Friday, March 16, 2012

Some Input, Please?

You know what sucks?
When you're so stressed out that you can't even do art. :(

Instead of ranting, how about I ask for your opinions on something else?
For those of you that have taken AP Art, you'll know that there's a concentration section, where you have 12 works centered around a specific theme.

I decided to make the theme overcoming depression.
The art is going to start from dark, suicidal themes and then transitions into finding happiness.
Your help? I need more ideas, particularly of the happy paintings.
It's so hard to think of things without being cliched.

Oh, and my teacher suggested having a flower in each work to symbolize emotions. For example, the drawing I'm working on now is a hand of a girl that killed herself. She is holding a dead rose. (Also, it's literally one of the worst things I've drawn. I DON'T KNOW WHAT'S WRONG WITH ME.)
Anyhoo, as the paintings get happier, the flowers will be more and more vibrant.
I need ideas of actual things to paint, though.

You guys' help would really be appreciated.


Here, have a painting! :D

ALSOALSO, before I forget, I'm also on Tumblr.
Come say hi! :D

*shower of love*

27 comments:

  1. oh I know, I fail at art. But what is art. If only eating food & procrastinating was art. :P

    & if you need ideas, why don't you go over here - http://www.kickstarter.com/discover/categories/painting?ref=sidebar

    :)

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  2. hopefully you can get all that negative/dark stuff out of your system with your artwork. good luck.

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  3. I'm so far from being an artist that I don't feel like I can suggest - but if I come up with something (despite my hesitation) I'll be back to let you know. Good luck! And the painting you shared here is beautiful!

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  4. I really like the flower painting there. As for ideas, I think if she's dead she should possibly be holding a black rose. But a rose would imply she killed herself out of love, so if that's what you want then go for it. Maybe you can do that actually, in the last picture of true happiness she is holding the exact same rose, and the pictures are a series of how she went from being depressed to finding love and being happy. This also works that if you do them the other way around, it shows the darker side of love as she found love and it depressed the hell out of her. I'm not sure if you can make that work though. You can do it with music but with art will be different, and more difficult.

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  5. Maybe use weather as a symbol for emotion? So rain for depression, sun for happiness.

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  6. I haven't done any serious art since I was the age of 14 so I can't really help you too much but I love the painting, you're a good artist, I know that at least.

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  7. Thing is, you've become too good for our opinion. Mine anyway. I can differentiate between immature doodling and good art but this is obviously going to look good to me. :p
    It's BRILLIANT.

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  8. hmm sounds like a tough topic you found there for yaself!

    what about in the darker pictures you include like withered or dried flowers ...for the happier pictures you can include like flowers that start to blossom and pedals in the wind and all that...garh I suck in this!

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  9. I found this to be so beautiful, I'd like to set is as my profile pic on fb (I rarely use my actual photo). Do you mind? Can I give you credit or direct people to this site as a thank you?

    I'll check back for your response, I'd never want to use some one's art in a way they weren't comfortable with.

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  10. Anonymous, I'd be honored beyond words. :D

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  11. I thought of something which I don't think you can use as it is, but maybe it will trigger other ideas for you.

    I was in France once for Bastille Day. My friend took me to the celebrations at Versailles. They had a beautiful firework display in front of the palace - so the palace was like the backdrop.

    The theme they chose was the evolution of western music. They started out with a classical piece and slowly made their way to the modern stuff. But what was so neat was that the fireworks danced to each type of music so perfectly.

    It was amazing to me that the light display could become music... and not just one type of music... but all the different genres.

    And this brings me to another thought. What if you use the background of the painting to reflect the mood - or use famous sites to symbolize what's happening. The Egyptian Pyramids worked in behind the dying girl somehow? lol... I don't know!

    I hope you let us know what you end up doing - now I'm curious!

    (It's because I'm not an artist that I can so shamelessly suggest!)

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  12. THAT PAINTING IS BEAUTIFUL.
    But really. My grandmother is an artist and she would adore it. Wooooo!

    Ideas. . .
    Maybe you can have a girl *and* flowers central to the painting. And start out monochromatic, maybe with the girl as the only colourful thing and maybe not, and then get brighter?
    This is kind of pretty much what you said. Sorry 'bout that.

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  13. I'm sure you already know of color use, so deep blues together with reds and browns and things while transitioning into pastels would be awesome.. but I think if you're in a class they already explained this to you? I don't know, I don't remember how my dad gave classes.

