Cyanotype Series

thinking about:

- composition

- shape

- line

- human body as a form

Formal Elements

The formal elements of art, also called the visual elements, are the basic units and the means artists use to create and design works of art.

Some formal elements are point, line, shape, space, value (light and dark), color and texture. With these simple elements an artist can create whole worlds of visual experience.

Formal elements of painting

Formal elements of painting:

In painting, the formal elements are composition, space and color. The elements used in creating pictures are mark, line, shape, color, value, texture, and space (the pictorial elements). These are described in more detail below. The pictorial principles, which will be in the next Design page, are balance, contrast, harmony, emphasis, movement, proportion, variety, and unity. Artists may concentrate on some of these elements and principles more than others.

Some of the main design functions include: 1) leading the viewer's eye around and through the painting (and not out of it); 2) stabilizing the composition with checks and balances, neutralizing of elements; 3) directional movement created by elements; 4) considering the total space (positive and negative). Some of the ingredients include: 1) the linear structure of forms, that is, the underlying geometric structure of objects, like the rectangles and cubes, and vertical, horizontal and diagonal lines involved in tables, buildings, chairs, etc.; 2) viewpoint - either with 2-point linear perspective, atmospheric perspective, or a contemporary "flat" image; 3) straight lines and curves (types of curves include linear, gestural, baroque, organic, biomorphic); 4) structural geometric forms used as underlying compositional elements to stabilize the composition, such as a triangle, or the upside-down 'Y' structure of Illustration 1.

Source:
http://www.ndoylefineart.com/design4.html

Blue Figures

During 1952, one of Matisse's most prolific late years, he created many ambitious paper cutouts, among them the presentBlue Nude. Facing front with arms raised and breasts projecting sideways, the pose recalls various standing odalisques from his Nice period of the 1920s. The simple but effective composition is built up from six disjointed pieces of blue painted paper that seem suspended in space. It represents one of a dozen or so variations on the theme that Matisse created over a period of several months. That same year, his cutouts culminated in the production ofThe Swimming Pool(Museum of Modern Art, New York), a gigantic, dynamic composition with multiple figures.

The paper cutouts, prepainted with blue gouache, synthesized the intrinsic qualities of both painting and drawing—form, color, and line—and allowed the artist "to draw in paper," as he described it. This new idiom, which he had used for the first time in 1931 (while developing his large compositionDancefor Dr. Albert C. Barnes), enabled him to create images in which form and outline were inseparable. During his final years, when illness left him bedridden, the cutouts became virtually his only means of expression, still exuding the master's undiminished inventiveness and creativity.

"The Swimming Pool"
Commenting on The Swimming Pool, his largest cutout, Matisse said, "I have always adored the sea, and now that I can no longer go for a swim, I have surrounded myself with it." Indeed, this nearly fifty-four-foot-long frieze of blue bathers silhouetted against a white rectangular band was designed to adorn the walls of Matisse's dining room at the Hôtel Régina in Nice. At the time of its creation, the artist was restricted to his bed or to a wheelchair, and he conjured this lyrical depiction of the natural world for his personal enjoyment.
Read from right to left, beginning and ending with a representation of a starfish, the contours of the diving or swimming forms eventually dissolve until the blue shapes define the splashing water and the negative white space represents the abstract figures. In a dynamic interplay with the background support, each bather flows rhythmically into the next, sometimes breaking free of the horizontal band in a graceful arabesque. Matisse combines contrasting viewing angles—from above looking down into the water or sideways as if from in the water—so that the different postures of the figures themselves determine the composition as a whole. With this spirited yet serene aquatic imagery, the artist brings to brilliant culmination his career-long desire to create an idealized environment.
Source:Henri Matisse: Blue Nude (2002.456.58) | Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History | The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Source:Henri Matisse: Blue Nude (2002.456.58) | Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History | The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Airport fieldtrip

mmmmmmm the airport :) such a feel good place for me :)
i love the feeling of going somewhere...
the packing of the luggage...
movement

Being inside the airplane (during cleaning time) felt so great! Totally made me want to travel again.

BEING inside the airplane to go somewhere is one of the great parts of a trip for me. To some people it’s the getting there. For me its equally both.
I don’t know being in an airplane makes me forget the world under me a little bit, all its troubles, all the worries I could have, and just…relax with my airplane soda, peanuts, and in flight movie ☺ sounds cheesy but it’s sweet serenity and a true break. Lol it’s as if I could just spend the whole trip in an airplane and I’d be good with calling that a vacation lol… not really yall… but in the fictional world…

Overview of class critique of "Come Play with Me" (images on previous posts)

Response, overview, and thoughts about class crit of my series "Come Play with Me" (Miniatures)

So I think I can say crit didnt go really well...but at the same time I say that, I feel I'm being hard headed because
it wasn't necessarily a "bad" crit...it was just a crit where people didnt just like what I'm doing. Instead, I felt alot of oposition and suggestions of changes. At the same time I know that misunderstanding or not undertanding can be misstaken as opposition. Sometimes people just dont know what to say, and when you present work that is not finished yet, people dont really know what to say, and the UNFINISHED aspect of the project leaves a loooooot of room for other people to implement their ideas. Naturally, I suppose.

