The School Year is Coming to an End.

Last project in Drawing studio of my freshman year of college. Phew... it is weird looking back on all the assignments I had to do. Assignments that would help me to become a better artist. To tell you the truth... At the beginning of the year I pretty much thought that becoming a fine artist would entail drawing master still life's! I never actually thought, until now that they were just getting our foundation structured. Yes we learned how to draw outlines of bottles, find negative space, thickness in line, and value. Forgive me for just now realizing this but, those lessons helped sooooooo much! After doing this final assignment and her explaining to us that we need to start thinking conceptually.. Well (whatever that means) but it makes sense. We need to start putting what we learned in studios to use. I couldn't have done that with out thinking of something that really meant a lot to me. Well this year. it was college.

College was my biggest fear. I remember like it was yesterday when my sister came down stairs after cleaning out her closet full of books.. standing in front of me while I was playing a very "important" video game. She was holding up a book. I don't remember the name of it but it was basically saying.."Next Step College." The next thing I know I chucked the book to the side. Of course I didn't want to start thinking of college. It sounded horrible. Being away from my family. Not knowing anyone! meeting new people? How the hell am I supposed to do all that while being a good student.

Well it was hard. Very hard. However, Of course I learned from it. Doesn't everyone learn from anything that happens. I know there are far worse things going on in the world but right now. I am now finishing up with the most hardest thing of my life. and everyone says, " we all went through it mary" but why didn't anyone do anything about it?

That is when I started sketching in my sketchbook. It became my journal... that I ended up sharing with a lot of people. In a way, I want the whole world to see it. Because I am pretty sure, we can all relate to one another. and not everything in my sketchbook is anger about things that happen, but it also has little things I have begun to recognize in my college life. Being away from home, seeing those changes. Being away from my high school friends who went to different schools. Or choosing to go out with new friends just because I know that I need to make some but at the same time, I am growing away from the people who are my friends. It is just weird to think about how, everyone says college is the best years of their lives. BUT IT IS SO DANG HARD!!!!

Well everyone has to deal with their feelings some how right? I put it into my drawings. That is when I begin to think, that I want the world to see them. Soooo as some of you might have known, the previous piece I posted on the Blog, about Things You Won't Understand. That was for a portfolio review that we are having at the moment. This review has nothing to do with whether I am going to continue on in fine arts next year or not. It has to do with starting out with your art career as a freshman in college. The word around the studios are that they are going to choose 12 people to show their work in a gallery next school year. I can assure you that you might not understand how important this would be for me.

All year being in a class that repeatedly says "SHOW YOUR WORK IN GALLERIES BECAUSE YOU ARE GOING TO BE FAMOUS" How do you think that made me feel. It drove me nuts! I didn't want to do that. Being a cartoonist, illustrator, photographer, sounds wayyyyy more fun. and you get payed regularly. Why would I ever wan to put my self into the position of being poor, hungry, living with random friends, and creating art work. Do you understand how expensive art supplies are? They are veryy expensive. So yes i wouldn't want to be a famous artist. I would like to make art on the side, as a hobby. But when i heard about this portfolio review. Something just clicked in my head. I had to do it. and on top of that. I had to create something from me. Something that I have created from my sketches. That would be " Things You Won't Understand." I hung that one up of course. with 3 other projects. By all means I don't expect them to look at all four projects and go Tadaa!!! She gets the award! Life is way harder than that. But I am hoping to God that they consider me. It would mean so much. But all I can do is wait. because it has been a week and they still haven't sent the god damn email.

