Artistic Behaviors - Blog 5

Artists Create Original Art:

Change Project: Henna tattoo (Original Art)

      For my first sculpture I used clay to make a tea lamp holder. It's also gives a flower effect because of its shape and designs. Using vibrant colors I painted the sculpture with yellow, dark blue, magenta, red, light blue, and white. This is original art for me because I used my own idea for its functional use and sculpted it based on my imagination. The designs I used for this piece are very small yet detailed. Using the colors I mentioned above, I tried using contrasting and complementary colors to make it look colorful. For example, I put the red and blue paint next to each other, and then white to highlight the contrast with small designs. I purposely kept the base color of the flower mustard yellow so it could give a somewhat general brightness to the piece. I wanted to fill the inside part of the flower, so I repeated a single line of design in layers pointing towards the bottom center of the tea lamp. I feel this idea really gave depth to the sculpture which is what attracted most people. Instead of giving the piece a simple profile, I painted a surrounding design so it would look complete.  I basically just used the red to paint petal - like designs; and then painted white in a smaller form on top of the red. This complemented the plain yellow base.

Tea lamp (flower sculpture)

Artists develop new art making skills

For my 2nd sculpture I made a teddy bear holding a heart out of clay. This was actually my first time sculpting something "unrealistic". Starting from the colors, to the shape, to the size, everything was based on making the sculpture look cute and appealing. Some of the new skills I learned through using clay were cross hatching to suck on separate parts, using water to moisten the clay every once in a while, and using the basic smoothing tools in order to finish the piece. My biggest challenge for the bear was making the parts of the body proportionate. I tried not to make the head too large and kept the feet of the bear show instead of all of the legs.Sculpting the arms was the most difficult though; the size and especially the shape was a new skill I learned. I figured out that firstly I have to cut a longer strand of clay in half so the sizes were equal. Then rolling it in a way where it's fatter at the ends where the "paws" of the bear are, and skinnier at the back where it attaches to the body. Although the main technique I used for this sculpture was the pinch pot idea. In order to make air not get trapped within the body of the sculpture I had to dig a hole at the bottom of the piece using one of the tools. I also did this on top of the "belly" of the bear where the head is attached to. 

Artists convey messages through their artwork:

For my last project I did a portrait of Mahatma Gandhi using his own spinning wheel. The history behind this portrait is that when the British were in control over India, the Indians were forced to buy the products the British made. In order to boycott with nonviolence, Gandhi encouraged everyone to create their own spinning wheel where they can make their own clothes instead of buying the British products which were too expensive for the common man. This portrait obviously shows the spinning wheel, which was built by him. Simplicity, independence, courage, and intelligence is what I tried conveying for the viewers. The quote on top reads: "I will not let anyone walk in my mind with their dirty feet", an original quote by Gandhi. I thought this suited this specific portrait because he was not allowing the British to take control of what he could or couldn't buy in his own country. The clothes I drew on him were very ordinary like how Gandhi was in his time. For people to recognize Gandhi I drew his glasses and simple clothes which he always wore. I worked mostly on the value for the portrait so it could look realistic; although the hardest and longest part of this sketch was drawing the spinning wheel. To firstly keep it in a sideways perspective yet still symmetrical was a challenge.