So what was said?
That the toys didnt look played with enough.
That they looked just taken out of a box.
That they dont look like they are something that little kids would play with.
What else...
That they looked out of place

Which is funny because now that I'm looking at what was said, I have an answer for each of the claims that
makes perfect sense to me...
"That the toys didnt look played with enought" - I personally was a very neat kid now that I remember. My playtime
was impecable, my Barbie dolls were always dressed, and everything was in place pretty much. I think that comment
came from personal experience of my class mates...I'm guessing they were messy kids.
"That they looked just taken out of a box" - That one I can almost agree, but dont see the problem. The furniture I used
were ones I had from 7 years ago, so they came from a box once yes. I'm thinking that if I had used antique doll house furniture, i wouldnt have had a problem.
"That they dont look like they are something that kids play with" - That statement was just purely made from someone's personal experience and not all kids are the same! I was FASCINATED with beautiful miniature furniture when I was 7, so I shouldnt take this statement as the complete truth
"That they looked out of place" - THAT WAS THE POINT. Really. The point, besides other points, was to catch the viewer off guard and make them say - "wait a minute, is that a chair besides a leaf??? what the heck??? or - aw thats adorable! " or whatever else they say out of amuzement

Part of the reason I feel my crit went the way it did is because I wasnt ready to explain it the best and truest way possible simply because this project is in its beginning phases. It really is in its baby stage...more like the gestation phase...fetus stage? yea sure anyways!

...I dont know it's like - after my first individual meeting with another professor, i felt my original intent shifting and I want to say it's because of what I talked about with her. I'm too much of a sponge! She mentioned several things and it deviated me from what i was thinking about at first....

which is kind of why I want to put this project away a little bit
to let my original intent with the Miniatures project come back to me.

Ideas from over the Christmas Break

So today I began remembering a few Video ideas I had over the Christmas break, that somehow escaped my mind until now.

Idea 1 - Stop motion - about the reasons/fears behind a few of my O.C.D. habits
- such as the fear/dread of causing:
*the bathroom to flood
*spilling coffee/hot chocolate on wood/carpet floor
*fires due to heat from electronics (laptops, etc)
Video details:
- using yarn and different types of paper, I would stop motion a scene illustrating the fears happening
- the disaster would occur with the yarn and paper
- the setting would be real places where these disaster would hypothetically happen
- Going for whimsical *NOT realism*

sooooooo for the scene of the bathroom flooding I would have blue yarn coming out of the faucet and "spilling" out of the sink onto the floor
and I want to go for whimsical, so the yarn will form "designy" swirls on the floor

*Example photographs coming soon*


Idea 2 - Stop motion - Stuffed animal Love Story

- Stuffed animal love story concerning a pig and a frog
- Dialogue will happen through passing notes, since they can't talk
* will rely on body movement for dialogue **similar to Wall-E
- Setting: My room
Possible plot 1:
- Pig and frog are sitting across the room from each other
- Frog sees pig
and they wave at each other
- they pass notes by making them into paper airplanes
What are they going to talk about? Is the frog going to ask the pig out to icecream?
or are they going to talk about love and try to figure out what it is?
****are they going to talk about love as something they hear about from the human world and try to figure out
what it is? ***** I like that idea. They can begin the conversation through notes, then look it up in an encyclopedia,
then a love story book, then they watch a classic love movie together, and in the end
while watching the movie they acidentaly touch each other's hand, the frog looks into the pig's eyes,
and the story ends with them watching the movie with a hint that they will be together, accepting love

...did all of this sound really cheesy or what?
but at the same time I want to pursue this idea ... what's cuter than stuffed animals in love?


gosh I've just realized how awkward it is to try to describe video through writing.
I feel like I dont know where to start in my attempt to describe what I see in my head,
and I try to be to the point and end up feeling like I'm being too proper and at the same time
dont want to sound like a child, you know what I mean?

