Ryan Trecartin

Holy guacamole. This guy is out there and weird. Trying to portray young adolescences in a way that society mostly perceives them as mostly none informant and waste of annoying time and resources. They hardly contribute anything useful in terms of art and intellect as they are self focused with their looks, personality, characteristics and how they portray themselves. Unfortunately this message seems to be mistaken as they think they are interesting, mature and highly intelligent with opinion that they believe have more input than what they actually do. Ryan captures this in a creative way of video's, His voice is pitched when he speaks as a girl into an annoying high tonal of Valley girl accent.  He overemphasizes the use of make up by painting his face in vibrant bright colours which informs us that girls at such a young age are wearing too much make up and this is how they really look, annoying and immature unable to grasp the concept of too much. This is a  response to his video I-be-Area.

Overall as an artist he tries to portray many different characters using dialects and accents with the use of paint face make up and wigs. Initially within these videos is a 'compu-pop poetry' which is a brief way of understanding their 'Chronic-over existence'.

Visually his camera isn't a set tripod or anything, it's hand held and this is seen through the jumpy scenes and constant movement we see in the frame not just from the characters but the background as well. This actually works well with the image he's attempting you know, these young females are so focused on themselves they cant even learn how to establish a well set video by having a tripod so the scenes aren't jumpy and erratic.

This is interesting in a way where I could try and think of a perspective on what to do with my art. What is the main purpose of mine? Is it like Ryan to send out a message of backward thinking materialistic teenagers who provide nothing informant in the digital media exploration? Vintage for example, a message I could portray in my artwork is to re-invent the image of vintage using contemporary items such as the recent fashions, current hobbies etc and apply my Photoshop skills and create a vintage image of something current. 

Bill Viola

A contemporary video artist, whom uses electronic, sounds, and image technology in his New Media to show his expressions. Focusing on birth death and aspects of the consciousnesses claiming these to be the fundamental human experiences. The artworks seem rather confronting with the natural and raw human emotions displayed depending in different scenes. Particularly his "acceptance" work is at the beginning daunting, you see this outline of a human shape in a darkened shot but the body is kind of illuminated in an alien glow of some form. At first it looks like grains of sparkle sand are coming off the body, giving a fading withering look accompanied by the despair of emotion on the face but slowly as the body moves it is seen that water is cascading off the body. The camera changes it's direction slightly for a different angle. All in all it was a rather query experience. Not typically inclined to watch art of this form but it is interesting to see the different ways of how they have captured the human emotions through video art, and the sound? Like a soft waterfall gave it background noise that accompanied the image. Everything worked well together and nothing was in anyway at all outstanding or vibrant, more subtle with raw emotion complimented with visual effects and sound effects.

His use of adding sounds to his art could be an idea I could include in my artworks, for example if I were to go through with my vintage idea's I could research the sounds and melodies of the vintage era, such as violins and piano's are an excellent sound representation of vintage, and apply this to my artworks. Could conduct a whole slideshow of vintage images with piano's/violin's as a background noise to connect the theme together or complement the images.

The fact he has a focus of birth death and consciousness makes me wonder what my focus is/could/should be. I know I am interested in incorporating the idea of vintage but could my focus be something like every day house hold items? Candles? Cars? Gardens? Or could it be something simplistic like a general questions such as  "What goes boom?", "Culture", "Coffee, tea and books".

The current themes in Australia are Elections, Education and Foreign affairs. So no Bill does not engage with current Australian themes, but alas do I want to engage with Australian themes or go to a more globally spread theme which when you wonder what the current themes are ranges from different people in different settings. Some would say Global warming is a current theme, or third world countries, poverty, gangs, death etc. I think I want to narrow my theme to an Australian one, something to address to, maybe in terms of education seeing as I am studying to be a teacher.

Brushwork

So I like to start with a blank canvas sometimes and then add brushes to create an image or artwork. Sometimes the blank canvas will be white or black because I like to keep it neutral at first and then add detail but selecting either vibrant or subtle colours. Or I work through stages of colour, such as beginning with primary colours, then secondary and depending if it needs more I'll had the tertiary colours. There's no set way I do any of this work I just begin , and play around with what look good, or dynamic, or exciting and awesome, shocking, I tend to like my artwork exhibit some form of emotion reaction from the viewer.

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Final Product

The above images I forgot to save periodically as I worked through them. Basically I started with a dark blue water wave brush, followed by a green and then a red. Between these I added a purple and an aqua, I didn't want to have to many contrasting colours or bright yellow colours for it would create a stupid rainbow gradient type image and those are annoying and repetitive. The next phase of action I added some black lightning brushes along the top of the image to show the lightning striking down at the water. This created an image of action that the lightning thus caused the water reaction of waves. I chose black as a neutral colour again so I didn't apply to much differentiation. 

I was looking at applying a gradient over the image to see what effects it would or if it would create a better image. The first one was a black and white one which looked dull, I wanted a stand out colour. So there was either green and purple, orange and yellow and then three sorts of colour gradients. Doing the 3 different colour gradients didn't look to grand and rather kind of downgraded the initial image and gave a sense of confusion. Typically there are two elements used in this picture, lightning and water, so for it to look complimenting and effective to it's image I decided to stick with two colours to counter balance this. I chose orange and yellow because they aren't generally associated with water and lightning, and it gives it a rather shocking vibrant look.

Print.Edit.Upload.Edit?

This blog is going to contain images that I have selected to print, and then edit using contemporary art materials such as pen, pencil, texta, chalk, watercolours etc.

