Weekly IP Blog#14

What I did

Sat. 1/21/12: About an hour redoing my tornado’s line quality and style

Sun. 1/22/12: 3 hours finalizing my tornado and sketching out a new hurricane composition.

Mon. 1/23/12: About 1.5 hours recreating my hurricane and composition

Tues. 1/24/12: 4.5 hours working on my new hurricane draft.

Weds. 1/25/12: 4 hours and 25min on reworking my hurricane.


Thurs 1/26/12: small group critique, reflected and wrote up my blog for about 1 hour and 45min.

What I accomplished/discovered/encountered

This week was a bit difficult, I was sick and my laptop had a lot of technical issues that are holding up my working process. I’ve done everything I could do get my laptop problems fixed, purchased new computer stuff, spent time getting it looked at by different technicians, and tired working on the schools computers. My laptop still lags right now, especially when I make a file more complex but I am doing my best in moving forward with my project. Due to my lagging laptop, my hurricane is not where I had planned for it being this week. I wanted to explore more compositions with the eye of a hurricane coming out or at the viewers, but I go too caught up in fixing my laptop and getting a good draft done of my hurricane. I discovered that I should spend my energy on planning out the vantage point before fully painting digitally and not get as anxious to getting digital drafts done.

I managed to do some more research this week by stumbling upon Geoffrey Short’s photographs of explosions from New Zealand. He created this work using fuels, gunpowder, and special film effects, for “exploring the relationship between terror and the sublime”. This was very relative to my work and how I’m attempting to capture the terror and beauty found in nature and the sublime. What captured me right away were his eerie yet mystical clouds that reminded me a lot of my tornado! I had no idea what the work was about until later, but I loved the awe effect it had in drawing me in. That is something I want my work to do both on screen and printed. 

Another inspirational thing I found this week was this whale illustrations website one of my friends sent me. I really liked the simplicity of water waves and comical terror the element of water was given, in contrast to the realistic imagery I’ve been seeing. Stephanie also shared with me Mary Hambleton’s work, it really hinted to the unknown and awe that color and composition can have.  I especially liked “Blue with Yellow Stripes” because of the vibrations the overlapping blues and yellows created, it hinted to the aspects of water or the sea in an abstract way.  

Mary Hambleton Blue with Yellow Stripes 2007 

Thursday’s small group critique was also very helpful. I learned that the original color palette I had for my hurricane was more successful in having more earth tone colors that dirtied the water. The eye of my hurricane needs to be improved and worked with to create a better vantage point. My digital clouds and water effects are interesting, but I need to crate more of eerie calm feeling in my work that’s more terrifying than what I have now. I am a lot happier with my tornado and the feedback I keep getting is good. The lady at Kinkos really liked how it had so much energy and how it immersed her well enough that she had to ask me how I made it. This was encouraging, but my hurricane and volcano still need to be brought to that level.        

What I think I should do next

I am currently waiting on my Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard CD update in the mail. I am hoping that’s the last thing I need to get my laptop at normal working speed. In the meantime I will be working on getting better compositions rendered or sketched out for my hurricane to get the best immersive composition to work with. I’ve got some ideas in my head and need to get them down and somewhat rendered out to see what parts work the best for my hurricane. I’m hoping next week will go a lot more smoothly in getting more digital explorations and work done. I also have some ideas for my volcano and would like to play around with some effects or compositions if I can get my hurricane in a good place.      

Weekly IP Blog#13

What I did

Sun. 1/8/12: About an hour reading more of Landscape and Memory by Simon Schama

Mon. 1/16/12: 6 hours reworking and editing my tornado. Researched more on the subject of the sublime and explored cleaner digital painting styles.

Tues. 1/10/12: 4 hours reworking my tornado’s natural lighting and line styles, also experimented with composition. Created new digital water effects and sketched out new compositions of my hurricane. Also go feedback on my thesis and how to organize my research better.  

Weds. 1/11/12:  About 7 hours crating different versions of my tornado. Experimented with lighting, vantage points, lines, and perspective.

Thurs 1/12/12: About 1 hour and 45min writing my blog, got feedback from Hannah on what specifics to fix on tornado. Meet with Mark Nielsen for about 1/2 hour.

What I accomplished/discovered/encountered

This week I concentrated on really developing my tornado and defining my digital style with the sublime. I made many versions concentrating on how I could create more natural light, clean up the parts that looked like poor digital computer effects, and create the immersive swirl I want my tornado to have. Below is the version I reworked early this week, the parts in the inside swirl looked kind soupy and too bright. 

