Notes from Week 3

This week I finished up my whimsical oil painting with the giant pear and pieces of collage. When I showed this piece to my critique group, Amanda and Steph, they said they really liked the idea of adding the collage to oil painting. Amanda even asked if I was going to cover the entire piece of paper with collage. I hadn't considered doing a huge, intricate collage before, so I found this idea interesting and inspiring. I bet that a massive collage would take a lot of time and energy, but I also think that it would end up looking very cool and original because I always do my collages from strange scenes that I've thought up in my head. Mr. Brooks and Ms. Roberts also gave me similar feedback that I should just keep playing and see where the work takes me. I definitely appreciate this no-pressure advice.

On another note, I discovered another artistic passion this week! Sonja showed me her black and white ink drawings and her inspirations for the drawings (books of fairy tales and a picture-book of faeries). I saw these and I immediately wanted to try drawing with ink and no color. There is something so emotional, raw, and vulnerable to me about simple line sketches. First off, I saw a picture of a cat's head attached to a fish's body with wings and wanted to draw that. After I finished that, I looked through a book of art done by Tabitha Vevers that my mom got me from DeCordiva Museum. There was one painting of hers that I could not take my eyes off of. It was a picture of a woman entwined with a lobster called "Rapture." This picture was both beautiful and horrifying to me. I couldn't get the image out of my head, so I decided to draw that too. After that, I drew a woman's face based off of a photograph of Kate Winslet's face that I found on the cover of a magazine. My only pen then ran out of ink, so I had to stop. However, from these experiences of frantic, obsessive sketching with pens, I have realized that I love doing these types of drawings. This past weekend I've seen certain images and heard stories and immediately thought "Oh! I have to draw that!" For example, a friend of mine at Ballet was telling me about a dream she had when she was little and immediately I asked her if I could draw her a picture of her dream for my art class. Also, if I see an image I want to recreate I always add my own style and emotions to it. I've never enjoyed drawing so much so I'm definitely enjoying this sudden burst of art-related adrenaline.