Emmit Gowin's aerial photos, who were recommended to me from my December Review Panel. I found Friedrich and Turner’s work to be most inspirational in their painting strokes and mysterious landscapes. I’ve seen Friedrich’s work before, but this time I really could relate my project about nature and the sublime to his work. His “Polar Sea / The Destroyed Hope” reminded me a lot of the prideful and epic presence of my volcano, how I could give it an awing style by making it lighter with a sort of stillness that is like the frozen actions of the pointy rocks of the painting. 

I found Turner’s work more abstract and that was something I was thinking of adding to the forms of my natural disasters so that they are not terribly obvious or boring. I especially loved his interpretation of water and wind by making them terribly forceful yet seemingly soft; this can be seen in his “A Disaster at Sea”. He creates a sort of awe in not being overly obvious as to what is happening, but there is a sense of destruction that is felt right away that gets countered by the gold and almost holy lighting in the painting that found among the mysteries human figures. 

He creates dazzling spectacles with dramatic lighting and use of edge, as also seen in his “The Eruption of the Souffrier Mountains” that plays with the volcano’s elements and the sublime, setting a surreal and awing feeling. 

Other artists work I found over the course of the week that related to these works and nature with the sublime were Francis Danby and Joseph Wright of Derby. Danby’s “The Delug” plays with eerie power in water while Derby’s “Vesuvius in Eruption, with a View over the Islands in the Bay of Naples” presents a sense of oncoming catastrophe with high contrasting colors.  I found their work along with Turner’s on this History of Art and the Sublime website, which also related to ideas of nature and the Sublime from Simon Schama’s Landscape and Memory. Schama’s book was also recommended to me by my December Review Panel, and I really enjoyed how it tied to thses painter’s work I had been looking at before reading it. They all reference Edmund Burk’s Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (Schama 449). The book really inspired me by relating themes of what is considered “delightful horror”, such as travelers journeying through unknown landscapes and the beautiful treat that mountain edges had become. This all also took me back to studying Australian landscapes and black opals stones that are associated to “the sublime” in capturing mystical colors. Peter Lik's work again came into mind.

During my small group critiques this week, I appreciated the feed back I got because I’ve been anxious and hard at work this week in capturing “the sublime” in my work. I was worried about it after creating my first new version of my tornado that was done in a more painterly style out of inspiration of new research I’ve been doing. It took me hours to create the new brushes that captured the painterly quality I was seeing in the other artist’s works I’ve mentioned, but at the end of it I felt that it was weak in being a sublime, awing spectacle. What I did like was the idea of the composition I had based off the withering body of a snake, but it had to engulf the viewer better. So I revisited some of my old digital painting styles and combined them with the new painterly look I had been exploring to produce a second version of my tornado. The second version also took me several hours and revisions to crate, but I really wanted to push for a more awing effect in electricity and wild winds that a tornado holds in engulfing things. During my critique I got better feed back on my second version of the tornado, but it still had digitalized aspects that were taking away from the awing attempt. My composition and digital painting were a lot better, so that was really great to hear since I was so worried. We talked about adding a light source to my version and exploring lights and darks to crate a more evoking piece.  

Tornado version #1

Tornado version #2

What I think I should do next

This week I grew anxious about capturing right away the awe and sublime style for my natural disasters. I felt better after my small group discussion because I do seem to be getting closer. I’m just getting a bit impatient and want to have the style set and done so that I can concentrate on recreating my hurricane and volcano. In getting closer to finalizing my style, I might work simultaneously on all three natural disasters. So what I plan to do next is to stick with my tornado in order to finalize and develop further my painterly and sublime style. I also plan on studying the new artists’ works I found this week in order to really understand the type of painting techniques that were used. I will also continue researching topics and elements that make up “the sublime” and how I can tie them to my pervious research.