New Project

So I had a lousy week in art so far, and I haven't gotten much done. I spent all of Tuesday struggling to draw. Nothing turned out, and I was so swamped with other homework that I didn't really get a chance to try again later. So today I gave up on drawing myself from a photo and broke out the mirror. I wasn't really anticipating that, but it worked out okay. I'm thinking I might take the sketch I did today and turn it into a painting, but it would probably be kind of bold and graphic and not exactly in sync with everything else. We shall see. It's quite possible that I might not be able to get much done over the next few days (which is scary), but I'm going to do my best!
Next week I promise I'll either get a photo or comment on an artist.

Lazy Week

Okay, so this week I was out sick. I honestly didn't do much but sit around doing nothing because I had a lot of headaches. So I have one lonely sketch of me for concentration 5. It was, thankfully, an okay sketch. I'd planned to do a painting of it, but it didn't really work out for me this week (I really would've at home, but movement made me nauseous).
And this blog is late because I was sick all week and then I forgot about it Friday. So sorry.
Anyway, I'm searching through my photos for next weeks' concentration, so hopefully all will be well and I'll be fairly caught up by this Friday.

Art of Diane Tremblay

http://www.dianeart.com/surrealism_paintings.html

I'm beginning to think that perhaps I should have elected to do surrealism for my concentration, but alas, that takes too much planning for me to work quickly. There's that, and I'm always short on ideas. Meaning that self portraits were probably a good idea.
Anyway, so above I have the link to the surrealist artist Diane Tremblay up above. Half the website is in French, so I'm assuming she lives in France, or caters to the French. I'm not sure.
Anyway, her paintings are typically done in acrylics, and she paints a lot of women. While her paintings are very colorful, the hues are muted and gentle, giving her paintings a slightly eerie feel. Typical themes I've noted are life, death, birth, various aspects of feminism, nature, and religion. There are probably others but I've yet to figure them out/notice them.
The paintings I found most notable were: Peace at the Intensive Care, Balancing on the Edge, Superman, Evolution, Jungle Urbaine, The Sea (love the bird people), and Pleine Lune.
I found the use of birds as angels (I think) particularly interesting in Peace at the Intensive Care, and also quite liked their appearance in The Sea as well. What the represent I'm unsure of, but they have an intriguing prescence in her art. Loved the nature theme and how she used it to portray the woman's body in Pleine Lune, the colors in Balancing on the Edge, and the robot in Superman.
Anyway, it was interesting for me to look at. I'd recommend browsing through the site.

All right. So while perusing the web in desperate search of an artist, I came across a web page for Robert Beal's surrealist artwork.
http://www.beal-surrealiste.com/introductorygallery.htm
Okay. Hopefully that link works, because I can't get blogspot to let me paste anything in here.
I loved his use of colors. They tend to be very bright and analogous, and create a sort of unanticipated contrast and depth... or maybe I don't know what I'm talking about, which is also distinctly possible. My favorite piece in here is probably The Fool's Cap, but it is quite hard to choose, as all of his art is intriguing and in its own right, uniquely beautiful. I do think that the person in the Fool's Cap has a very interesting face, and reminds a bit of the distorted faces I used to draw. Except his are way better.
The Wheel Barrow is also fascinating, not only because it's a traditionally weird surrealist piece, but also because it's done in oil, but so smooth and controlled that it looks digital. Having oil painted before, I think it's a sign of huge talent that he can get everything so accurate and beautful, rather than gloppy and textured like most oil paintings are.
I also like his concepts--The Inventions of Culture and Stocks, Pilleries, and Cultures of good Intentions in particular stand out to me. The blue mannequins are my favorite part of the paintings. Another painting that caught my attention was 'The Great Imperial Fantastical Kingdom of Diddley-D0-Dum" because it's both creepy and funny in its depiction of childhood and toys (I think. I'm sure there's a much deeper meaning that I missed.). Anyway. I like his art. End of story.

Concentration 1

Yay! It's the self-portrait in progress!

Mmkay. So I did this with black and white acrylic paint, some nifty new fine point paint brushes, and a lousy photo reference. So that said, I think I'm doing okay, considering how time deprived I am. Thankfully, the painting is coming along better than it was at the time this photo was taken. I fixed the disproportionate arm, added some more value, tried to fix up the background, etc. There's a little more detail on the face, but since it's such a small painting I had difficulty with that. Anyway...

So... while I was browsing the internet yesterday looking for photos of foreign architecture (I don't remember why), I stumbled across the blog of an artist called John Lovett.
http://splashingpaintblog.com
Anyway, I'd never heard of him before, but as I scrolled through his blog searching for the particular photo that had appeared on Google, I was completely taken with some of his art. The rock arrangements inspired by the color wheel were definitely different, but I preferred his many paintings instead. While the artist referred to several of them as sketches (and some of them certainly are simplistic, but that's where the charm lies, too), they had a certain combination of detail followed by immediate vagueness. Parts were done in watercolor, sketched over in pencil, in some cases very rough and sketchy, but I still liked the look.
For some reason, the less professional something looks, the better I tend to like it. Sketchy is preferable to perfectly fleshed out. For me anyway. Most of the time.

Alright. After much thought on the subject, I have at last come up with a more final concentration idea. I've noticed that I have a tendency to just randomly draw faces--usually without a subject present, hence the randomness.
Between that, and a slight penchant for drawing things in an intentionally warped way that I have, I've thought that maybe I could do some sort of surrealist/facial portrait thing. I don't know.
I'm just trying to think of something I could maybe stand to do for an entire semester. So yeah, that's what I've got thus far.
Ideas are always subject to change. :)