I often feel that visual ideas cant truly be explained through writing or talking about them...
I guess all us creators/artists/visual people feel this at times...
it's like there's nothing better to explain an idea than just simply seeing it done in front of you
That's why sometimes I dont like talking about a project idea because i know that whatever i say about it
will be different than how it truly looks in my head, and the person i tell it to will also distort it in their mind due to
the baggage they carry from whatever happened in their life ...well, and simply because we all think differently , with imaginations that work differently
...and it's crazy, my ideas always seem to change slightly or immensely when I talk about art project ideas with people...
which is really why i prefer to do and show before talking about a project idea
...which makes individual meetings with professors sort of hard
buuuuuuuut I'm getting better at holding more firmly to original ideas this semester, trying them first before incorporating
other opinions so that projects dont take whole 360 turns before they are even started


over and out

Video Piece - Drawn Sketchbook Animation

Animation Test 1

Test 1 from Thais Verissimo on Vimeo.

Animation Test -1
-Possible Introduction -

Plot:
Girl dreams of wearing numerous shoes in one lifetime:
cake designer, food photographer, yoga instructor, high school professor, world traveler

This animation will happen on the pages of a Japanese Moleskin (in which pages are all attached and unravel out together when they are pulled out of the Moleskin)
I'm planning on including - drawn animation, cut-out animation, and pop-up book effects

New Project - "Come Play with Me" *title still on the drawing board*

So these are some of the first test shots to a new project currently being called "Come Play with Me". How do I begin to talk about it? is a question I often face when a new project arrises since new ideas tend to evolve quickly in the beginning in a very short time. Perhaps I'll begin by the beginning...in a land far away :) called the University of Houston. No but really.

It all began last semester, after learning about a photographer who would gather and keep things in his backyard only to much later know how to use them. Afterwards, I was walking around the UH campus and I passed by a tree with branches sprouting out in a V, with a nest in the space between the two branches...I then thought of a student who made miniature furniture out of twigs for a class project...which brought my mind to a box in my closet full of miniature dollhouse furniture that was just stacked away gathering dust. I almost threw it out but I knew it would come to use someday , just didnt know how. Then it hit me. I knew exactly what I wanted to do. I wanted to take the little furniture, place them in trees where birds would build nests and by roots of trees and then leave the furniture there to give pedestrians a surreal experience on a monotonous day.

Afterwards, when school began, I spoke to a professor and we talked about imagination, playing pretend, the definition of home, and stories of elves and gnomes - basically fictional creatures that live in the woods...and how they would use the furniture and what they would make with it with even a minute of wondering what would an elf make? We also touched upon Buddhist philosophy of coexisting with nature and the question of - do I want to lead my viewers somewhere, or do I want to let them wander where their minds want to go.

________________________________________________

Yesterday's thoughts during test shots:

I want to leave an open door my viewers' minds to "play" while viewing my images.

I want to invite their imaginations to run free and play pretend with me

...to maybe make their own stories of what kinds of creatures are living around the furniture at the roots of these trees, in between the clovers and leaves

We forget how to play pretend when we grow up.

Now is your opportunity to do so.

* I think it's important for me to keep things simple on this project.

I feel that the "Less is More" philosophy is a must

otherwise I'll be force feeding the audience.

I'll be feeding them too much.

I feel more would make this project cheesy and more would take away from the magic and "mystical-ness" of the images.

Ambiguity is the key most of the time so if I dont give the viewer everything, they will have room to add their own things... which would make my intention successful (of inviting/allowing the viewer to play pretend / let their imaginations bloom and create stories/things)

Response to: Field trip

http://fswphotography.com/

This week photographer Frank White was gracious enough to allow our Digital Photography class into his studio and home to share with us a little bit of the life and working space of a commercial photographer.
Honestly, compared to so many people I've heard speak, Frank was the most honest person I've heard so far. Sure sugar coating makes life seem more cheery but a good dose of "this is how life out there really is" is always a good wake up call. *So thank you Frank*
Surprisingly, plenty of people didn't think the same. But opinions are opinions and there you go

For me personally it was a really good eye opener into the photography world of today. I had this illusion that I would graduate, quickly get a food photography *commercial* job afterwards and pay off my school loans in a jiff. Jiff? anyways...
yea so i thought it would be a breeze, but Frank really made me realized that alot of work is necessary to get there and that a business attitude is totally necessary + networking + a good business card + the really important - selling yourself.
Being a strong presence basically.
Doing well in class projects is not all it takes and we cant just count on doing that and only printing photos to have a decent life after graduation...
afterall, surviving just on your art is really tough
and i just dont understand how so many people think they can just do that after graduation while being so against commercial photographers. Hello - they have a house and money to buy expensive cameras. If you tell me you seriously dont want that then well I dont know what to say
* Trying not to sound hateful * I just really dont understand this opposition to a paycheck. I mean if we all lived in the mountains like Monks then sure ok i get it , but we live in a society where money = food, housing, and clothing
...right? unless we convert back to trading

So anyways
Go Frank you rock you're an inspiration and an example of where hard work can get you