But in the long run. I made something that was really important to me and that will be a part of me for life. I don't need stupid galleries to make me feel better. All I need is my sketchbook and a pencil. Oh and my friends and family that surround me. I wouldn't have been here if it wasn't for them.
Here are my four pieces.
So yea this post was just going to be about the last drawing assignment but this last one helped me understand what I have been doing this whole year.
This project was a collaborative/ individual drawing. The way this worked was: that I started out with the paper and drew what ever I wanted. (Paying attention to mark making. Considering composition, directional lines, and visual texture) Well hot damn. I know I accolmplished all of those requirements. and the weird thing is. that this is just another one of my sketches from my sketchbook. But here is what I did first. If you can't tell... on the left hand side of the paper is cut out V shapes overlapping one another. this was my way of creating visual texture, and seeing how someone else would handle it.
Next was my friend Kelly.. She began to work in the faces where I left blank. I was a little hesitant but....
Now this is the final piece. However, I did switch with one other girl. She began to fill in between the V shapes with black pastel. I knew someone was going to at some point. But once it got back to me, after starring at it for a while. I knew what I wanted to do. Well this is what I did.
Looking back at this piece. It is weird thinking about what people do in reaction to seeing something. Kinda like how my first year of college went...........

Things You Won't Understand

Something I did for my portfolio review...

Photography

For Time Studio, we moved into photography. We were given different prompts to follow.

BELOW: This photo is based off the Passenger prompt. The passenger I chose to take a picture of was my Nana with her walking stick. This picture portrays a journey that my Nana has taken. However, I have realized that people can interpret this picture many ways. One being as the ground is marble and the traveler is wealthy. Another being that the traveler is going through snow. (which why would you be walking through seeping snow with a walking stick) But the real story behind it is that she was walking through the sand, struggling to get down to the beach.
BELOW: This is a group of stills. I followed my brother-in-law and his daughter down to our creek. My brother-in-law is a huge outdoors man and loves taking his daughter down to the creek to skip stones. She gets so excited whenever the stone bounces along the water.
After looking at the photos, I decided to warp around the colors to make the picture give out more of a journey feeling. I did this through Hue and Saturation.


BELOW: Based off the Prompt Army of Me. I took picture of my Mom working in her flower garden. Taking pictures of her moving back and forth down the line of the house to arrange the flowers. I thought it was funny, because every year my Mom plants the same flowers, saying that they will last through the next year but every year she is out there again planting the same flowers. Every year for mothers day, my Mom asks us to help but, this year I just watched her. So by taking pictures I created an army of her to work in the garden.
BELOW: I kinda made up my own prompt for this picture. It could, however, be based off of poetics of space. The area in which I live. I live in a dormitory and my bed is low to the ground. I always have stuff being piled up underneath there. So i chose to take a picture of me searching for what I needed underneath my bed.

Thinking about it....

Sooooooo.... Along with working on my projects in class, I have been obsessed with drawing in my sketchbook. What do I draw? Well, I draw what I would write in my journal if I had one. I draw things that happened during my day, or how I felt about that day.
I recently have become more relaxed in drawing. These drawing always make me feel better when I go back and look at them. As you will be able to see, I kinda mess around with different body shapes. I think it helps me get my point across. I used to always think I had to draw the perfect muscular body but that never showed my style in it. So take a look at these on my tumblr! I am giving the world permission to look at my journal! Make sure you look at the full view of each one. I am still working with my portfolio on tumblr and need to figure out how to display the whole image?

Oh and obviously I have been thinking about illustration a lot more. Drawing cartoons have always been a part of my life, but I have never been able to bring myself to create something of my own. Just a thought. Illustration and comics would be really fun!
CHECK IT OUT!!! http://lytlemary.tumblr.com/

Fooling around in Photoshop

Our next project involves us working and manipulating photos that we have taken for different prompts. Here is something I was experimenting with to refresh on my photoshop skills.

Redesigned!!

Here are the redesigned posters! I tried to keep them as simple as possible with a sharper image.




This projected wasn't like anything I thought it was going to be. My teacher wasn't happy with the first poster I redesigned. I thought the point of the project was to put our own design to the posters while still providing all the information. Well, it wasn't what he was looking. So he tried to put into my mind that it should be as simple as possible.
I always thought I wanted to go into advertising later in my life but after doing this project, I have changed my mind! Guess that is why I am taking all these classes. To figure out what I want to do!

BORING!!!!