    But what you need is themes, and you don't want them to be cliche. I think the best way to go about this is by closing your eyes and taking yourself on a journey. We could give you a specific scenario, bt it won't come out right unless it comes from within you. For example:

    Happiness to me is easier expressed in sound. A certain type of sigh. If I were to try and draw it I'd try and reach for that sigh by drawing a hammock at the beach during sunset with the soft crash of the crystalline ocean. But that's ME, maybe it'll work for you, but maybe you get that happy sigh thinking of something else, ya'kno? It's hard for us to help here.

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  14. It's so pretty! I'd love to see the rest of the paintings.

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  15. Hmm, good one. It's really rather hard to display happiness without going the routes of cliches.
    You can either search for really deep meanings in religion or something and symbolise those, or just make it as cliche as possible. Actually dead serious on the latter.
    In the end it's up to you though. If the idea doesn't fit you properly then don't go ahead with it, find a better alternative. Keep searching!

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  16. Maybe play with the textures as well as the colours? So the depression way of starting could have bold scratches out of it, or out of control rough colouring to make it look more out of control. More symbolism to depression? What about using other things as influence- newspapers for example you could use headlines to show some depressing facts of human nature (depending on how depressing you want to be from suicide, murder or unemployment) you could also use happy headlines aswell. I hope that's something different though!

    Good look with the art work ideas, and the de-stressing!

    Ellie-
    www.inspirationbecomesaspiration.blogspot.com

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  17. Sometimes art can be an expression of a vent, don't you think? I love this painting.

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  18. Hmm. Well I don't know how helpful I'll be, but my experience has been that, whether depressed or not, life always has its ups and downs. There're a few main differences though:

    [Random interjection:]Sunflowers! Sunflowers would be highly symbolic![End interjection]

    Our brains usually have better memory for happy or positive events. Depressed people are just the opposite. Because their "typical" state is unhappy, the unhappy memories come back in full force, better remembered than they could ever be otherwise. So you might be able to do something using exaggerated proportions. You know those drawings of the human body where size is in proportion to touch sensors and the lips, hands etc. are huge? Maybe you could do some sort of scene full of happy things where a few, normally "tiny," symbolically "down" items are larger than life, or vice versa... for example, they ashes of a burned down house with an ENORMOUS flower growing out of them!

    Although happy things and sad things can make us happier or sadder, each of us at a specific time will experience a different "baseline happiness level." This is how we feel about life overall, when nothing particularly great and nothing particularly terrible has happened recently. Maybe you could represent this with altitude somehow? I dunno, someone walking lightheartedly on a roof, or perhaps more surrealist, a telephone wire or something?

    Lastly, a depressed perspective can be incredibly skewed. The context of things is usually taken in the worst way possible. Any successes are attributed to pure blind luck, and anything bad is usually seen as entirely the fault of the depressed person. So maybe you could do something with common items looking all... "wrong" somehow? And dark? Bah, these are just my rambling ideas - use them how you will! :)

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  19. In several books I've read (i.e. Blue is for Nightmares, the enola Holmes series, etc.) that lilies are associated with death. Maybe connect that with suicide somehow? Maybe a withered one, with an arm that's covered with scars. I don't know, I'm kind of a clumsy artist. Your drawing up there looks really cool. :]

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  20. 12? How many do you have? Middle of the road is pretty easy, you could do a shadow walking away dropping a flower 'letting go'

    Reflection, looking into a pool concentrating, closed eyes....

    Acceptance? Falling backwards off a cliff into something soft?

    Fear?
    Oh monsters everywhere is best.

    Total and utter awesome sensation? You tell me: What are you most passionate about in life? I love music so wide open mouth with big headphones on with my palms PUSHING THEM INTO MY EARS AS HARD AS POSSIBLE would be my final answer.. more?

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  21. Well I don't exactly know how I can help but I found this website and maybe something might inspire you http://www.ricstultz.com/

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  22. that is weird, maybe you need a break from everything? go on one of those massive 6 month holidays in figi ;)

    check out mine?
    f-a-i-r-y-l-i-g-h-t-s.blogspot.com

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  23. Hmmm how about some websites to help you find inspiration?

    This one was weird but interesting
    http://despainart.com/index.php

    and this one reminded me of you
    http://www.ricstultz.com/

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  24. I don't know if this will help or not, but when I am working on a piece at the end of each when I go and sit in the front room to relax and rejuvenate for the next day ... I put the piece I am working on onto an easel on the coffee table.

    As I am watching the nightly news and other shows I look at the piece, basically study it during commercials and boring parts of "whatever" is on the old TV.

    Somehow, with this process, I manage to "see" where I need to correct and where I think I should go next. It's not an intent study, rather a sporadic study that seems to make an imprint on my mind so that while sleeping I awake with direction.

    Try it, it might work for you to?

    Good luck.

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  25. Im the last person to turn to for art ideas

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