Final

On Thursday the 15th of March, My brother and I visited the Seattle Asian Art Museum. It was an amazing experience! The one piece of art that caught my eye was called The Pacific Coast by Albert Bierstadt. It was a gigantic piece of amazingness!! The creativity and detail in Bierstadt’s painting was unbelievable. 

The black storm coming from the east side and the light coming from the north of the painting are both symbolizing a war between ugly and pretty, heaven and hell, yin and yang. It gives the portrait an even balance of color and light. Love the way this is laid out. Also the trees up on the little hill are given a Low Key Value of green and yellow. This being another balance with the black storm. Darkness on the East and the West; High Key Values on the North and the South. 

From the perspective of the painter, the Native’s are pulling in the boat maybe after trying to fish. It looks like they are rushing in to get away form the storm and warn their society. The narrow strip of land on the other side of the Natives gives feel of a small island in the middle of nowhere because the trees and the hill do not spread out to the back as much. 

The different size and depth of lines used in the clouds give the viewer a feel of realism because of atmospheric perspective. The farther away the clouds, the more atmospheric pressure (blue) is involved. The line depth is also used in the structure of the rock hills and the outlining of the light from the sun. The water is also given a light of depth by the thickness of the waves. The thicker ones are closer than the thinner ones. 

Both, brother and I, had a wonderful time seeing all the crazy cool painting. We plan on going back when he comes to visit again! 

The Art of Andy Goldsworthy

This is my attempt of creating something Andy Goldsworthy would create. I like to call this Sun God! I know it does not have the feature like the Sun God but it is close enough. The green leaves symbolize the the hair of the sun god or the flames from the sun. The purple leave is the face of the sun god or the sun itself. The bottom part (the brown and orange mix) is the body of the sun god mixed with some old hair or it is a solar flare. I really liked this one because it is simple; looks so little but means so much. The texture on the green leaves give the shading from my flash a distinctive look. The brown and orange mixture is not symmetrical because of the wind. This is my Andy Goldsworthy's attempt to create something unique.

#2 Critique

Hello everybody! My name is Nice Sandhu and this is my artwork. After a long and hard struggle with Adobe Illustrator CS5 I came out with a wonderful mixture of texture and balance. I had ten thumbnail models and from those 10, I made five with the combination of many. After that, I created the 9X9 work-up model and began to experiment with Adobe Illustrator CS5.

I began to find out that the intensity of the shading is very easy to adjust with the gradient scale. So, in no time I had the two leaves and two flower peddles shaded in an adequate manner. The lines on the two leaves were pretty easy to create. Started off with the one point thickness and went down every few lines. Then used the spike tool (hidden under the shape shifter tool) to give it a natural look. The texture on the two flower peddles was simple as well because it only took a click of the mouse.

When it came to making the vines running out and in through the flowers peddles and leaves it got a complicated. At first, I could not get the lines to be a perfect curve; nor could I get then to look good. I had to spend quite a while to figure it out. What I did was made a circle in the position I wanted the curve and drew the lines around the circle to give the vine a perfect bend. Another aspect that was extremely difficult was the layers. They gave me a real hard time. I would have to restart the illustration because I could not get the layer to cooperate with me. So I finally turned to YouTube and found the simple mistakes I was making.

And I make out with this! One of my favorite assignments we have done.

High and Low Key Values

Our current assignment focuses on values. Values are the lightness and the darkness of color. For instance, the color Red would be in the middle of the value scale, Light Red would be on the left, and Dark Red would be on the right. The Low Key Values are dark in value. Again, The color Red's Low Key Value would be on the right side of the scale. Here is a photograph taken by 'bdwfh that I got from a website. It really explains the Low Key Value of black. The mixture of the black background and the black cat really catches the eye because the cat is blended into the background giving the effect of continuous.

High Key Values are light in value, These values imply the left side of the value scale. In this picture, taken from a blog by Gaye Adams, has applied the High Key Values. The darkest value applied here would be the shadow of the oranges and it would be the fifth or the sixth value from the left. The lightest would definitely be the first or, as some people say it, the zero.

This art is called 'High Key Oranges' 

by Gaye Adams. She is a painter. She

typically does not do any high key 

paintings; mostly all her paintings 

are dark. 