The first image is one one I found from my sister. She took the first image herself, I printed the photo wrote some interesting dialogue, drew a hand gesture in texta and drew some different facial features, at first the feautres were done in a purple pen, then a thicker black pen and finally a texta. I drew flame outlines in the corners and then started chucking abstract lines all over the image. It looks pretty dramatic with the plain overdrawing. Kinda stands out with the contrast of dark brash texta black on a sepia tone image.

The above image is a photo of my Idol P!nk, Alecia Moore. I specifically chose a black and white photo so that I could chose a more colourful textile to use on the photo. I chose chalk, and coloured her white blonde hair with purple her lips as well, her shoulder tattoo is orange and her dress has been coloured in green, The background I originally did a an oddshapped sun in the corner but bkurred and smudged it out as I didn't like how it looked (childish and pathetic) I wanted to chuck in some lightning to give it an elemental look and though lightning was outstanding, particularly a bright vivid blue. All of the colours were chosen keeping in mind I wanted highlighted colours that would stand out not subtle soft colours that would blend in. I also chose colours keeping in mind I didn't particularly want them to harmonize with one another more or less standout together.

Quote Posters

Playing around with some brushes on Photoshop I created some posters with quotes.
DISCLAIMER: I DO NOT OWN THE QUOTES, only the background image they are printed on.

           




They have a basic plain white background. The left side one is using a red painted brush with the brush set of glossy and non glossy blood splatters, the one on the right is using smoke wisps again in red. The quotes are used in black italics.
The chosen brush sets were due to the relationship it posed with the quotes and that they related. In the first quote it starts with 'Blood' and therefore I found that it would be visually dynamic to use blood splatters for effect, using red just made it seem more 'realistic'. It offers a more real physical confrontation using the blood splatters that can cause effect on the viewer more or less shock at the image.
The chosen brush set for the second quote related in a way where as I look and view dreams as real things that you can't grasp. Wether physically or mentally, it's hard to catch and understand and figure out this enigmatic thing we are having. Perhaps though I should have used a different colour than red, maybe a purple. Purple could have encapsulated the idea notion of intrigue and different, set out aside the normalcy notions and benign the creative ideologies.
I chose the texts to be written in black due to the colour composition, I already had a neutral background used a vibrant colour to exemplify the image and needed a nuetral colour to signpost the quote. This was to create a balanced and effective poster. Balanced by two neutral colours and effective with one vibrant colour to exemplify the message.

Poster Pop Art

 The first image is the original photo I took of my friend. I was careful in making sure there was no background interference because I knew from previous experience that it is quite difficult using the technique to select just the face and delete the back ground so that it is a somewhat clean way of editing the image into poster. Once I had satisfactorily gotten the part of the photo that I wanted and had a clear background I was free to use the 'Posterize' filter on photoshop. I was shocked how effective it worked. Afterwards I applied another filter called 'postcard' or photocopy. The result is the black outlined image of my friend, after that it was just a matter of ease by applying a paint black to change the colour from black to red yellow and blue.
I think if I managed to collage the photo's together I could create a re-enactment of a poster pop art of my friend inspired by Marylin Munroe.  It's quite dramatic in tone with the vibrant primary colours, the shape remains organic to human standard,there is quite alot of negative space but this is the effect I was hoping to achieve as the main focal point is the face and the poster details of the human features such as the eyes and eyebrows, nose, cheeks, mouth and teeth as well as the chin.

Vintage

Vintage is a style I have immersed myself in. The colours, the high quality in an old fashioned way, like a history of style, photography, fashion, art etc.To me vintage is considered between the years of early 19th century to roughly about 1940 or 50, before "flower power" fashion came into being. The bright vivid colours that clashed against one another does not inspire or interest me, in fact everytime I see some combination (Besides Pop Art) of the "flower power" era I am more inclined to turn away.

The above image is a vintage one due to the diluted colours into a more sepia tone. It's sleek and subdued colours give it the 'vintage' look I desire. Not to mention the use of an old fashioned camera references that vintage desire. TO achieve a vintage look in photography I like to use the contrast change of turning an original image and transform it into a sepia tone. Sometimes I use black and white but alas I feel that is more inclined to the classical 18th century where their camera's only did take black and white photo's. Sepia was the slight colour gradual shift in technology before they discovered/created the way to take colourful photo's.

The 3 selected images are of my own collection when I did a photoshoot of a couple before she was due to give birth to their baby. Anyway the point I chose them was to show the contrasting differences between the three and how I classify each to a certain style era etc. The first one is a more contemporary colourful image taken with a digital camera, you can see the colours clearly and brightly with detail to show. The next image was edited using a contrast technique and applying a tonal change to sepia, sepia - a reddish brown colour, this has effectively given it a quintessential feel for he original image transforming it into a more vintage representation. The final image the was again edited using a photographic technic of applying a black and white tonal filter change, this has given it the more classical look but due to the surrounding environment and brightness of the sun does not successfully portray the classic old fashioned image of black and white photography. I'm interested in doing a series of works that take every day normal photo's using the contemporary digital camera and editing them into a more vintage style to represent the early 19th century. The subjects could range from any number of things, such as classic Australian icons that are popular to this day ( Vegemite, Beer, Esky, Tool box, Clothes line etc) or contemporary hobbies and activities like going to the beach, riding a motorbike (Preferably dirtbike) Or even just siting at a computer, laptop playing games, playing with a digital electronic device the possibilities are endless. Using photo editing though I'll apply a bit of contrast and change the tone to sepia to visualize the vintage look and create a contemporary image to reinterpret an earlier century. Or to re-interpret it again I could take a photo of a classical vintage image and apply a editor that brings colour back into it. Or could just re-create the scene in modernization and leave it in digital colour and put the photo's next to eachother to show the difference in visualization. I have researched 'culture' of the 1920's to represent my vintage idea, during the 1920's it was post world war 1 and there was a feeling of celebration.  1920 Culture