Special Edition Blog: Art Institute Trip

This is a special edition blog regarding the Art Institute visit on October 14.
We had to choose 3 works that we thought were inspiring and write about their craft, concept, and composion.

Here's the picture of me.

Here's the picture of you.

Mountain Road

Joos de Momper II

1600-1625

Craft

This painting is oil on panel and utilizes brushstroke to bring the foliage into a realist fashion. Although the people and objects in the foreground have dark, noticable outlines and are painted with bright, sharp colors, the trees and landscape blend together with the evident brushstrokes to appear less illustrated and more like actual real life landscape scenery. The further in the background you look the more blending of color and contrast come into play.

Concept

The concept of this painting is striving for realism. As it is a baroque piece, close attention to nature is needed to achieve an accurate and realistic appearence for the landscape and foliage. The painting captures the vastness of nature and stives to accurately dipict real life perspective for the viewer.

Composition

The foreground uses sharper edges, mainly for the people and objects, but uses darker tones and the more defined edges to separate the foreground from the background which is the overlook from the valley. The large tree in the center is heavily illuminated on the backside and the trunk is darkend to show the illusion of natural light. Plus the tree is foreshortened somewhat and leans back into the painting and into the background. The birds flying in the air even like they are part of the middle ground and further give the illusion of space.

Still Life with a Basket of Fruit and a Bunch of Asparagus

Louise Moillon

1630

Craft

This painting is oil on panel and pays close attention to proportion, detail, and realism. Brushstroke is barely evident because this is not a landscape where differnet elements blend together but a still life. The brushstroke is so fine that the elements are separate from one another. There are very gradual changes in color were need be and high contrast with the differenet colors of fruits and black background.

Concept

Again, this painting is striving for realism, but with a still life rather than a vast landscape. The fruit and the leaves are trying to achieve not just looking like fruit and leaves, but showing the qualities and feeling of fruit and leaves. The fruits look ripe and juicy, the asparagus looks like it has been freshly cut, and the leaves look ligth and fragile.

Composition

The composition uses shallow space and dramatic lighting to illuminate every detail of the subject. There is also special attention to how the different shapes of the fruits and leaves react with the lighting.

Quadrangles in Two Planes

Irene Rice Pereira

1945

Craft

There are two levels in this painting that consist of a lower layer of oil on panel and a top layer of oil on glass. The bottem layer uses vibrant colors while the top layer uses mainly black for a high contrast.

Concept

The concept is to create a three dimensional painting with two dimensional geometic shapes that require two layers.

Composition

The vivid colors on the bottom layer contrast with the black on the top layer. This creaets depth and dimension. The colors on the bottom layer are lighter than the black and seem in a way atmospheric.

Week 10: Misfit Toy Packaging

Craft
The packaging was made for landscape format of tabloid paper. I started by making a large rectangle with the rectangle marquee tool and then filled it with a solid color with the paint bucket. Then I made guidelines around the box to make the sides. I made the sides of the box making rectangles again and then using different shades of the color from the front of the box for the sides. Then I used the transform-scale and transform-skew tool to adjust the size and angle of the sides to create three dimensionality and perspective. The front, top, and side were all in different layers. Then using the rectangle marquee tool, I made another rectangle in the front layer to make a window and then I deleted the selected area. Then I made another rectanngle behind all the layers with a solid color to serve as the back of the box. Then I compied and pasted the elements of the playset from the original photoshop file and resized all the elements together to scale so they would fit in the box. I rearranged them to fit in individual compartments. I made the compartments with the rectangle marquee tool and, like the box, made tops and sides for the compartment dividers with more rectangles. I merged the box and compartment dividers together. Then I used the blending options to add a drop shadow for the inside of the box. Then I added a drop shadow for all the objects in the box. I used the eliptical marquee tool and lasso tool to create the feature panels over the window of the box. With the gradient tool, I made the plastic window glare with 100% white opacity on the ends and 0% opacity in the center, then dragged the gradient diagonally across the window. I added the text and on the largest text I used the bevel and emboss blending option.
Concept
The concept is a box with different compartments and the meat chart in the background used as a backdrop.
Composition
I wanted the items to be arranged in a matter of importance. The slaugthering machine is in the center surrounded by the animals, meat, and bottles.

