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Christo Task Part 3

Imagine that you are Christo and wants to do a large-scaled wrapping project in Singapore. How would you go about convincing the government to give you the permit to do so?

Wrapped ‘object’: Singapore Flyer

First and most important of all, this work is temporary and I will do as much a possible to minimize inconvenience and ensure that carrying out this art project would be meaningful.  Installation team will work closely with Singapore government and nearby communities to minimize impacts to recreation. There will be no damages to the surface of the Singapore Flyer itself when attaching the fabric. The removal team will be in charge of cleaning the flyer, ensuring that the Singapore Flyer is in the same excellent condition when returned.  The temporary work of art will display for a week only.  Just like most of my other large-scale works, I would fund 100% costs associated with permitting process, manufacturing, installation and removal of the wrapping.

During the displaying period:

Staff will be stationed around to distribute information regarding rules, fire minimization, viewing opportunities, traffic conditions and other pertinent information.

In addition to increased law enforcement during the exhibition period, a private security ream will patrol the corridors once the installation begins and continues till removal.

Solid waste and recycle bins will be located throughout the corridor ad serviced daily. Daily sweeps will be conducted during exhibition to collect any trash not captured in the available bins to ensure cleanliness of the area.

After sharing my thoughts about the activity.. here is the actual blog task assignment

If I were to describe his works to a friend:

His works are generally ‘unique and neatly done wrapped objects’some of which are large-scaled and really leaves a deep impression on viewers.  The planning work that went into the project, including preparatory drawings, collages, scale models, and so on is a lot and it can be seen from the final piece of work(neat and systematically wrapped). 

They are works that changes forms of the ordinary objects and explores the texture of the wrapping. The points of the original objects are joint due to the wrapping to create the new form. This often leads to his works ending up to be hard for the viewers to recognise the original subject matter. The choice of the wrapper, which is fabric is well decided upon as they create movement whenever they flow with the wind. Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s large-scaled artworks’ ability to make an impact and attract people’s attention allows viewers to ponder about the significance of the works and the meanings behind them.

Subject matter ‘Wrapped Coast’ and why create such a monumental work in your own words:

Just as the title suggests, the subject matters are both the wrapping and the coast. The artwork would not be complete with either of them missing. However, personally I feel that the fabric for wrapping is more important than the coast itself. After all this work is all about forms, in which the fabric plays an important part in, taking shape of the forms and connecting minor gaps in the rocks due to its wrapping nature, overall simplifying the form. The wrapping itself is the one that depicts the interesting textures of the fabric as well as creating movement, another crucial part of this piece of artwork. Thus all these roles the fabric plays makes it the most important focus point of the work and makes it the subject matter. The coast however is also the subject matter that differentiates this artwork from Christo’s other pieces, for it is the unique shape of the coast that the wrapping takes. The peaks of the coast determines the fabric’s folds and creases and the environment of the coast that determines the movement of the fabric from the wind. Thus together, they both make the subject matter of “Wrapped Coast”.

The purpose of creating this monumental work is to create an impact on the people and make them ponder over what are things they would accept as their attention gets attracted to the work.  This has something to do with people’s open-mindedness since they were taking in a sight so uncommon in their lives yet it was right before them and without a specific reason other than the fact that it is a piece of artwork. Most people would not be expecting something in nature like a coast to be artificially wrapped as people would not have any reason to do such a thing. Also, being large-scaled added on to the effect. This makes viewers likely ask questions and decide if they would accept something like this, or connect to other things in their lives that pose similar questions of acceptance to them. Hence this monumental artwork is to attract people’s attention and let people rethink their mind sets ideas and open-mindedness in the process.

Just like the Christo’s blog task, we were assigned to create something similar to Andy Goldworthy’s work after learning about him during SOVA lessons. Basically we had to arrange objects nature in an unnatural manner. (Geometrical shapes or patterns that do not occur naturally)

As we walked around the school looking for inspiration, we picked up a few interesting objects along the way: a shell and a unique large pebble. Finally we picked a spot whereby a plant with yellow flowers stood and created this small piece of work(shown in picture). The flowers placed at the center along with the bright pebble is at the center of the attention being the brightest colours in the arrangement. Eye movement is further directed towards the center due to the rings in this piece of work. The small stones arranged in a circular manner is something seen commonly in Andy Goldworthy’s works. We used it here to show the contrast between the green of the grass and the whiteness of the pebble and shell in the center, making use of the grayness of the stones. The surrounding stones also seemed to draw a boundary between the piece of work and the nature itself. Like Andy Goldworthy’s works, we attempted to achieve a balance between nature and patterns.

