Hey, it’s been a while

Hey guys.. its been a while… A little bit over a month a while… Sorry about that. This semester has started out super fast paced and I’m finally getting a second to catch my breath as I sit in the printmaking studio during open studIo hours.

In this post I want to give a brief overview of what’s happened and what will happen this semester in terms of my art classes. Since I’m in the printmaking studio let’s start there.

Alright so we started out printmaking by going over the studio, where things are, what things do, etc. we also started right on the second day learning how to print from a screen that already had a stencil burned into the screen. I’ll go more in depth about that process later. This stencil was a set on circles that were concentric around each other. However, it was slightly maze like, which pieces cut out of the circles. The reason our professor decided to use this stencil is because he wanted to teach us precision. We had to make ten prints in one color, let it dry, and then take those same 10 prints and print over them with another color. He didn’t want to see the first color at all in the second run prints. It look a lot of time to make this perfect, and I’ll explain how we did that in yet another post.  We also finished our second project. We had to hand draw (ugh) anything of our choice to fit on 9x12in bristol board. It was a one color run, which means that the print only consisted of one color, instead of multiple layers of color. We had to print 10 of these designs as well, but we will be graded on only our best 5.

In drawing, we have been working through the ages of modern techniques. We started with impression and expressionism, using india ink, and pastels to draw a still life of a vacuum cleaner. Then we moved on to fauvism, which is a style that consists of childlike gestures, with lots of unnatural colors. Currently we are working on cubist style of draw, which has been my favorite section thus far.

In photography, I have been working on the project I posted on a while ago. I have one couple that I am focusing all my time on. So far I have shot 6 rolls of film, and have printed many, many photos. So far I have shot 1 practice, 1 lesson, 1 competition prep, and 1 competition. I have truly enjoyed this project, and would like to continue exploring this project even more possibly once I’m out of school.

I hope you enjoyed some of my art that I have done so far this semester, as well as the post. I will try to be better about posting. Please feel free to check out my website, follow me on twitter @anapolousphoto, and give a like on my facebook page.

I’m Finally Done!

Hello all! As of 2pm today, Tuesday Dec 17th, I am done with this semester. May the grades roll in. Overall I think this semester went pretty well, and there was only the one class that I completed loathed (digital media). But I will take the positive outlook and say that I am so glad that there are people in the world who love doing that sort of stuff, and that I discovered I was not one of them. I like editing and doing MINOR touch ups to my own photos, but that’s about the extent of how I want to use those skills I learned in this class. So until late January, I am home free in terms of school.

Things may get quieter on this blog for a couple of reasons. First being that my Indiegogo Campgain has met goal! Thanks to my wonderful family I was able to reach my $500 goal. The campgain will still run throug mid-January, per Indiegogo’s regulations. So feel free to stop by and check it out for a bit. With the campgain being succesfull, I will be creating my own website on zenfoilio.com. I am in the works of using the trial time to set it up and get it exactly where I want it, but I will let you know when it is up and running. This hosting site for photographers has a pre-made blogging platform on it. I plan to use it for the professional side of my business.

Now it comes to this blog. I don’t know exactly where I want to take this as I am taking most, if not all of my photography stuff over there. I think what I will do is keep this one active at least through my remaining 2 semester to post projects I am working on at school, while keeping the other one competely professional. Let me know in the comments below whwat you think of this plan.

And while you are at it feel free to check out Facebook Page, Twitter and Indiegogo Campaign for the latest updates of what I am doing with my photography!

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Class Update

Hello all!

So the semester is winding down (only one week to go before finals) and I though I would give you an overall update of what’s been going on.

In painting we have been working on our final two. The first is a 24x36in canvas and it could be whatever we wanted it to be. So I chose dancing (of course). It took me WEEKS to figure out what to paint. I probably went through 10(!) different sketches until finally my professor let me start working with my canvas. Here is the painting so far:

 

It’s an abstraction of a develope. It’s a high extended leg position that you develop (here’s your ooo moment) over a certain measure of beats. I still have a lot to work on. During critique the major issue was I need to be more loose and really let my paint brush dance across the canvas… We shall see how that goes.