Week 9: Misfit Toy Draft

Craft
Starting with a blank 11 X 17 sheet in landscape format, I started by cutting out the cow with the magic wand tool and then touching it up with the block eraser. All images were dragged and dropped into Photoshop, then copied and pasted into the compostion. The pig was cut out the same way with the magic wand and block eraser tools. Both had simple backgrounds and sharp resolution. Next was the treadmill. It had a white background and was easy to cut out with the magic wand, including the background in the netting. The cuts of meat were cut out from a black background and resized with the transform-scale tool. The chart was placed underneath all layers, skewed to look tilted, and the white background was pianted silver with the bucket tool. The razor blade was cut out with the magic wand and placed under the treadmill layer. I temporarily placed it on top to use the lasso tool and selected the treadmill layer to cut out the arm so when the razor blade was placed underneath it looked in between the arms of the teadmill. The bottle was cut out with the magic wand and block eraser, placed in the background. The hue was changed to red from the original blue cap. A layer was added on top and painted with the brush tool with red with opacity set to around 50%. Then the two layers were merged and then that new layer was copied. The cow was copied, flipped horizontally, and the value was changed to white. Then with the paint bucket, it was changed to a yellowish beige, then on the same layer, painted with blotches of red with opacity at 70%.

Online Photo Reference List
http://www.annastoydepot.com/animals/cow-family
http://www.annastoydepot.com/animals/pig-and-piglet
http://www.dogtreadmill.ie/2008/10/23/dog-jogger-treadmill/
http://www.askthemeatman.com/hind_qt_cuts.htm
http://www.howto-cooksteak.com/

Concept
The gruesome reality of where our meat comes from is deemed socially unexceptable for young children to be aware of.
Composition
The composition was intended to look like an advertisement in a catalog or end-of-commericial still shot of a laid-out playset. I put the slaughter machine in the center with farm animals on the left and cuts of meat on the right so the eyes read it like a book. Here are some online images used for inspiration:
http://www.sourcingmap.com/gas-truck-tanker-model-fruit-bus-buddys-truck-toy-sets-p-23972.html
http://2ols.com/item_13150_462762954-Kids-Construction-Set-Toys-Construction-Set-span-style-color990000A-Savings-of-18-htm

Week 8: Misfit Toy Photographs

Craft
For these photos, I tried to get the highest resolution possible. I took a number of shots against a simple background so they would be easy to cut out in Photoshop.
Concept
The concept for my misfit toy is a slaughterhouse playset and the miter saw blade is part of a conveyor belt slaughtering machine. The water bottles will be used for fake blood included with the set.
Composition
The photo is a profile of the miter saw blade becasue it captures the sharpness and dangerousness of the blade and it is attached to the conveyor belt which is also a side view. The photo of the bottle will be rotated eventually to be vertical and be placed in the playset display.

Week 7: Collage Final

Craft
I used the same background as the original, but resized it using the transform-scale tool to fit the full size of the letter paper. All of the fruits and vegetables were copied and pasted in and then cut out using the magic wand and block eraser. Then they were all resized using the transform-scale tool. The smoke and the smokestacks were all resized using transform-scale and the saturation was reduced using ajustments-hue/saturation. The saturation of the smaller pear in the shoppers cart was increased. The shopper and the cart were cut out with the block eraser because of the busy background and fine detail of the low resoultion photo.
Concept
Oversized fruits and vegetables and the factory represent the point when manufactered produce becomes rediculous.
Composition
The compostion has the viewer see the giant fruit first followed by the shopper then the factory in the back. The actual background I think is somewhat irrelivant but grounds the image somewhat. As for the lower value and saturation for the background, they help show off the foreground and make the fruit and factory stand out a little more.