Poetry Interpretation...

Interpreting a poem into a something else is a lot harder than it seems. I wrote a poem about friendship that I was required to transform into something different like a movie, photo series, digital image, painting or something similar to that. This seems like a simple enough task but it is a lot harder than it seems to transform words into a visual. Maybe it was the poem I picked but it was actually really hard to do. I did a photo series and all week I walked around my neighborhood to take pictures that reminded me of friendship. The photo series ended up being more about friendship in general but my poem was about a specific friendship between my friend and I. 

I started out by taking pictures throughout my neighborhood of things that I think represented friendship. I had a plan to start out by taking pictures that were exactly like the poem. As I started taking the pictures I realized this was going to be hard and it wouldn't be very aesthetically pleasing. So I decided to take pictures that illustrate friendship in general with a little emphasis on my friend and I. Something I found interesting was the interesting things around my neighborhood that were in pairs. For example, something that I thought illustrated friendship was a specific tree i found on my street. It was a tree that came out of the same roots but there were two tree trunks. I also photographed a lot of flowers in pairs because I thought these really captured friendship. They are beautiful, they grow from the same roots, and they are always together. 

Even though I was able to find these portrayals of friendship it was really hard to get just the right ones. I couldn't just do flowers, I had to find something else. So I also went through past pictures that I have taken. One that I found that I really liked was a picture of two shadows. It was of me and my friend. 

So as a reflection on this project, I would like to say that it was harder than I expected it would be. I tried to use all the resources that I could and in the end I was able to get it done. I was pretty happy with my final product but it didn't turn out how I had first expected.

Claude Monet... The first draft

In reviewing the art of Claude Monet I have, of course, learned a lot about his paitings and his life. I've been able to look deeply into why someone would like his art and why someone might not like it. I looked at both sides of the arguement. I learned about his life and process of becoming an artist.

Besides all of this, the part I like the best were the little interesting facts that I learned about him. Did you know that he started at age fourteen by drawing caricatures? Did you know that he used to charge for his portraits when he was fourteen? He became popular throughout his whole town because of his art. Did you know that during his caricature years he thought of landscape scenes as "revolting"? He hated them and didn't consider them art at all. Of course once he opened up his mind enough, he learned to love them and that is what he is really popular for now.

I also thought it was amazing that his art basically started impressionism. He was considered the first Impressionist. Do you know what an amazing accomplishment it is to have started your own genre of art? Thats pretty amazing.

I used to think of Monet as an artist that painted pretty water lilies. But now I know that he is so much more than that. First of all he does more then just water lilies. Second of all his shading and detail are just amazing and intricate. He is so much different then any other artist.

Perspectives...

Monet's paintings all depend on your perspective. One could say his paintings are unrealistic and sloppy. Of course one could also say they are beautiful and that the portray the real beauty in a landscape. These perspectives have played an important part in my writing of the reviews of Monet art. Writing these reviews is all about your perspective on art.

The process of reviewing Monet's art has really opened my eyes to different point of views in art. Not only with Monet but with all artists. Depending on the style you like a piece of art can be beautiful or meaningless. I never thought of Monet as a controversial artist but when you think about it he probably was during his time. Although now, most people think that Monet is a talented artist that paints beautifully, when he was first starting out I'm sure there were some negative critics. Back then people were not used to the kind of art that he paints. His paintings don't exactly portray exactly what you see when you are looking at a landscape. Most people realize this and think his art is stunning and intricate. Other people might think that its unrealistic and they might not like the change. Just something is different doesn't always make it bad but that all depends on your perspective...

Researching Monet has opened my eyes to new points of view. I hope this blog has helped you understand what I have just realized.

The Rest of Tempera Paints and Pigments...

So this next blog is related to my last blog that was about tempera paints... today (well actually yesterday but I'm just getting around to blogging about it) I finished up my rough draft for Anne's chemistry class. Like I mentioned before I decided to do two separate papers, one about pigment and one about tempera paints. The pigments proved to be a little bit easier to research on, but not much easier. Here are a list of websites that were more helpful...

http://painting.about.com/od/artglossaryp/g/defpigment.htm

http://www.nycosh.org/workplace_hazards/Chemical/RI_LeadpaintLawsuit.pdfhttp://www.pictureline.com/newsletter/article.php?id=322

http://webexhibits.org/pigments/intro/index.html

The first website is just a definition of pigment to get me started. 