In Time Studio we are replacing found flyers with smart, tight, and sharply designed flyers we make celebratory gestures to the everyday lost cat sign. Re-imaging the world with more potent aesthetics.

Check out these sights:

http://cardoncopy.com/

http://www.27bslash6.com/missy.html

http://lostfrog.org/

Here are the posters I chose to remake!

Next Post will have the re designed posters!

Dance, Move, and Draw!

For Drawing studio, We were told to bring every medium we own into class so we could have numerous options for our painting. For five classes we had to paint on a 21x40 Lintex paper. My teacher put on a different radio station everyday to give us different varieties of feelings.
At first I was nervous about this project because, I have always hated doing abstract art. I have never been able to do it successfully. However, I never had music to listen to while working. It all made sense to listen to the music and make drawing/painting movements from there on.
I mainly stuck to acrylic paint and soft pastel. With side materials like: sand paper, painters tape, and hemp. Here is what I came up with...
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Day 5 Final
After doing this project, I learned to make layers, and windows to see back through the layers. I was told to not fall in love with anything while I was working. Sooner or later it will be covered up!

Just a Little Something

I was just playing with my Prismacolor Markers that I haven't touched in a while.
Above: Throw Up Love
Above: Shutup, I Wanna Talk
Above: Good Things Happen
Above: Don't Go to Bed
Above: Big Storm

Inspired by a Book

First Drawing 3 project was to go out and get a old book and create a repeated folding patten to render the book so it became unreadable. Our teacher told us to transform the book into a work of art while considering social issues, the state of the world, investigate yourself, or a psychological you. I chose to investigate myself. After the Keith Haring project, I have realized that I enjoy drawing characters and I wanted to continue on with that. When I was looking for a book, I found a book called The Manual of Play, that was published in 1914. This book had descriptions of how kids play and what they play with. One of the sections was about imagination for kids at a certain age. This gave me the idea of imagining who characters are in a book with out pictures. When someone is reading a book with out pictures, they have to imagine what the character looks like with a very vague description.
For my project I began folding the pages in the book as tightly as I could. I started in the middle and worked to the outside. Once I got closer to the outside, the pages began to tear. Once I finished folding the pages, I realized that it resembles my mind in the way that it is tight and crammed most of the time. I then decided to make a mold out of my face and forehead and the book would be in between each mold. I covered the book with gray spray paint stuffing from a pillow. Then I covered the stuffing with the characters I made from hearing or seeing things around me. Once I put all the things I had together how I wanted it, I realized the mold face doesn't have very much meaning to the project so I decided to write the words of the things I drew.
I think this projects worked as conceptual art because everything I used related back to my idea.
Here is the finished project!


If you want to see it; it is in the glass case on the sixth floor of D.A.A.P.

Tweet Tweet! Chirp! Chirp!

First project of the final quarter! We were assigned to make a bird house! For this project we worked with FUTURE Blooms and Keep Cincinnati Beautiful to build artist made birdhouses in a new bird sanctuary in Avondale. We first had to do research on the bird we wanted to make a house for. After seeing that all the holes were mostly the same size, I decided to make it accessible to all birds. Right away, I thought of a bee hive hanging in a tree. I wanted to create rings increasing in size from top to bottom. The bottom would be a bird bath, then there would be a surface for the bird to make a nest on, then a level that has perches on it. We had a small critique to discuss our ideas and everyone seemed to approve of my idea. However, my teacher told me to look up the Guggenheim Museum, because the building spirals up to different floors. I decided to use bicycle tire and tubing for my material. To start out, I covered a plastic container with rubber tubing. This would be the bottom for the bird bath. Then I took a tire and spiraled it up to the height I wanted it at. To stick everything together, i used crazy glue and goop. I made sure there would be enough room between the levels for the birds to get in. Instead of making a whole, the birds can enter the bird house at any section. The surface for the bird to make a nest on and the roof are made out of a thick piece of cardboard wrapped in bike tubing. The roof can be taken off because I put ledges for the roof to sit on. Instead of making the perches on the inside, I decided to put them sporadically on the outside. I was going to use wood for the perches and then I realized that I could use the valve stem from the bicycle. I used invisible cord to hang the bird house.
Here it is before I painted it.
I painted it a shade of green that wouldn't be too bright. I wanted it to blend in outside.
Here is a view of the inside.
This is it hung outside on campus after our critique.
During the critique, the lady from FUTURE Blooms said that it would be perfect to hang at their sanctuary. However, I told her that I wanted to keep it so I could keep an eye on it and see how it does with the birds. I was also thinking of putting some kind of vine plant in the bottom of the bird house to attract humming birds. I will post more pictures as spring moves on to see what happens with this bird house.
Many thanks to my sister who works at Cycle Sport for giving me used bicycle tires and my Mom for giving me left over paint she didn't need anymore. This was probably the cheapest project I have done yet this year.