Our second painting also could be whatever we wanted. In this past week, I’ve been working on a few sketches of it. Here are my two sketches:

 

The basic idea is dancers on a dance floor. The size of the canvas will be 36x48inchs! Crazy big but I think it will work well with this idea. The top sketch is the first one I painted. I just wanted to get my basic idea across. I did one other that I am not showing here that does not reach the boards of the paper (like the first one), but where the brushstrokes and colors are more defined, like the bottom one. Now my professor pulled me aside and said he really like the concept but wanted to show me how different the feel would be with clear boarders. The sketch became more than just the paint, and the experience of the paint. The layers of color became more defined and the boarders added more depth to the painting, which I enjoyed. This led me to my third and final sketch (the bottom image). I really do look forward to painting this next week.

In digital media we created a magazine of our artwork. We had to make a front cover, a back cover, and an interior. For the covers we had to use Illustrator.  We had to make the front and the back covers really pop, and show our use of Illustrator. They could not be basic. They also had to be cohesive with each other. For the interior we used InDesign. We came up with our own artist statements and added photographs of our work thus far. I used a lot of my photography, and a few pieces from my casting and painting class. This has been my favorite project thus far. Unfortunately I do not have any picutres of it. We also just completed our animation project, which I disliked even more than our photoshop projects. We are currently working on our websites using Dreamweaver. I’m not in love with this project either, but such is life.

In photography, I have been focusing my efforts on ballroom dancing. I photographed our comepition, DCDI, on a 3200 speed roll. Here are a few pictures from that:

 

As you maybe able to tell, this film has a lot more grain to it, which gives it an almost darker quality to the prints. I really like this feel and I think I’m going to use this speed film for all competitions from here on out. It also allows to shoot in lower light situations which is great for competitions.

I have also focused on getting some of the members of my club to let me take pictures of their practice and classes. I am still working on printing those, but I hope to have more completed next week.

That’s all I have for today! Until next time, check out my facebook page and indiegogo campaign to see more of my work and to learn about what I am currently working on!

 

Painting: Post Midterm

Ok, so you know how paint was going really well… Well now it’s not. We have now moved on from learning techniques, do using those techniques to come up with our own post-modern (as that’s the current era of art we are in) painting. I’m trying to do dancers, because that’s what I know… But every sketch I do just isn’t coming out right. My professor is trying to get me draw influence from the futurist painters. But I’m still having trouble. Every sketch I show him isn’t quite what he’s looking for. I tried going down to the art library to find a folio of futurist art, but guess what… It’s no where to be found. The catalog system says that it is shelved, but is it on the shelf? Nope. Is it on one of the reshelving carts? Nope. The clerk at the desk said she would have someone contact me once they find it, but right now I don’t have a lot of faith.

I completely understand why my teach is pushing me towards a more futurism approach to my painting. The futurists really focused on creating movement in their works. Futurism came out of the Cubist movement. The Cubists wanted to showcase every side of the image they were painting. Futurists, however, wanted to show that thing in motion. One of the more famous paintings is the dog walking on the leash. 

As you can see in this painting, the dog, the leash, and the feet all are in the various stages of walking. You can see the progression from one end of the canvas to the other. My professor wants me to lean towards this style of painting, but be even more abstract. He is especially pushing me this way since I am not the greatest drawer in the world. In fact, drawing is my weakest area of the art world. Thank goodness I love photography, right? Hopefully I can come up with something soon, as I have until the end of the semester to come up with 2 more paintings, including the current one I’m working on now.

The reason I’m spending so much time on my sketches is because he commented that was the weakest part of my Mid-Term Review. He stated that he wanted me to work more on my sketches so that I have a clearer and more precise map for the canvas itself. And he’s completely right. If you have a really good road map on the small scale, the larger scale will go so much faster, and will turn out better in the end. I hope I can come up with some really good final sketches soon so I don’t fall too far behind.

