Puppet Silhouette

Hi there. I hope everyone had a nice vacation. I have been neglecting this blog for a while, either because I've been busy or lazy, and for that I apologize. This new blog post is one that's a month over due and that is my Silhouette Screen print.

For this piece, we had the choice to paint a non-objective piece or make a silhouette/design playing card screen print. I chose to make a screen print. For this piece, we the topic we were given was to visually convey a sense of helplessness. From there we were free to interpreted that anyway we wanted to in order to create a theme.

From the there; the theme I came up with was a visual interpretation of free will v.s fate. The puppet was made to represent people while hands were made to represent an unseen entity possibly controlling us, like puppets. People could argue in circles over this forever so I'll keep it short. The big question tied to this piece was how much does free will really count for? Are we born because of luck or by design? Are we here to fill a purpose or are we here to pass the time until our death? Do we control where our life goes or are we being lead like puppets? I know, deep stuff. To add greater emphasis to my point, the background was a stage with a red curtain. Life is a stage and we're the players (I think that's the quote).

The process was very interesting, but harder than it looks. Not enough ink and it wont print clearly. If your screen isn't secured well enough, the print will smudge. There is a whole technique to this that could mess with your work if not done right. I made a series of 12 prints using the Chinese Collage method of gluing two pieces of paper together and printing on top of them. Out of the 12 that I made, unfortunately (the ones above) only one of them came out perfect. The other three do have their flaws but are the best of the other 8.

I feel that even though some of them didn't come out as nicely as I wanted, I think it was a very nice try for my first attempt at screen printing.

Duality Portrait

Hi people. In CyberARTS we did a dual portrait in any medium of two opposite or conflicting personality traits by either using symbolism in objects of imagery etc without splitting the page in half somehow. We also had to unify the subject matter in someway and relate the image back to our own personality.

Let's start this off with the imagery, what we're seeing on page. In my piece in the sky, you can see yellow, cartoonish looking clouds and a bright sun with rays stretching across the sky...then on the ground you have grey zombies crawling themselves out of their graves. Why did I choose this kind of imagery? Because they represent parts of me that are present in my life. The sky represents the happy, pleasant personality that is sometimes typical of me, meanwhile the grey ground with the zombies emerging from their graves, makes that statement that within reason, I can't change what I think or where my mind happens to wander. When I daydream, I usually go into my own fantasy world which,incidentally is home to zombies, and vampires and so on. I also wanted to show duality in the colours I used as well. The bright yellow vs the light and dark grey. I also put the ground off kilter because I needed a way to define the ground from the sky and give the zombies more space without just spiting the page down the middle. Splitting it this way gave the portrait a diagonal composition, which seemed far more dynamic than the less favorable alternative.

The materials I used to make this were Yellow, Yellow shade, and two different cool grey Copic markers and a water colour sheet.

Now for the age old tradition of sharing cool stuff. Here is an amv I found a month ago. See you next time :)

Star Wars Hoth Graffiti Mural

Last week, I found this on google and as soon as I saw it my eyes widened lol. And people think all graffiti is bad.

Andy Warhol

Self Portrait made in 1986

Andy Warhol created his self portrait from photographic images and silk-screened them off kilter, giving it that crooked look. He used very light pinks and yellows. Which gave it a very intense feeling to it.

I liked this because Andy Warhol took something familiar and did something weird and different with it. I wont lie, it sort of looks like a huge acid trip. The portraites of Warhol slowly look like they're slowly going out of focus while the picture it's self sort of looks off kilter.

Speed Drawing Deadpool :D

This blog entry gears more toward the comic book fans(especially Deadpool fans). I found this on Youtube and I'll say it. I was amazed. The Youtube user TheWalrusZF made a drawing of Deadpool. It took him an hour and a half to complete it. I liked it so much that I'm sharing it on my blog.

I personally like this because A) I'm a Deadpool fan (In general I'm a Marvel fanboy) B) I wish I could draw like this (even though some viewers of this video think that this was traced). Bottom line, I like this because it looks very professional and the lines are strong an confident. Enjoy :P

It's Geek Pride Day :)

That's right. A day just for geeks where we reserve the right to be as geeky as we want, without consequence. This is really the first time I get to celebrate this day because last last year, I was too busy stressing out about Yearbook crap to remember. Today I wore a Hulk vs Wolverine shirt..but since I usually wear superhero shirt, I brought a comic book to school :). One of the responsibilities of a geek is that they have to specialize in something. Me for example, I'm a comic book geek :D. For anyone who cares at all for comic book movies here's a picture of the Red Skull. I personally, don't like Captain America, however I would watch this movie for two reasons: 1) I was raised on marvel. My mom and my nana conditioned me from the moment I could speak to like comics and comic book characters. So naturally, being the geek that I am will see this whether I like Cap or not. 2) Two words... HUGO WEAVING. No only was he an awesome villain in Transformers as Megatron and the Matrix Trilogy as Agent Smith, he was articulate anti-hero V from V for Vendetta. He hasn't dissapointed me yet and I'm positive he won't now. Also, the movie will likely be good. I didn't have high expectations for Thor and that movie surprised me so I think I'll give Cap a chance.

Reponse to Edward Burtynsky Film

In class, we are now starting on our photography unit and the first thing we had to do was watch a movie on Edward Burtynsky. The reason for this is because the theme of this unit is to go out and take photos in industrial setting and put together a presentation of some sort around it. Edward Burtynsky's photography is about how industrial landscapes can effect surrounding areas. We watched a documentary on his work which included the places he went to shoot his pictures.

Personally, I thought the movie was boring as a whole. I thought it was boring because there didn't seem like there was much going on. Most of the movie was just the context of some of his photography shoots and then the finished products themselves. Because this was all the movie was to me, it made it very hard to pay attention. Imagine, sitting through an hour and a half of the same boring thing. The movie was 90 minutes long so we had break it up between two periods. I will admit however, that two things in that movie did capture my interest for a bit and that was when I was watching how fast the assembly line workers assembled small machinery and when there was a picture that he shot of many many cars that look almost identical lined up in rows. I can explain why that interested me but it did. Maybe it was the weird repetition of grey that sort of captivated me.

Anyway now for the part that all of my regular readers likely enjoy the most. I was watching Sxephil yesterday and as part of a new show that he and other ppl(if I'm not mistaken) do on youtube called Sourcefed, he did a segment on Mike Relm who created audio/video remixes of videos like the Old Spice commercial for example. I looked him up on Youtube soon after and found a Scott Pilgrim vs The World remixed with How Low Can You Go by Ludacris. I thought it was cool so I am now directing it to my reader :). Side note: For those of you who don't know who sxephil is. He has a channel where he just talks about stuff that matter to him like pop culture, current events etc etc. He funny, check him out. Also check out Mike Relm and his other remixes. Enjoy the last of your long weekend and see you next week.