Happy Spring!

Over my spring break I started to draw in my sketchbook that I have had in my possession since the beginning of the school year. I just haven't had the time in my mind to sit down and draw in it. However, that changed over this break. I went out to dinner with my family earlier this week and we had to wait to be seated. When I was waiting, I was sitting next to a gentleman who was drawing in his sketchbook. After watching him for a bit, I realized he was drawing my niece that was playing in the rocks nearby. The gentleman looked up at me and said, "good way to pass the time, huh?" My Mom butted in and said to him that she has always wanted me to carry a sketchbook around with me. We all three got into talking while he finished his drawing and we found out a lot about one another. His name was Gill and he studied Fine Arts in college then I told him that I was a freshman in Fine Arts at DAAP and he got to hounding me about not carrying a sketchbook around with me.
This was a big wake up call that I need to start drawing in my sketchbook! Gill gave me the drawing that he drew of my niece and he let me choose one of his other drawings in his sketchbook.
This is the drawing I chose out of his sketchbook. He had mostly contour line drawings and every now and then he would add watercolor.
On the left is the drawing he drew of my niece. On the right was my attempt of drawing on the spot the next day. This drawing is of my sister and her husband relaxing at the pool.
Then I tried drawing my baby nephew who kept on moving! After drawing observationally, I started drawing whatever was on my mind. Below is a drawing of a girl lying on the beach not noticing the sand made hand reaching out to her
(left)When I didn't have anything on my mind to draw, I looked up at the clouds and drew what I saw in the clouds. On the right are more drawings from my imagination.

I want to say a big THANKS to Gill from the restaurant for helping me get back into the routine of drawing in my sketchbook. From now on I will carry a miniature sketchbook around with me. Goal: Draw at least one drawing in my sketchbook a day.

Responding to Keith Haring

About two weeks ago my class took a trip to the Contemporary Art Center to see the Keith Haring gallery. The exhibit will be up till September 5th so check it out! After taking a look around the gallery we were told to respond to his work in some way. Our work was then displayed on the first and basement floors of the Contemporary Art Center this past Monday.

Keith Haring inspired me when I saw a video clip of him going up to a blank advertisement and begin drawing on it. This was one of the ways Keith Haring became recognized. After getting arrested numerous times, the cops started to just let him be. Later in Keith’s life, he got to paint on public property without getting in trouble. This inspired me because I have always wanted to draw something on public property. However I would be to nervous to get into trouble. That is when I got the idea to do my own public artwork legally by building an apartment building out of cardboard. Once I had the building built I had to start drawing on the building. After starring at the building for two days, I finally began to draw. I didn’t know what I was afraid of. I realized it was so hard to start drawing because I haven’t drawn on my own in a while. Once I started to draw, I couldn’t stop. Little cartoons started to take over the building. After I drew many different scenes on the building, I realized that I wanted to have a little blue Kill Roy pop out every now and then. This blue man kept on popping out from a black whole around the building. I realize that the blue man was me, beginning to draw again. The blue man finally ends up popping out from the back of the building. This is shows me going out into the world with a whole new attitude of drawing. I am now going to start carrying a sketchbook around with me so I can draw whenever I please.