The second one was actually very helpful. For each paper we needed to find a controversy relating to either tempera paint or pigment. This has been the hardest part because it was is very hard to find anything about paint, let alone a fight people are having about it. So this website tells about a lawsuit happening in Rhode Island about pigment. It is about lead poisoning that has been happening to children from their paints. The only question I had was what was what different brands were the ones with lead in them? 

The third one was kind of irrelevant but I thought it was interesting. I didn't use much of the information on it, but it was about pigment vs. dye. 

The last website listed was the most helpful. It was called Pigments through the Ages and it was very helpful with the history aspect of the paper.

All in all writing this paper was very difficult. The first hard part was actually finding useful information. After you found the good websites you had to find what was on the rubric. Then you had to put that all on paper in an informative and entertaining way. 

The Tricky World of Tempera Paints...

Today I started researching for the chemistry portion of the (Art)iFacts project. We have to write a report on tempera paint and pigment. I have chosen to do two seperate one page papers on each of the subjects. Today I started researching on tempera paints, which was a very hard subject to find information on!

I did find a couple websites that were helpful but nothing really amazing. I found one website on the history of tempera paints which was my resource for the history aspect of the paper. It gave me useful information about the history of tempera paints as well as when oil paints began to take the place of tempera paints. It was helpful but could have been a bit more clear... I wasn't exactly sure the approximate year that people began using tempera paints. (http://www.vanaken.com/history.htm)

Another website that turned out to be pretty helpful was the Society of Tempera Painters. It was especially helpful on information about the pigments and how toxic they were. This website will be helpful when writing my paper on pigments as well. I did have a few question such as... What was their view on oil paints? Was there a reason they chose to join a Society of Tempera Painters? Or was there a reason that they preffered tempera paints? Unfortunately, there was nothing on their webiste that answered these questions so I was not able to get them answered. I was hoping to get their opinion on the differences between oil paints and tempera paints. I emailed them on the email that was listed on the website but I doubt that I will get a message back. Oh well... (http://www.eggtempera.com/index.html)

I spent a lot of time researching today, but I can't say that I really got much done. So far this has been a very hard topic to research. I did not get the whole tempera paper done but am very close. I seem to be having trouble finding any misconceptions about tempera paints... I'll have to keep looking and hopefully I can find something that will help me next time I research. Bye for now.

The Beginning of Claude Monet...

Today I started research on Claude Monet. Monet is the artist that I chose to study for a part of the humanities requirement. We are required to write two reviews on an artist who was active between 1800 and 1960. One of the reviews is a positive one and the other is a negative one. So I decided to start doing a little bit of research on Monet's background to begin with.

http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/monet/

By just looking at the first paragraph of this website I learned something very interesting. Apparently, Monet was the person that started Impressionism. He was considered the first Impressionist. I thought this was very intriguing because Impressionism is such an important form of art. The name Impressionism came from his own painting entitled Impression: Sunrise. One thing I was wondering was since he initiated this kind of art, does this mean that the year he painted that painting was the first year of the Impressionist movement? That would be pretty amazing for Monet to have really started his own kind of art... I was also wondering if there was anybody else involved because in some cases there were many people that started a new trend but only one person gets credit. This website was also helpful because it gave information on his life as well as examples of paintings throughout his career as a painter.

http://giverny.org/monet/biograph/

This website was helpful because it gave a timeline of the important dates in his life. It was very straightforward and factual. It wasn't too detailed but it gave me an overview of his life. Now I have a background on him and will be able to make my reviews interesting and informative.

First Blog...

Welcome to my new blog! We have started a new project and so it seemed necessary to start on a fresh blog. Our current project is one focusing mainly on art and all of its aspects. In chemistry we are focusing on paint and the chemistry related to it. In humanities we are studying the history of art, but will also be making some art of our own. Now that you have a little intro I'll get you caught up on one of the things I've been working on... 

I've been sick pretty much all week so that's why I'm just starting to blog. The first thing I did do this week was have my meeting with Spencer about phase 2 of the Poetry project. I am doing phase 2 on my non-literary poem, which was an aim conversation between two close friends. I chose to do a photo series because I think this will clearly illustrate the poem in a different way. My next blogs will be about my research on other components of this project...