More paintings I like!

So here are two of the final five paintings for the 10 Objects Project on 4x6 boards. Phew! That's a lot of numbers in one sentence.

We did transparent objects in class a couple of weeks ago. I'm very proud of this one because of several reasons such as: I finished the objects in class, the reflected lights being cast on the other objects, and the rendering of the objects (although the highlights should be toned down a bit). I was scared to paint this subject but it turned out way better than I expected. I have to fix the background though, I thought I covered the entire background but as it dried, spots weren't as covered as I thought due to a watery paint. 

Wood Sculpture - "Bronco"

(Finally got photos of the entire piece!)

So for my final sculpture last semester, we had to create something out of wood. The first thing I thought of was "Art Deco styled oversized chess piece as a staff head". So what did I end up making? An Art Deco styled staff with an oversized chess piece as a staff head.

This was the first time I was working with wood so I had no clue what I was doing. At all. I kept asking my teacher, woodshop teacher, and friend (Thanks Jesse!) throughout every step of the way, making sure I wasn't going to mess up.

So here's the staff head chess piece with the original drawings and final:

I was aware that I would lose the detail I wanted but I still enjoy the sketches I made.

Here's the staff in full glory:

+12 Agility

I wasn't sure I would have time to create the handle and already prepared a backup installation of just the chess piece but several people pushed me into doing the staff, and I'm glad they did. I'm also thinking of painting it in black, there were suggestions of certain kinds of paints to use but nothing for sure yet. For my first time working with wood and its related variety of tools, I think it was a success. Especially that I have all my fingers still intact. 

Another Rivera Exploring Cubism

Oh hey there, not dead just super busy. But I will make multiple updates this coming week so here's the first!

***

For Drawing we had to choose a content that we needed to study and incorporate within the work we're doing for the rest of the semester. It was so difficult to choose something and I wanted to choose an idea that would help me draw better. But my instructor told us to choose something that we're not familiar with, since we do need to study about it. A ton of people chose anatomy or chiaroscuro so I didn't go that route, instead I went on the other side of the spectrum of how I draw and see and chose to explore Cubism.

I was nervous to choose it since I just couldn't (and still can't!) wrap my head about the process of creating work like that. My instructor read my proposal and promptly agreed (contrary to the many talks she had with a lot of students about their proposed content). I had no clue what I was getting into and it still makes me nervous about the oncoming projects and how exactly I'm going to create them. 

So this is my first attempt ever with 4 poses in 40 minutes. 

I began with drawing the figure the same way I normally would but a little more stylized and even more geometric than my own style. Then I erased a bit of the side since we were doing an activity with erasing and drawing in new parts of a pose for this ghostly combined image, and aligned her sitting pose proportional to my first drawing. Then I started to think about the composition and drew the third pose on the lower right since there was too much white space, and emphasized the curve of her back to add some movement throughout the piece. The fourth pose is when the process of cubism and drawing the form in multiple angles then combining it and as well as the careful consideration to line and composition just finally made sense to me. I turned the page, drew fragments of the body, repeated sections and emphasized lines in my previous drawings to guide the viewer everywhere.

I had a classmate give the compliment of calling it a Picasso without even telling him my content beforehand. Mission accomplished.

This was my second attempt during the same class. This time I played with minimal colour and set a rule for myself when I use certain colours. I went more for a straight line drawing style and rotated the piece many times. There are 4 poses, each with a randomized length. I took what I learned from the previous drawing and applied it here like fragmented and repeated parts, rotation etc. This is my favourite I've done so far, I think it's far better than the one I drew for my first project:

We had to create a piece that incorporated 5 subjects. I took a drawing that we did in class with multiple poses and erased lines and used it as a reference, I also combined two extra poses from other drawings that I had. For this one I made it so that each figure shared certain body parts with another pose, either through the torso, arms or legs. A classmate said it reminds them of Picasso's Les Demoiselles D'Avignon and now I can't unsee the similarities of the poses.

It could have used more work in the background, others said rather than having it organic make it look cubist as well. I said I was worried that the figures might be lost in the background if I did that but other suggestions made me realize that a solution to the background wasn't as hard as I thought. So I may go back and fix it.

 ***

So it turns out this Cubism thing isn't as easy as most people think it is. I'm gaining a ton more respect for cubist artists because of how difficult it actually is to create something like this. And I'm actually learning more about the figure and how it actually looks (especially in different angles) and how it moves in contrast to what the pieces actually depict. It's actually fun trying this out and my instructor said it's good that we should try something different and out of our comfort zone now and then because we mostly stick to our own way of doing things, and that can eventually get stale and boring. I guess, "When Picasso became bored of painting people, he started representing them as cubes and other abstract forms" holds some truth to it.

I heard a classmate (who's in my drawing class) say in a different course, "Picasso was a piece of shit." It's good to know she dislikes my work then.

Christmas Card 2012

So I drew a Christmas card for my secret santa this year. After drawing it out I just needed to colour it. So here's the process from start to finish!

Original drawing.

Then I re-did the lines on photoshop.

Colour.

And the finals with a bit of texture added! I made two for whichever someone prefers.

So Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to you! 

I also changed my url into: artofmarcorivera.blogspot.com because my original one was just something I made up since everything with my name was taken already. But I didn't like the one I had so I resorted to the typical "art of" url. Damn my somewhat common name.