This project had a big impact in my right brain because it made me want to start doodling again. I shouldn’t be afraid or embarrassed about what I draw. People can either hate it or love it. I just hope people look at this apartment building covered in my drawings and understand how much fun I had with this project.

Self Portrait

Well here is my final project in drawing this quarter! I can see my progress! It was a colorful quarter!

Thanks for following!

Landscape Painting

To finish up with painting for this quarter, we were assigned to pick a landscape to paint. Along with finding the exact same color as the photograph, we had to work with different sized brushes. We had to start with a small fine brush to replicate the photograph as well as we could. Then we chose a section to use a medium sized brush to make it a little less detailed. Then a large brush for even lesser detail.
I chose to use the fine brush for the barn, fence and dying sunflower. I used the medium sized brush for the long grass. Then I used the large brush for the trees above the barn. This was done with acrylic on illustration board.

If The Link Doesn't Work

Youtube Material Strain

Material Strain

When I was assigned to make a material strain that looked like an experiment gone wrong, I started to think of viruses, mold, a snowflake, and an explosion. Making a ten-foot long organism going along the wall of DAAP gave me many ideas. Since we had to have five different mutations, I started thinking of the materials that I could use. Straws, bottle caps, paper plates, and plastic wrap were the things that came to mind. I knew I couldn’t start without having the material right in front of me to experiment. I then went out and bought some dixie cups. It took about and hour to realize what I finally wanted to do with the dixie cups so I knew I had to get the other materials soon to start experimenting. I went home the following weekend and scrounged around the house for materials. I found hemp, straws, an old deck of cards, and clothespins. After finishing the first strand of mutation, I began working on the next one. My sisters and I have always used hemp to make bracelets, so I decided to use my hemp bracelet skills to good use. I was making these hemp bracelets while being forced to watch the Justin Bieber movie when I babysat. Turns out I was working a lot faster then I thought I was because I made ten long strands. After I connected the hemp to the cups I began to make a snake looking head out of cut up straws. I was scared to use the straws because I thought it would make the mutation look crappy but once it was connected it worked out. Once I finished first three mutations, I then went back to add a smooth transition between them. A mutation can’t just appear it has to form. After those three mutations were done I started to work on the final mutations. I started with the last one first because I wanted to connect both materials before I connected them to the other three. When I started to work with the clothespins, I wanted it to look like a twisted DNA strand. Since I already did that with the hemp someone gave me the idea to make it look like a spinal cord by adding cardboard to it. It was hard to keep it altogether so I had to put hemp through the holes. That still wouldn’t hold it together so out came the hot glue. After I got them all connected I started working on my fourth mutation; a deck of cards. I first painted them with a light brown coating of paint to make them look older. Then I decided to just curve them and glue them together. The way I hung the cards gave them a floating effect. Once I got the last two mutations finished I could connect them to the other mutations and give them all transitions. After I was finished one of my friends wanted to mutate with mine so my hemp mutated with her hair. She worked on the transition for that because I didn't want to touch her hair!

When hanging the project on the wall, I had to be mindful of the restrictions. I couldn’t be more than sixteen inches from the wall because people had to be able to walk through the hallway. I also wasn’t allowed to hot glue anything to the wall. However, both of these restrictions had to be broken. I had to move my strain many times to find the right spot for it on the wall. Once I found the right spot, the straw part of my mutation was jutting out more than sixteen inches. I decided since it looked good that way, it was ok to break the rules. When sticking the mutation to the wall, tacs, didn’t hold everything up so I had to bring out the hot glue and stick it to the wall. Hot glue became my best friend for this project.

Altogether, I feel proud of what I accomplished in this project and how fast I accomplished it. I was one of the firsts ones to get finished because I managed my time wisely. This assignment helped me branch out with materials and my ideas. Now I am ready to work more in 3-D.

Here is a slide show of the pictures! Click!