Summer Project
Space
Acrylic paint on wood slab (side of shelf)
3 ft by 15 in
Completed August 2021
Space is a collage of eyes portraying different ideas inspired by Magritte's The Blood of the World. This piece strengthened my eye painting and precision skills. My goal was to use anatomy to portray ideas of sadness, abnormalities, and gore art. This piece took many months to complete and required an extreme amount of motivation and concentration, neither of which I'm particularly great at, so this piece challenged me in more ways than one.
Inspiration
My inspiration was The Blood of the World by Rene Magritte. I've always found that my painting style somewhat relates to Magritte's method, especially in this project, because of the strong colors and contrast. This piece was made to show the raw parts of limbs, as if you had pulled back the skin and the veins and arteries were very prominent. This piece has a notably strong contrast, although some parts have a softer gradation. The parts are thrown together in a sort of messy collage. In my piece, I tried to bring in the aspect of a strong contrast in my piece, as well as the collage of raw emotion.
Planning/Experimentation
I knew from the start that I wanted to add something to my desk, and I decided to incorporate a project. I had been taking inspiration from collages I had seen around classrooms or on the internet, and I had also been practicing drawing eyes. I've been drawn to eyes since I started taking art seriously. I also experimented with eyes and emotions, which was a pillar to this project. I wanted to show a collage of emotion in one common object or thing, which was eyes. I sketched ideas for the kinds of eyes I would draw and the emotions they would portray, from closed lids to floating eyeballs. The main ideas I captured were sadness, gore, and mystical/abnormal eyes.
(Sketchbook Planning Page)
Process
I started with a sketch of the eyes in white pencil over the background, which I painted a solid dark blue. This was to give the eyes a floating appearance to more accurately resemble a collage. The white pencil was a smart choice on my behalf because a regular pencil would have been too dark to see the sketch, and this basic outline was what helped me place the eyes to make a good composition.
I started with white paint, which is unusual. It is usually best to start with dark shades, but for this piece I started with white because the whites of the eyes cover such a large area. Then I went over it again with gray shadows and red veins. I did the irises last because they would take the most concentration and precision, which I didn't want to mess up with one stroke of white paint.
Next I went in with some black to do darker shadows, like where the ink is spilled in the eye, in the black teardrops, and the dark irises. I also went in with a lot of pink for the waterlines and I mixed several skin tones. I tend to jump around in a lot of my art, especially large pieces like this. I would sometimes hyper focus on one eye instead of the painting as a whole. This didn't effect the final result too much, although it would sometimes effect my motivation or cause me to waste a lot of paint.
One decision I had to make while working was where to cut off where the skin of the eye met the backdrop. I didn't want the eyes to blend into each other, I wanted a sharp outline to make them pop. I chose different places to cut it off depending on the eye and the look I was going for. For the eye in the center with the ink poured into it, I showed a lot more skin around it to show it was being pulled down. Another challenge was the eyelashes, because I don't have very thin brushes. I had to either work very carefully with the brushes I had or use an ink marker. I went back and forth between the two; using paint for the bigger eyes and marker for the smaller ones. One technique I found helpful was painting big shapes in and then going back and blending to create shades. I did this a lot for the eyelid folds, in order to give both colors a steady base. At the very end, I added streaks of color in the more empty spaces to help the eye flow around the piece better and to cover space.
Compare and Contrast
Reflection
I worked very hard on this piece and I am proud of everything I put into it. I feel like I strengthened my painting precision skills a lot, as well as my ability to paint eyes. I think I should have found a better eyelash technique or spent longer on them to make them look more realistic. There are lots of thin brushes I could have used for small details as well that I didn't have at the time. I intended to make some of the eyes look bulged out with popping veins, but I feel like in some cases I should have added more shading to reach that effect. I also wish I had done the streaks of color around the eyes differently, I think they look too choppy and contrast too harshly with the piece as a whole, they also distract from the main idea when they were meant to draw the eye around the piece.
Sources
Renemagritte.org. “Rene Magritte: Biography, Paintings, and Quotes.” The Blood of the WORLD, 1925 by Rene Magritte, www.renemagritte.org/the-blood-of-the-world.jsp.
ACT Questions
1) Clearly explain and describe how you are able to identify the cause-effect relationships between your inspiration and its effect upon your artwork.
My inspiration shows itself in my piece more metaphorically than physically. There is an aspect of collage in both pieces and hard line, as well as the idea of conveying emotion through anatomy.
2) What is the overall approach the author has regarding the topic of your inspiration?
The author seems passionate and well educated on art and the artist community.
3) What kind of generalizations and conclusions have you discovered about people, ideas, cultures, etc. while you researched your inspiration?
People use physical objects or ideas to convey mental images and emotional ideas, as Magritte did in The Blood of the World.
4) What was the central idea or theme around your inspirational research?
I was searching for an artist who had a focus on collage and using pieces of something to create something bigger. Magritte did this by putting limbs, veins, and other objects resembling body parts on one canvas.
5) What kind of inferences (conclusions reached on the basis of evidence and reasoning) did you make while reading your research?
Magritte was intrigued on the unusual aspects of art and expressed himself by manipulating the human figure or parts of the human figure in his art.
My inspiration shows itself in my piece more metaphorically than physically. There is an aspect of collage in both pieces and hard line, as well as the idea of conveying emotion through anatomy.
2) What is the overall approach the author has regarding the topic of your inspiration?
The author seems passionate and well educated on art and the artist community.
3) What kind of generalizations and conclusions have you discovered about people, ideas, cultures, etc. while you researched your inspiration?
People use physical objects or ideas to convey mental images and emotional ideas, as Magritte did in The Blood of the World.
4) What was the central idea or theme around your inspirational research?
I was searching for an artist who had a focus on collage and using pieces of something to create something bigger. Magritte did this by putting limbs, veins, and other objects resembling body parts on one canvas.
5) What kind of inferences (conclusions reached on the basis of evidence and reasoning) did you make while reading your research?
Magritte was intrigued on the unusual aspects of art and expressed himself by manipulating the human figure or parts of the human figure in his art.