a) Explain the importance of process and planning in determining your final product.
When creating my final art piece, I started off by making sketches of what I wanted my end result to look like. This was very helpful because it acted as my road map for creating my piece. Since I had a final image in mind, I could look at which things needed to be done first, in the background, and how they could best be completed to create a good overall look. I thought that planning was very important because later on, it allowed me just to execute my plan instead of having to think about what I wanted to do next and this saved me a lot of time.
b) Explain how you have incorporated into this project materials and expressive qualities of artworks studied.
I have incorporated materials and expressive qualities of various artworks and styles that we have studied in this course into my piece. The materials I used that we had previously studied were paint, painting cut-outs, and lead pencil. I used paint for the background of my piece and the less detailed parts of the foreground. The painting cut-outs formed a tree in the foreground and the lead pencil drawing was the man, the focal point of my piece. The expressive qualities I used that I had used before were colour schemes, creating an illusion of depth, and the stylistic techniques of Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso. I used the colour schemes mainly in the painting aspect of my piece. Depth techniques were incorporated into my piece with the lead pencil drawing and background painting. I used the stylistic techniques of Picasso when creating the flying birds and I used Matisse's techniques in the tree situated in the foreground.
c) How did you overcome design and construction challenges in the creation of this art object?
When creating my piece, I certainly had to face design challenges, but not construction challenges because my piece was not 3-D. The challenges I faced include not being able to stamp the image of the flying bird and having difficulty getting the painted grass to look the way that I wanted it to. I wanted to use a stamping technique to get the same bird shape in different places. I thought I could do this by painting a bird shape onto a palette and then pressing the palette onto different places of the painting. This didn't work. I overcame this challenge by cutting an original bird shape out of coloured paper and then tracing this bird to get shapes that would all be the same. My other trouble was getting the hues of the paint to be uniform throughout a section. For example, I wanted the front hill to be all the same green colour and that was very difficult to achieve. I solved this problem by spending lots of time on this section and looking it over again and again to ensure that everything was the same throughout.
d) How have you used materials, tools, and processes creatively in this studio activity?
I used the materials and tools I was presented most creatively in the note that has the lyrics of the poem and the paper line that separates the foreground and background. In both cases, I used paper in a way that it was not necessarily intended. Most people used the paper either for collages or to act as the colour for section of their piece. I thought that some of the handmade paper looked like very old and well-used letter paper, so I imagined that it would be very interesting to write my poem on the paper instead of directly onto the paint as was originally planned. The black Mayfair separator also was very abnormal. When I was painting the background and foreground grass, they looked very similar except for their texture. Since they were so similar, I decided that I needed to put something in place to distinguish between the two.
Since paint wouldn't really separate paint, I decided paper was a good option because it was identical throughout and was a different material than both the foreground and background. In the end, both of these uses turned out great and I am happy with my decisions.
e) What sources have you used in your research for this project?
The only resources I have used in this project are the various pictures I looked at on the internet to find out if grass is lighter or darker in the distance.
f) What role did your first drawings play in the final product?
My original drawings were very close to the final product. Only a few minor changes were made, such as having grass on the left side of the river and having a caged bird in the distance. The fact that my drawings were so close to my final product helped me out a lot because as I mentioned earlier, my drawings acted as a road map and I could always refer to them to determine what I should do next. The role the original drawings played allowed me to achieve my final project sooner than if I hadn't planned it out.
g) What colour scheme (complimentary, analogous, monochromatic) did you choose and how did you make it work to create contrast?
I used an analogous colour scheme in my piece. I used mainly green, yellow and blue in my piece and these colours are all beside each other on the colour wheel (not counting tertiary colours). I got contrast from these colours by using dark values directly beside light values. For example, I used the bright yellow colour for the sun up against the dark blue of the ocean.
h) Explain the two stylistic techniques of Matisse, Picasso, or Cornell that you developed in piece and why?
In my piece, I used Matisse's painting cut-out technique to create a tree in the foreground and Picasso's style in the flying birds. For Matisse's style, I painted half of a separate piece of paper green and the other half brown and then cut out simplified tree shapes from these two halves. I then used white glue to attach these shapes to my piece. To replicate Picasso's style, I made the bird shapes very angled and irregular when I drew the original bird drawing. I chose to use these techniques because I thought a tree should be very simple and a bird very angled to show speed. Since these are the main values of Matisse and Picasso respectively, I thought that they would be good opportunities to use the stylistic techniques that were required for this piece.
i) In what way does the unique combination of features in your composition suggest new meanings or ideas?
I add new ideas to the poem "I know why the caged bird sings" with the two caged birds singing to each other from a distance, the man sitting at the bottom of the hill, and the quick birds soaring around the foreground. I tried to suggest that the poem is about keeping birds and other animals in captivity. Also, my piece suggests that a man is going around catching birds and that is why there are two caged birds singing to each other. As well, other free birds are visible in the piece to show that he will keep on catching birds. My take on the poem is that it is spoken by someone who catches birds and they are saying that they realize the birds don’t like being caged, but the person needs to catch them to make a living; they are stuck between a rock and a hard place. I tried to show this meaning in my art piece.
