I Love the Smell of Sawdust in the Morning!

I had my camera with me today, so I decided to take some photos around campus.The architecture on these buildings are really cool looking.

The image below is a sculpture that I pass every day on the way to classes. I just think it is such an interesting sculpture. It is placed in the center of a large common area outside.

The piece is titled "The Balance of Equality" which is a fitting title becasue the common area that this is in is called Martin Luther King Jr. Commons.

This next photo is of a bulding on the way to class. I just love the way the ivy covers it.

Here is the castle of NIU. Did you know that it is a state law for all public universities in Illinois to have a castle. Sorry about the photo. I was in a rush to get to class. I'll get a better one another day.

Here is the art building at NIU. There is always something going on in this building. When I walked in today I was bombarded with the smell of sawdust and acryllic paint. Art buldings always have a distinctive smell. The smell of the art wing at my high school was a mixture of paint, metal shavings and pencil graphite. A very comforting to smell to all artists!

Contour Line Sketch

In this drawing we were simply creating a rough contour line drawing.

A Contour Line is a line that defines the inner and outer edges of a form and suggests three-dimensionality.

In this sketch done in my drawing 1, class cross countour lines are also used.

Cross-Contour lines are multiple, curving, parallel lines running over a surface of an object horizontally and/ or vertically which describes its surface topographically.

The image shown is of a still life of sheets placed overlarge boxes in the drawing room.

Abstract Composition Part 3 and 4

These two assignments were done concurrently, which is why I am posting these two parts together.

In part three (below),

This is an 8X8 composition where I took marks that I thought looked interesting and arranged them into an interesting composition by arranging and affixing them to the surface. The final product is layered with a significant amount of newly generated imagery without being overly complicated or busy.

What’s The Point? The idea is to begin the difficult process of imposing order on chaos, finding concrete meaning in visual ambiguity, and defining for myself in practice, the principles of gestalt. The point is to learn from the challenge of creating a cohesive and harmonious abstract composition from scratch, as opposed to the slightly easier task of simply reorganizing and reacting to existing imagery.

The final part of this project is conceptually rather simple, I had to choose my favorite composition/individual square of all from part 1 or 2 and then recreate it at a much larger scale (at least 22x22”). I projected and lightly traced the outline of marks, areas, and lines.

Second Drawing assignment

In these two drawings we were continuing our study of line in class. Using different line we were to create an interesting composition.

This first drawing was done right outside the art building. It shows a very interesting sculpture and some stairs that lead up to the building.

In this drawing some lines that were used were intuitve perspective lines, and scribble lines




This drawing was done after the drawing above. In this drawing, we were to focus more on compositon. Some things that the teacher was looking for were that objects ran off of the page, and your eyes should wander around the paper without getting stuck.

Some lines that I used in this drawing were again scribble lines and intuitive perspective lines.

In addition to intuitive perspective there is also atmospheric perspective which states that as things get futher away from you they get smaller and their lines get fuzzier.

The above drawing was done in my dorm lobby. In this view I am looking out of a window.

My Deserted Island

Although this is a fairly old art project that I completed in my senior year of high school, I still love the way that it turned out.

The process used to create this piece was printmaking.

The type of print making used in this piece was a solar plate

The process is a somewhat simple: A transparency is used to create an image(Below)

In my case I created a collage using Adobe PhotoShop and then printed it out on the transparency.

After the transparency is made, a UV sensitive plate is used. Placing the transparency over the plate and exposing the plate to UV develops the plate. After 5 minutes of exposure to UV light the plate is placed in a tub of water to complete the developing process.

Ink is then applied to the plate, which is then put through a printing press.

By differing the amount of ink used and the color you can create hundreds of different prints using the same plate.

Here is an image of a the entire process that i framed

To start with . . .

To start my blog out I will be posting an assignment I had in my 2-D art class.

Abstract Composition

In this composition I cut out 4X4 squares out of a large sheet of paper that I created marks with using found objects and india ink. I then put 16 of these squares together to create a single composition.

Gestalt theory states that we tend to continue shapes beyond their ending points and things which share visual characteristics will tend to be seen as belonging together. I was supposed to think about how the clever choice and arrangement of smaller squares can generate visual movement, fluidity, and rhythm so that each sqaure can be seen as a singular whole utilizing similarity and continuity.

What’s The Point? The idea is to begin the difficult process of imposing order on chaos, finding concrete meaning in visual ambiguity, and defining for ourselves the principles of gestalt in relation to continuity and closure.