[After observing our own work for a while, we also noticed it resembled a grave stone, only with an over-sized plant growing in front of it, and a shell as an offering. If this piece were to be large-scaled, it will probably resemble a crop circle too, or maybe even a real gravestone.]

Dreams and Reality Exhibition Part 2

The next piece isThe Three Graces (1880) by Marie Braquemond. This impressionist artist is said to be admired by Paul Gauguin and influential critic Phillippe Burty.

Looking at the details of the painting I could see how she skilfully brought in the colours and portrayed the lighting(sunlight) perfectly. The different shades of colour could be seen everywhere in the painting(e.g. green, red and purple in the skin, in the hair, in the clothes and in the background!) yet you can still tell what the ‘actual’ colour each part of the painting is supposed to be. (e.g. brown hair, purple, red and white clothes etc.) From afar, the colours fuse together in a complicated manner and the work seems almost realistic.

Next comes the interesting one, familiar to us due to Edouard Manet taught during SOVA lessons, yet its is not something I had seen before. True enough as I got closer, it is a piece by Manet’s student Eva Gonzales and it was inspired by Manet’s ‘The Balcony’(1869) and Olympia(1865).

This piece is called “A box at the Theatre des Italians” (1875-1878) by Eva Gonzales. It greatly resembles Manet’s way of painting, the deep, dark background, the colour of the flesh tones and of course the subjects.

“The Lady with Glove”(1869) by Carolus-Duran:Breathe-taking portrait caught my eye from meters away and I found myself staring at it for the longest time. This is a huge painting, and had an atmosphere around it that does gives the impression the subject is a woman of high social status. The artists seemed to know Edouard Manet as well, and it can be seen too how this portrait resemble’s Manet’s works. (again a really dark neutral background and similar flesh tones)

Finally, this post will not be complete without Vincent van Gogh’s famous “Starry Night.(Over the Rhone)” I have always seen his works online and in photos and did not really like them, until I saw this one in real life. It gives me a completely different impression as I walked around it, looking at the brushstrokes and the glossy paint, and how the shines of the stars were sublty painted. I had considered Van  Gogh style to be dull with its colour scheme chosen was mostly unsaturated and always being blue and yellow. Yet after seeing this one in real life I thought I may actually like his Starry Night series.

Overall, I enjoyed myself very much during the exhibition. Other than getting to see those works from Paris, there was good lighting focused on the displayed paintings and at the end of the exhibition there were reference books and sketching materials provided to us to sketch a few of the paintings. It was a meaningful visit and I hope to visit such exhibitions again soon. :D

Dreams and Reality exhibition Part 1

[As tumblr is unable to post text in between photos, I have posted the pictures in order: description of exhibition»photo»details» photo of work’s name, artist and description of the work.]

[Sorry for the blur photos of the text. I will post some contents on it as writing here if you do not want to refer to the photos of text itself]

My camera did not have the battery for me to take everything, so I simply took those I like and want to record on this online journal.

The first work in this post is The Knight of Flowers(1892) by Georges Rochegrosse. It is said to be inspired by Wagner’s Parsifal and illustrates a scene where Parsifal(the hero) wanders into an enchanted garden filled with maidens calling out to him.

Other than it being a beautiful piece of work, with its rainbow colours and realistic characteristic, the details attracted my attention as well. I took a close-up picture of it as I observed the strokes of colour and was fascinated by how the artist manipulated the oil medium for the painting. For example the figures painted were completely blended while the background and the surrounding plants were of thick blobs of paint with edges sticking out, indicating  that were probably brushed on very quickly.

When I visited the exhibition at that time I was considering to start on oil painting and this exhibition, along with pieces like this were very inspiring to me . Other than the interesting brushstrokes, the colours took great skills as well: the artist had managed to achieve colour harmony perfectly in a painting with all the colours of a rainbow in them. I’m guessing this is due to him mixing mostly unsaturated colours (most of them mixed with white) together, using only the saturated ones for the darker areas.

The next piece is an illustration by Carlos Schwabe. Personally I had always been very fascinated by pen, ink and wash (watercolour) combination. Especially with their details in ink and the flat planes of colours that are pleasing to the eye. Though not much colours are used, there is always enough to have a sense of space within these illustrations. I was particularly fascinated by these pieces as I rarely see ink and watercolour pieces from the past, and from France. Most of the time the artworks are made from oils. You could tell how happy I was when I spotted these pieces. The details of ink and the washes are amazing just as expected.