High Key Oranges: http://gayeadams.blogspot.com/2009/12/high-key-oranges.html
Cat Photograph: http://bdwfh.deviantart.com/art/Low-Key-135646036

Self Critique

This project for me was a learning experience. From what Ms. Dillon and YouTube has taught me, I have been able to save a lot of time trying to figure Adobe Illustrator CS5 out by myself. This Space and Contrast project has given me a few tricky obstacles but I have obtained the knowledge to pass through them. The 3X3 models I created were not all that great but I did come out with a few designs that were favored by my classmates.
For the WOrk-Up model, I improved the design by the advice given to me by Ms. Dillon and gave in a little more time to make the straight lines and circles. It did take time to do the 3X3's and the Work-Up model but It took much longer to create the exact same figures in Adobe Illustrator CS5. This was so because I only know the simple steps; so I turned to YouTube. It did not really explain the procedure throughly but after getting a few tips from Ms. Dillon I became confident. The overall portrait turned out great.
The things I could have worked on is being more precise where I start and place the lines. For me to do that I need to practice more. Due to me not being able to make it to the scheduled lab hours, I have gotten Adobe Illustrator CS5 for me and I have been practicing ever since.

Ambiguous Space

Composition II in Red, Blue, and Yellow

By Piet Mondria(a)n 

Does the piece exhibit symmetrical, asymmetrical or radial balance?

This artwork definitely does not have symmetrical balance because one half is not similar to the other half.  It also does not have radial balance because the shapes and lines do not start at the middle of the art piece and radiate out in a circular fashion. So this is asymmetrical. 

Where is the focal point?

I would say that there is no focal point because there is no particular spot where the artwork begins. 

Explain how the artist is using space.

Mondrian is using space very well. The way the shapes correlate to the black lines is very distinct because the weight carried by the colored shapes is balanced by the thickness of the lines. The positive space in this art piece are the colored shapes and the black lines. The negative space is the white. Shape plays a big role in this composition. I would say that this composition is flat as well as it has depth. Flat because it does not have shading or any particular structure. Depth because the use of edges and overlap of lines is very smooth and blends in amazingly. 

What kinds of Gestalts principles are at play here?

The Gestalts principles being used in this composition are similarity and figure/ground. I see similarity because the shapes are all the same; they are rectangles. I also see figure/ground because the contrast in color of the colored shapes show more then the ones that are white. 

What are the strengths of this composition? 

This artwork was done back in time where electricity was not invented and straight edges were hard to find. So the crisp, straight lines and shapes really bring the art piece to life. The greatest strength of this composition is the color. Piet used the red, blue, and yellow really precisely and accurately.

Research on this artist..

• Piet Mondriaan was born on March 7, 1872 in Amersfoort, Netherlands.
• He was Dutch.
• He was greatly influenced by Pablo Picasso.
• His greatest composition was Composition II in Red, Blue, and Yellow in 1930 in New York. 
• After the created of his greatest composition, he started to enhance and add more lines and shapes to it.
• He died of pneumonia on February 1, 1944 in Manhattan, New York, US. (He was 77 years old)
• His funeral was attended by over 200 people the next day. He is currently buried at Universal Chapel on Lexington Ave. 

Piet Mondria(a)n

First Picture URL: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-vLJGSAXQsNw/TaRHmCVcrI/AAAAAAAAAA8/4e8uhYzMbfs/s1600/mondrian_comp_rgb.jpg

Second Picture URL:http://rupo.ru/i/msg_i/2982/mondrian-foto.jpg

Gestalt

Unified Whole is a configuration, patter, or organized field having specific properties that cannot be derived from the summation of its component parts (Dictionary.com). This is when a group of anything becomes a whole. For instance, all the states in USA make up Untied States but one of those states does not. Another example would be a family. When one person is left, the family is no more. Here is a picture, an example, of a bicycle and the separate components.

Grouping in terms of Shape is a simple approach to the Gestalts Principle. It is when same shapes are grouped together. A group of trees, a group of houses, a group of windows, and a group of birds are all examples of Grouping by Shape. Here is a picture of Koalas Bears together.