Photography: Post Midterm

Alright, lots of printing has happened over the last few weeks. I have a few things to show you. First and for most is the quality of light photo project. This one stumped me, as it was hard for me to come up with different aways to create different lighting schemes. It wasn’t until the last few shots I really felt that I got into my grove, which really made me sad. It wasn’t until I found reflections in puddles after some rain that I found some really cool compositions. Here are the two she wanted me to print.

We also had a mini class discussion with her about some of us, including me, having a hard time shooting a roll a week. Within the projects we had, many of us had a hard time finding inspiration. She gave us two solutions to this problem. Her first solution was to let us start shooting subject matter that we want for the rest of the semester. For some people that’s portraiture. For other’s it’s completely forgetting about film and working on digital photography. For me, it’s ballroom dance. My rolls for the remainder of the semester will consist of dancers. Whether they be practicing, competing, or getting ready for competing, I will be taking their photos. Finally something I will enjoy. Though I will not be without my challenges. Studios, ballrooms, and the gym we practice in all have a lighting issue. So having a high enough shutter speed to capture good action shots maybe prove to be difficult.

The second solution was to go out during one class and do a mini shooting workshop around campus. Many people were having a hard time finding inspiration in around campus place that we walk around day in and day out. So she took her camera, and took us around to show us what we were missing. She showed us this really cool area where it was a courtyard which would lend itself to fashion photography. We also went to some warehouse type places to show us that even in the most unlikely places we could find interesting things to shoot, or interesting environments to shoot portraits in. Unfortunately, I did not get to take a lot of photos as I was helping out our teacher with her equipment. I think this was a great experience for all of us. It opened our eyes to what makes a good photography, and the process of getting that good photograph. It was much easier to adjust the angles that day as we were using her digital camera, and had instant feedback of what the picture looked like. You aren’t so fortunate in film. You have no clue how that picture is going to come out until you take the time to develop the roll, create a contact sheet, and print the picture.

Lastly, we had our midterm review on Monday. It went less then stellar. We found out as a class, we kinda suck at created good compositions. We also suck at picking out good photos out of our current portfolios. We also learned that we are putting way too much pressure on ourself with this class. She really does not care how we fulfill the project guidelines in terms of content, but as long as we shoot at least one roll of film per week. I am so glad I can finally focus completely on ballroom and dancesport photography. I also spoke with her and she has agreed to teach me how to use my fancy flash, as studios and ballrooms have very bad lighting. Hopefully I can get better, crisper action shots with the flash.

That’s all I have for now for photography. I have 2 rolls which I plan to develop this week, and 3 contact sheets to print. I’ve got a very busy week ahead of me for photography. See you next week!

Major Class Update!

Gah sometimes the time gets away from me and I completely forget to post. This is one of those times. So I have a couple updates about the classes. The first painting in completed, yay! Here is a quick look at it.

I offically turn it in along with painting number two next week on the 24th for our midterm. Let me know what you think about it in the comments below!

The second painting that I mentioned is a series of four smaller paintings done on a 24×24 canvas, each image being 12×12. Here we are learning four different techinques, overpaint/underpaint, wet in wet, glazing, and impasto. The first techinque, overpaint/underpaint, is exactly what it sounds like, layers of paint overlaping each other to form the final design. Think impressionist. The second, wet in wet, involves adding paint on top of paint and smoothing the colors together to great a more blurry line of transitions between colors. Glazing, the third techinque, involves adding a thick, white medium to the canvas, and adding very light layers of pure colors and shades (adding black) to it. This gives you the purest and brightest colors out of all of the techinques. Also note, we do NOT add any tints, or adding white to our colors, in glazing. We only go down the color scale. Impasto is the last techinque we are applying to our canvas. This also involves adding medium to our canvas, but instead of trying to acheive really rich and vibrant hues, we are trying to ad visable, touchable texture to the piece. We are trying to build up the surface of the canvas to really make certain objects pop of the canvas.

