Is Art Without Meaning Decoration?

Does every piece of art have to have a deep, personal meaning? I think that every piece of art that is created is very personal to the artist. For example, places like Wine and Design give the artist a rubric and examples, but every painting turns out different. Every artist has different shades and strokes of their brush creating original paintings. I think that these subconscious actions provide meaning. This meaning may not convey the artist deep emotions and troubles or the pure joy they are feeling, but the fact that every single piece of art is specifically different and unique from any other piece of art created gives it meaning. I also think that meaning can come from the pride one would feel in the art they made. Like the mural in the article, the person who painted that was probably really proud of it. Even though it is a decoration, it has meaning because someone put their time, effort, and a little piece of their heart. So I think that art is art. Decoration is also art because there is always the personal touch that every different person has to add. The picture attached is a piece I painted. I didn't have any specific reason to paint this, other than I like sunsets. But I'm very proud of it and it makes me happy that I could make something this beautiful. It is hanging in my living room as decoration, but every time I see it, I feel proud, so I think every piece of art has some meaning.

Elements of Art

I chose to use value as my element. At first, I wanted to use charcoal, but after exploring more options, I found it easier to get the values I wanted from colored pencils. I wanted to use colored pencils because I like to have the paper saturated with color instead of using the paper to show values. Using colored pencils allowed me to use different colors to show values. It started with the hair. The colors I used, black, purple, blue, and pink, made me think of a galaxy. That idea of space gave me the inspiration for an alien. Also, I really liked the colors and values I could get from the green. 

Full Figure

This was my portrait of Jacob. I'm proud of how much this looks like him. I think I took a risk by drawing him in a position that wasn't just standing there. I learned how to use charcoal through this project which I think I did a good job using; I was about to get a full range of value. I did a lot of planning before starting this so I could make sure I put all of the body parts where they go. Doing a drawing on such a big scale was intimidating, but it was important for us to practice something this big.

Scratch Board

I used creativity in this piece because I came up with the idea of a mermaid to show the movement and texture. There are many textures going on like the roughness of the log, the scales on the tail, and the flowiness of the hair and the seaweed. I think I achieved the goal of texture and movement in this piece. I also like the values I have. It was weird to do the reverse and draw in the highlights instead of the shadows, but it was cool, too. It was hard not being able to erase stray lines or mistakes you made but that's what art is about. I liked doing this because it reminded me of my childhood when I used to play with these. I think I took a risk by choosing a topic that isn't real. It was hard to find references, but I think it turned out looking like the normal idea of a mermaid. I solved a problem at one point in this piece because originally, I drew the hair behind the body and I started scratching it off there, but I realized that wouldn't make sense, so I had to fix it. 

Portrait (Drawing)

This is my self portrait for drawing class. I have mixed feelings about this piece for many reasons. Since the photograph I used was taken from the side, its a weird angle.. I tried to show the view, but it just looks like one eye is smaller than the other. I like the value on the face though: the highlights on my cheeks and also the lowlights where the smiles creases are. I also think I got my nose just right. I learned a lot from this project like how to control the value with your pencil. I didn't use a blending tool at all, which I'm proud of because I think I had smooth transitions between the value shown. I think my next self portrait will be a lot better just because this was my first. It was really good practice and showed me what I can do, and now that I know, I think I could do better. I think the position of my face was a risk just because I had to show that depth and the sideway-ness of it. I don't know how well I executed that; I could have added more shadows on both sides. Overall, this piece taught me a lot about myself as an artist, and I look forward to the next self portrait so that I can see a growth.

Skeleton

In this exercise, I developed a lot of new skills like realistic shading and showing the protruding parts well. Aside from the skull and feet, I'm very happy with this. My favorite part is the ribs and shoulders. This was one of the first things we did in drawing that I was really happy with and it gave me some confidence for the rest of the class. Compared to my last skeleton from Art 1-2, I've grown a lot, and I'm very glad I can say that. As far as fixing mistakes goes, I started out shading with vertical or horizontal lines but realized that I would have to shade with the shape of the subject and executed that. I could have fixed the realisticness of the skull, but I wasn't very motivated to because of the lack of success the first time around. As for the feet, I would have liked for them to be normal size, but it was hard to make them proportional since we hadn't studied the proportions of the body yet. Overall, I'm proud of the shading and value more than anything else.

Figure Drawing

I really enjoyed doing figure drawings because it was fun to show the movement with simple lines and shapes. I took risks by just going with the shapes of the bodies we were drawing in a larger scale instead of focusing on small details. It was a little out of my comfort zone because I usually try to draw details first. That's another reason I liked this exercise; it taught me a different way to look at the subject I'm drawing. Looking at other people's figure drawings helped me understand the basic idea of what they should look like. Artist on pintrest and even my classmate's art showed me the main idea and the point to the drawings. It was hard sometimes to draw people because their poses could change a little bit...but that's also what made it interesting and fun.