Misc. Life Drawing

This was when we were drawing with ink. Unfortunately ink doesn't like me (although I have been getting along with it lately), so none of those drawings will be posted. But this was the first one I did in conte on manila paper to nail down the model's pose, angles, shapes, and proportions before diving into  ink.

And now for a bunch of life drawings:

1

2

5

10

Unfinished but I really like the solution I came up with on her left shoulder. The light was in my face, so she was mostly dark from my perspective except for rim highlights. Her arm leaned towards the light so it was the only bright spot on her body and drawing it as a thin outline didn't look right. So I blocked it in instead with black and create a negative shape and the result turned out better than I expected. 

Played around by making this drawing into basic shapes.

Workshop

We did pentimento for workshop and class one day. It was really fun to do but really difficult, it was an interesting challenge! This first one was a wonderful set of poses, of course it's Ed. 

Then we did manipulation/distortion for workshop and class (again!). We had to come up with some sort of narrative in our head which helped manipulating the figure.

This first one was in workshop and someone thought it looked like he was dipping his foot in water and it was freezing cold, so we focused on the leg and the expression.

Then we had to think of our own for this one, I thought he looked passed out drunk so I made sure the hunched back was as hunched as it can be.

This was one in class. It was the same pose as the first one in workshop but the other way. This time (our teacher told us not to tell what we thought it looked like since we already gave an idea before) it was a pose being disgusted/repulsed or a "get away from me" pose as he's being asked out. So this time I focused on the shoulders and the downward direction of the head.

Not so serious drawing. The set up was him holding out something like cards and we all had to do our own thing without telling anyone until after. I made it into a tea party.

Watercolours

Unfortunately I am not in the possession of the decent paintings I did for the final batch of 10 small paintings, so here is my outdoor painting and tableau vivant. 

We had to go out and paint en plein air for this one. I started one but it was pretty bad so I redid it at home while referencing what I already had. I really need to get darker with my watercolours for some much needed contrast.

We had to (in groups) set up our own tableau vivant for everyone to paint. It also had to tackle a world issue. My group decided to do it on garbage/pollution/landfills, so we had a well dressed couple having a picnic in a landfill staring beyond the horizon (interpret it any way you wish, I actually don't mind landfills after reading on stuff about recycling just yesterday). I should have taken a photo of the actual set up we had because it was much more interesting. We had covered what they were lying on with newspaper, cardboard and anything you could imagine. We had actual garbage, cat litter, plastic utensils, crumpled plastic bottles and more scattered around the stage.

The other tableau vivants were pretty odd, sometimes difficult to actually see the message. But the one on censorship was a pretty neat and minimal set up. But my paintings for those other 3 tableaus weren't that good, but bits of the censorship one had some pretty neat brush work so I was pretty proud of that.

VCA Web Design

Web design, you're an entire different beast when it comes to designing. You proved to be very difficult (HTML and CSS nonsense aside) due to mostly size relationships of the content found on a page. Buttons are a little too big, headers may be too small, too much negative space etc. 

So rather than posting the horrid web pages I designed, I'm posting the small aspects of it instead. The first web page didn't really have much of personally designed content, so most of this is from the final assignment.

VCA Web Page

For our final assignment we had to design a web page dedicated to VCA (with content already provided) but in the style of one of the art movements given:

• Pop Art
• Cubism
• Art Deco
• Impressionism
• Abstract Expressionism
• De Stijl
• Arts and Crafts
• Bauhaus

Of course I would pick Art Deco, that would silly of me not to.

First thing I did was design a logo for VCA. I went overboard with it by spending a ton of time and creating a number of them...

I started out with this one first. I thought it would be interesting by making a somewhat symmetrical design by getting rid of the crossbar of the A to mimic the V. Then after looking at it for a while it just didn't look right, it wasn't being read the way I wanted it to.

Brought back the crossbar, placed it in a typical art deco frame. The space surrounding the "VCA" did not work as well as I thought it would within a half-circle. But I still wanted to integrate the thin lines into my design somehow.

So I used a font I came across that was entirely lines! I liked it for a while so I worked with it alongside what I originally had for a bit. Eventually I decided against it because of how busy it looked.

I put them within a boxed frame with repeated shapes to allude to art deco architecture and I found that it worked really well compared to the circular design I had before.

The bottom design is what I ended up choosing as my final. 

I attempted to expand on the repeated shapes at the side by bringing it to the bottom to actually mimic art deco architecture and bring back some of the thin lines that I wanted. I didn't like the result and it didn't scale well.

At one point I attempted to create a monogram...it was bad.

I wanted to create a header of the entire name of the program as well as design a button. I unfortunately didn't use any of these designs but I liked the border design a lot that I used it for a sidebar on my webpage. This also showcases the secondary colour scheme I adopted for my web page.

These are my final button designs. I found that separating the buttons through the use of individual gradients was a clever solution.

I also experimented more with different logos to see if I could come up with anything better and play around with angles. 

After my teacher saw the countless logos I made, he asked for a copy of the file to show his Digital Media class (2nd year VCA) since there aren't much examples of logo experimentation/logo design progress anywhere and he would give me credit. Sweet.

I also needed to create some header and footer banner to place my logo within.

And finally this was a mock-up slideshow design (because I have no idea how to actually implement one), I made it have that retro theatre look.