So far I have only  managed to finish my overpaint/underpaint. I think I am almost done with my wet in wet, but I have not touched the other two. I have brought my canvas home with me to work on the wet in wet so that I can focus competely on the other two techinques on Tuesday in class. Here is what I have so far.

Although I haven’t been able to print much in photog, I have been able to get one picture competely finished and I have taken about 4 rolls now on film. It is from our Vantage Point roll. In this roll, we were suppose to take 4 objects and take 10 images of 3 of the objects, and 6 of the last (on a 36 count roll). The ones my professor liked the most of were the pictures of my beat up practice shoe for dance.

It’s probably really hard to see in this quick snap shot of the photo, But I took this on a cloudy day, with probably a mid shutter speed (around 1/250 or 1/500 of a second) and a low depth of field (probably around 4.0 aperture). This caused the background to blur out a bit to make the shoe really pop. On the enlarger I used the fspot (aperture) 8, which is a middle range of light, for a total exposer of 3 seconds. I dodged, or waved a piece of cardboard around to block the light, the shoelace area in order for that information to come up. I did this instead of lowering the time or aperture anymore so because the rock and front part of the shoe looked perfectly exposed, while that one area looked a bit too dark. I might do one more print, and dodge that area for the entire 3 seconds.

Finally I have completed two projects for digital media. Below is an image  from the first project. In this project we had to take 15 items, scan them, and then use them in compositions. Plot twist, we could not make it look like a cut and paste image. We had to use the objects to create a whole new environment. This was incredibly hard for me to do, but I ended up with the three compositions. This class is truly pushing my creativity. The image below used bobby pins, rhinestones, a sheet, a lock, and sweater to create a stormy sea setting.

Let me know what you think of my work in the comments below, or feel free to link me to some of your work. With my club’s competition coming up I will prepare a couple posts about ballroom and competing!

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Painting Continued

Hello everyone! I hope you all have had a good week. So yet again, I am still further in painting than the other two studio classes that I am taking at the moment. In photography we shot one color roll so far just to make sure our camera’s work. I knew mine did but I had to shoot it anyway. I had the film developed at a CVS and they totally messed it up. The paper they used was fogged, meaning the pictures, though taken with a working camera and with sa person who is used to taking photos on full manual, looked under exposed. This made me incredibly angery, but I’m moving on. Also I learned the lense I used for this role is meant only for my digital camera. It causes a vignetting around the image. Lesson learned there. If you would like, I can make a serpate post about those two errors.

As for digital media, things are going slow. I am really not used to creating a whole new image out of nothing with photoshop. What this project entails is taking 5 scanned objects and turning them into a completely different composition. We need 3 of these compositions, meaning 15 total scanned objects. We have a critique next Wednesday and I am worried about it. I am really at a loss of what to do. But hopefully this weekend I can figure it out.

Okay, on to my painting class. On Tuesday we had to turn in the sketches that I had posted on last week. We also started on the 18×24″ canvas on Tuesday as well. I started out taking vine charcole, which is meant for use on canvas and paint, to get the general sketch out on the canvas. Then my professor came over, approved of my small scale sketch as told me to make the shoes on the canvas much, much bigger in order to really activate the canvas and the compostition.

 

This is just the start out the outline I did in vine charcole. You can see all the renditions I did before I was satisfied with how it looked as a sketch. Next we started on the cartoon. Now this isn’t the normal type of cartoon you would normal think of in the newspaper. In painting, cartooning is laying on a layer of black paint, and only black paint. Now you may say, “Well, what’s the point of adding only black? Wouldn’t that that just make your canvas one giant blob of black that would destroy your sketch?” My answer, no. In cartooning, you dilute the paint, acryllic in this case, with medium. Medium is a viscus fluid that thins the paint and evenly distributes the pigment. Using only water to thin the paint would not distribute the pigment evenly. We cartoon the image in order to let the white stand out when we paint over the cartoon. It gives the white paint a chance to pop, instead of blending in with the white canvas.

