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Interview #1:
Eileen Morley interviewing Ashley Hawkins https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVtqdBamDMs&list=PL84pGEk0cvDmBm9yQQ-P0TPsuONbSRi1X&index=6 I think that it is interesting that she said Maggie Walker in particular helped prepare her for success at VCU. She talked about how even in the competitive environment that she knew that she should do art because it made her happy as opposed to doing something more traditional, in her case veterinary school. She also talked about forcing herself to do work by signing up for a show or something, the theme of 'deadlines are your friend'!! I was surprised what she said about using art as a means to make things greater than yourself. Interview #2: Willa King interviewing Andras Bality https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y31gz7K5BMk&list=PL84pGEk0cvDmBm9yQQ-P0TPsuONbSRi1X&index=21 He found a style that he liked and was passionate about and stuck with it thru high school and college. He talks about falling in love with the artistic process and then sense of detachment that he feel when he is outdoors painting. He goes through phases where he paints more and less, art can be exaushting! He uses an underpainting! I'm really liking the new colors I'm bringing in. I think that they convey my theme a lot better and that it is already 1000% better. I need to go back in and add some texture to the clothing. I'm hoping that by repainting the stripes it will help balance the new brightness brought by the yellow.
I interviewed local medical illustrator Micheal Havranek.
Micheal really emphasized during our talk the importance of having a plan when going into the art field, that way you don't have to live the "starving artist life", which he mentioned on numerous occasions. He said that to get a professional, well paying art job, you often need to go through grad school and should plan those expenses into your future. For him, finding the right balance of passion and practicality went going to less prestigious and cheaper college, but taking more classes and getting experience in both medicine and art-based classes. I was surprised by the level of complexity that his business model followed. There was definitely a lot less of the "artsy" part than I would expect for a business centered around art. The majority of the time is spent figuring out what clients want, how to please them, and processing finances. To me, this indicated that prospective artists should follow his advice and take other classes, such as business ones, in college as well to help them prepare for their future. I did think that the speed at which his business has to operate at, and the fact that they recycle old work (which is standard in the field), does unfortunately take a little bit of the beauty out of it for me because you loose the creative process and are so profit focused. Obviously, he is running business and that is what has to happen in order to stay alive, but it is a little sad that profit has to come at the expense of creating beautiful art. Further, I didn't like that everything was digital. When I was little, I used to pore over my mother's anatomy textbook, which was all hand drawn by the same guy. The illustrations were gorgeous and I think a lot is lost when you switch from actual hand drawing to a digitized version. For my experience post I took at little trip to the VMFA. I tried to focus on finding works where the human form and portraiture were at the center. I really liked the top piece because it has that element of classic portraiture and is ultra-realistic. I really want to focus in my own body of work at getting better in creating life within my characters. One major difference between my work and the one in the picture is details such as the wrinkles in the face and the hair. I also think the careful painting of clothing is convincing. The second image shows three African American men. It is not a painting, it is actually a video exhibit, but I chose to look at this because the lighting is similar to how I like to light my images. The glow on the men’s chest brings through red and orange undertones. I think a mistake I’ve made with a couple of my past pieces is choosing difficult undertones and I should go back to the ones that are reliable and work. I think this work is a great example as to how undertones can be used to help convey a message. In this case the message was about death, but obviously that can be tweaked based on the positioning and expressions of the people.
I think that as this piece continue to develop I"m growing slightly concerned about the color scheme. I'm hoping that as I finish it will look a little better because I think this is vearing away from my style a little bit.
What I learned: Through this process, I like that I got the chance to explore drawing further. I don't especially like drawing, so I kind of have to be forced to do it. Doing the gesture drawings was a nice way for me to practice figure art without actually having to do traditional contour drawings. I felt like I improved a lot in how I filled in the figure and added movement towards the later ones. What do you feel like you need to work on the most in figure drawing next?: I need to work on my proportions and line quality. I feel like my foundations have improved this week, but there is still a lot of room for improvement. |