I got feed back from Hannah that the yellow lines were looked like car headlights in a bustling city, which I had not noticed and totally agree with. I discovered that I have to be careful with the certain aspects of my work referencing other things that don’t have to do with nature. I worked on 5-6 versions of my tornado through out the rest of week tweaking lighting, line quality, and color on each and compared all them together to see what aspects were the best. This is what is really helping me improve my digital style and quality, but it is a bit time consuming. The second version below shows more shift in my light source and the type of dashed line I can use, where as in my third version my lines are too bold and solid with more contrast. 

I’m thinking of combining the both solid and dashed lines in order to keep the tornado immersive and fix my darks a bit. The third version I liked the best out of the 5 I played with is below, my lighting is where I want it to be coming from the top left and the center vortex having a slightly deeper shadow of depth. I still need to fix the lines in the foreground in relation to how it covers the tornado’s body.

For my hurricane, the plan I have is for vantage point to be from looking inside or down into the hurricane’s eye. I want this to have a much more overwhelming feel with walls of water closing in on the viewer, in contract to the speedy and electric feel of my tornado. I’m also debating if I should have my hurricane in a vertical or horizontal composition. The tornado and the volcanic eruption are vertical, but exploring both directions for the hurricane is something I want to try. Keeping them all vertical will make they fit better as a series. But also having each displayed could be interesting, such as seeing the hurricane from the floor or the tornado hung from the ceiling.  Not quiet sure yet, but I am excited by the possibilities and what new kind of looks I can create.

I also got great feedback on my thesis this week. My concerns of it being too long got resolved and I learned that I need more statements as to why I did things in my art on the basis of my research and connect them more to each other. I also need to be more assertive in my tone, so that was a great to know. Sitting down and getting at how my new research is pushing my project and how I can better articulate it in writing helps me focus on the strongest parts of all my research. We discussed how my analysis of paintings featuring sublime landscapes relates to the travelers’ challenge, and also my own, of recapturing something new and a bit unknown in nature. I should be looking at how other artists in the past rose to the artistic challenge of capturing landscapes for others who never experienced them before, the same way I am doing so now for people who never have experienced a natural disaster.

I also meet with Mark Nielsen on thursday to talk about displaying my prints. We talked about how I can hanging my glass prints on the wall or ceiling, or use light boxes or other forms of mounting with plastic tubes. He went over the type of screws I could use and options of plastic tubes to have space behind my work for light to come through, he was very supportive of my ideas and liked how I want to print on glass. He also recommended me to get in contact with Ann Arbor plastics for any method of printing I do to get mounted onto the walls properly. The information I got was great because I did not realize how many wall mounting options I had.   

    

What I think I should do next

I am much happier with digital look and sublime style my tornado is having right now, I just really want it refined. I will be combining the solid and dashed line styles I’ve created and try to refine my tornado’s look to a really good level by next week. Working on my hurricane’s composition and style is also something I will be working on. I want to try compositions that are both vertical and horizontal to see what works best or if any other ideas of presentation can originate. I will be looking in on more options of presenting my work next week and how I can my project hung from the ceiling or the wall. 

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.    

December Consultation Reflection

Key things my faculty pannel discussed:
-my exploration of the sublime
-the improvement and importance of vantage point
-my digital painting quality
-my two digital painting styles. The first style of my hurricane combines more of my hand drawn sketches, textures, and digital style. It’s good in being more expressive and interesting to see, but lacks unity in combining my different working methods. My second style in the volcano looks too much like a video game rendering. Instead it needs to show something new or awing. 
-methods for printing my final project, printing on glass being maybe too expensive and constraining


Implications going forward:
-I need to make my natural disasters more immersive in order for them to be visually successful in capturing their beauty and terror. So the vantage point and compositions for each natural disaster is something I plan to revisit. 
-I also plan on reading the book Landscape and Memory by Simon Schama that was recommended, as well as looking at works done by Caspar Friedrich, J M W Turner, and Emmit Gowin.
-exploring the sublime, what it means and how I can create that sort of style for each natural disaster. What I’m thinking of trying now is to abstract the form of my natural disasters more and then exaggerate certain parts or elements that identify them.
-how maybe I should just stick to working digitally 
-take on the challenge of creating a new look for my natural disasters by successfully combining my current digital styles, research, and ideas of the sublime