 

This image is of the beginning of the cartoon I did for this project. You can see a greyscale come out. This is from strict black paint, with only medium added. Today, I finished the cartoon and I started to add the first layer of paint to the image. We started out with figuring out where our blackest blacks would go, and then moving up the greyscale from there, all the way to the whitest white. I had a basic idea of where I wanted to go. As you know, I really do love putting movement, or the idea of movement in my art work. So I really wanted to explore that in this painting. So I really let the brush strokes come through. I tried not to blend them together, and just let the paint and the brush dictate the movement in the painting.  I think I am really starting to get that down in the painting. I still need to work on the painting a bit more. I think we are still working on it through next week, so we shall see where I decide to go with it. Below is where I left off today before I left class. Let me know what you think in the comments!

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Painting Sketch

Hello everyone,

So far I have gotten the farthest in my painting class over the other 2 art classes I’m taking. Our first project consists of using only Black and White paint with the available use of the grey scale. The subject matter are shoes or feet for this project. We needed two sketches by Tuesday and I had decided to paint ballerina feet in point shoes.  

The actual dimensions of the sketch are 3×4 inches. Now as my professor describes a sketch, this is an incomplete idea. In no way will this be the final image when I blow it up on a 18×24″ canvas. But at least the basic idea is down. I at least want the foot and shoe in a more impressionistic style of paint, but I have no idea how I want to treat the background yet. Maybe after the critique on Tuesday I will have a better idea of what I want to do with that part of the painting. This will be the smallest project we will have. With each consecutive project, the canvas size (and sketch proportions) will get bigger and bigger.

Thursday I hope to post more of what’s going on in this class as well as our project in Digital Media. For my photography class we won’t be getting into the darkroom for another 2 weeks, so I probably won’t be posting much about that class for a while.

First Week of Classes

Hello everyone!

I hope your Septembers are going well so far. I just wanted to give you a new update of what is going on in my artistic/school life. I have now had my first day of class of all of my classes as of 3pm today. I have to say, I am super excited for this semester. All of my studio classes, though seem challenging, seem to have a great energy and seem like they will push all of us to further find out voice through different medias. As suspected, I am currently most excited for my Photography and Digital Media class. The digital media class seems so fart to be the most challenging out of the studio classes, as this will be an entirely new experience, even more so than painting. Hopefully by next week I will have some works-in-progress to post here. I will definately have something from my painting class so get excited for that!

I will also be teaching a newbie ballroom class this year in my club. I will be teaching our freash crop of newcomers the Latin style of dance. They will be learning Cha-Cha, Rumba, Jive, and may be introduced to Samba by the end of the semester. If anything interesting pops up in that class I’ll write about it here as well.

Until then, have a good week!

Hello Everyone

I am so sorry that I have disappeared for about two months. Since my class ended I haven’t produced much art. I did take some pretty cool photographs on the 4th of July, but I have yet to load them onto my computer. I cannot seem to find my card reader. As soon as I do I will pick a photo to upload and write about.

In other news, I should be posting on here a bit more regularly with school coming up. I will be taking 3 art classes this semester, Black and White Photography 1, Digital Media Fundamentals, and Painting. I will be posting some of my work here as well as describing what we are doing in the classes.

I am super excited for my Photography class. I took two photo classes back in high  school, and this will be my first time back in a dark room in about three-ish years. In high school, the dark room was my home away from home. It was my sanctuary where I could blast my music and tune out everything bad going on in my life. I hope this will be a similar experience. Lets just say I’ve already geeked out over the fact that my photography professor has already put most of our assignments, the syllabus, and materials list on our school’s online system, ELMS.

Hope to be posting soon and looking forward to connecting with more of you. Please let me know in the comments below if you want me to focus on one particular class or share the posts equally between the three classes, or have one main class while still posting tidbits from the other two.

Thanks!