Christo activity during SOVA lesson

As you can see from the photos, we had a hands on session for SOVA again today. We learnt about Christo and Jeanne-Claude, and of course about their works,(mainly wrapping projects) all the way from before how Christo came up with the idea of wrapping to his most recent works. Christo is actually known by the public more for his large-scale wrapping projects such as buildings and entire areas of a beach,etc (Wrapped coast). 

Do check out their website for specific information about them: http://www.christojeanneclaude.net/index.shtml

Personally, I am more interested in sketching and the painting side of art, not so much into 3D artworks and projects. The hands-on part, whereby we are assigned to wrap something with cling wrap and take photos with a partner helped in a way, allowing me to observe the process and try to figure out the reason why Christo was so interested in wrapping.

So my partner and I chose a swing, mostly because we were curious about wrapping larger objects. Even though the swing is not that big, we thought that it would be a good experience to at least wrap something larger than a human, and attempt to understand Christo’s works more through the experience. Another reason why we chose the swing is also because we are aware that wrapping objects changes the appearance of their forms. Wouldn’t an object that can move about a joint after being wrapped be slightly more interesting?

We observed the ‘transformative effect’ mentioned in the lesson. The cling wrapped allowed us to compare the new form to the original. You can imagine that if the wrapping were opaque, the seats would appear to be two giant triangular blocks.

Photographs of the process  were taken from several camera angles, (even from the swings’ perspective :D why not make good use of the transparent property of the cling wrap?) Those photos turned out pretty nice(refer to last 2nd photo of this post) with the clear plastic that distorts the view due to its creases. It reminds me of space distortion in a way. On the other hand, when relooking at the picture, claustrophobic people probably will not like it at all.

There are not much” tactile surfaces” to explore given that we were only provided with cling wrap. However I think it is sufficient for a 20-min long activity that aims to let us understand Christo’s works.

Overall I think this is a relatively interesting experience. Despite not being very interested in thia style of works (3D objects simply put together, exploring random concepts), the activity has allowed me to observe and think through about Christo and his works.

[I really wanted to upload photos of Christo’s works along with this post for easy reference, but unfortunately my computer probably cannot do that without taking hours or crashing halfway :(. In fact these 6 photos already too me long enough. So I guess there is always his website for you to click on complete with easy-to-navigate pages of his artwork gallery]

Just downloaded the trail version. Though probably not for my serious Cg purposes as I’m sticking to Clip Paint Lab for time being. I think the best part about this programme is how it imitates the traditional painting mediums from effect of paints to paper textures. After playing around with it for a while I noticed a few things about traditional media even, for example how certain medias blend and even how watercolours dry as they display this animation on screen. :O Markers for example goes paper like brushes go on the digital canvas in ‘multiply’ mode.

Shall play around with the programme when I’m looking for inspiration or having art block since its like using different mediums mess-free +without wasting actual art materials :D

Will be uploading Photos of Dreams & Reality Exhibition when my camera battery charges up :)

last doodle of 2011

A really quick doodle.

I really like this colour combination and will probably be using it again.

Black and grays with highly saturated colours

Complementary colours/Christmas colours Red and green, with blue and a more subtle violet  to balance out the colour harmony :)

december 2011

headshot doodle

I have been wondering recently if its possible for me to skip the base filling in digital painting, for its probably a waste-of-time step which is hard to do without. I tried following a few artists who starts with colouring without lineart and base coloursuch as http://asuka111.deviantart.com/gallery/#/d35kvzw

and some others with sketches as base, no base colour-blocks, lines filled in later/rough or no lineart

http://licheus.deviantart.com/

http://naguri.deviantart.com/

I figured out that starting with forms meant lots of correcting so I skipped out on trying that method and tried to do a colouring on sketches instead and the result is shown above^^^

turns out its not too bad, not as nice as line-arted ones, but most definitely more worth the time.

I would still do line-arts, not sure about base colour. It can be surprising how the thickness and flow of the line can change the way a painting looks.

for example my old linework: http://fc02.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2010/149/2/9/Anime_Manga_by_IZAYAAA.jpg

compared to my newer one after reading up more about about art/lines

http://th08.deviantart.net/fs70/PRE/f/2012/072/0/e/wip_buranko__by_izayaaa-d4sm2oc.jpg

not a big improvement, but at least my lineart no longer annoys me as much as it used to 

I should have changed the sketch colour to fit the colours more though.