iMedia: Photo realistic Portraits, Alyssa Monks

Throughout my whole painting and art career photo realism has been my goal. These paintings absolute amaze me. The ability to recreate a photo from scratch in such detail that people question which is the actual photo, fascinates me. Before writing this blog I went searching for photo realistic art and found this artist. Alyssa Monks. In about five seconds, I fell in love. Her art is so realistic, every single highlight is correcting placed. Every pore on a persons skin. These are only three of her works, but they continue. 

http://www.amusingplanet.com/2010/03/incredibly-photorealistic-paintings-by.html

Look at them, they're pretty remarkable. 

Being able to make such work takes lots of practice and years of failure. I am still an am-mature, yet I hope to one day be able to create huge pieces that people question. I want to hear people walk by and say, "Is that a photograph?!" and then be astounded when they walk up close and see the brush strokes. 

Oil realism is only one type of art that is able to be recreated like a photo. There are many others, you just have to sit down and search. 

Bic Ball-point pen

Scratch board and ink

Colored Pencil

P.s. After writing this I went and searched more to find photos of other types of realistic art and found that Alyssa Monks was the artist that shocked me so much at Art Chicago. Last year on a field trip we went to art Chicago and there was a painting, huge, took up the whole wall and I stood, mouth wide open and couldn't believe my eyes that it was really oil paint. This was it.

Carry it forward: Shadow Catcher

The novel, Shadow Catcher, carried the belief of Complexity throughout the novel. This made me think about the complexity in our 21st century lives which also connected to our sculpture project. We never really realize how complex our lives really are, and why they are so. The book made me think about why our lives are so complex. I came up with a list

• School, which includes class work, homework, and supplementary projects
• Work, takes time away from school work making that take much longer
• Art, also part of school but is always put into last place, taking the only free time I have left
• Parents, they need attention too and when we are parents we will crave that attention as well
• Boyfriend, and friends all crave attention. Yet, going out with them is partially for us as well because we we were not able to do so we would go crazy.

These are the major things that fill my life and i often get caught up in all these things. After reading Shadow Catcher and understanding that I am not the only super complex being out there, I've got a plan. 

I'm, going to try and plan my day a little better. Setting time aside so that I will able to give time to my parents, boy friend and friends, and still have some time for myself.

My trusty assignment notebook will finally be used!

Overall, realizing why our lives are as complex as they are and seeing that we are not the only crazy ones in this world; definitely eases the soul. I will carry this new found idea into the future by planning more and trying to rid myself of at least a little complexity. Slow my hectic life down a little, oh! and, SLEEP! 

Metacognition: QE Essay

Throughout the time I spent writing this essay, I noticed my usual thinking process come into my head. I started to use my usual metaphors and type all at one time. This time, it didn't fail me. My metaphors kept flowing in and they created a much more interesting read.
Even though the metaphors helped, I think the thing that was best about my essay was the paragraph about my painting. It definitely related only to me and set a voice of individuality to the essay. I struggled throughout the whole essay to try to make my "from my voice" and in that paragraph I felt that I succeeded the most. Not even was I able to illustrate the situation from a linguistic point of view, but I was also able to visually show what I was talking about by adding a picture.
Overall I think the essay turned out as a success, only thing I struggled most with was transitions. For some reason my brain likes to come up with metaphors yet when it comes to transitioning from one paragraph to the other- it reaches a blank. Poor brain, hitting its head against the wall. I think even looking through transitions that people use will help, yet sitting down and looking at those is going to be hard. Procrastination! Gets us teenagers every time. I will try to sit down and search the internet for some good transitions to wow you in my new essay.

Blogging Around

Garret B- Metacognition-Blog

I find it really interesting the way you wrote this blog. You definitely didn't stick to the generic student, you can hear your voice in all this and we can see your view on the subject of blogs. I agree with you that this is just a blog and you can take it any way you want, definitely a lot of what we do is like that and so therefore its hard to grade. Dude, keep it up, you write really well. Stick is to the man! haha

Desiree G- Change in mind- Keith Haring

Being into art myself I think its awesome how different people look at the same thing. You see so much movement in his work when I see just colors and patterns. Both of us look at art in appreciation but we appreciate different things. It's awesome to read about your view and contrast it to mine.

Metacognition: QE Essay

Throughout all of the essays I have written I have always noticed that I write better when it's in one sitting. I get all of my thought out right away and then edit them later. Most times I don't even need to edit. The thoughts are down the way they're supposed to, only thing is that I forget spelling and grammar.

Spelling and Grammar have always been my mistakes. When writing free hand- I am very good at spelling; when it comes to computers, the keys get all jumbled up and I forget to fix typing mistakes.

Another mistake that comes with typing in one sitting is awkward grammar. When continuously typing I start to just put down my thoughts, which are often jumbled and weirdly written. That is why, I can understand them yet others can not.

I've always been amazed with being able to write well with out trying. English is not my first language yet for some strange reason, it flows well for me. I am able to write down what I am thinking in interesting ways and make them memorable. Another thing I've been gifted with is writing titles!  Titles have always been my favorite, being able to catch people by just a few words always intrigued me to write better titles. Hopefully you will see some of them throughout this year!

Best of Week: Emotion

At the end of the week this week, our class talked more about creativity and what guide lines help in creating the best thing we can. One of the biggest things that struck me was something I had already known but needed to be told. I always knew in the back of my head that Emotion was a very big factor in making people interested in your work, but being told this made things a lot clearer.

Emotion appeals to everyone. Creating something with feeling makes people look at your work closer and actually relate to it. Playing with people's emotions makes them think about your work even after they are done looking at it. When art of any kind is made just because then people don't stop and think. They pass it by just like any other thing.

In the article "The Sea of information" the author talked about  research not being enough to catch peoples attention. I always think of art as painting or drawing but in this situation, the art of writing is the best thing to compare to. We learned this week about college essays and how to write them. Research about yourself is not enough for the college admins to look at your essay and remember it. That is why we need to involve emotion in our writing. Make it memorable to only us because no one sees or feels a certain situation just like you.

Everyone is different yet everyone has emotions, no matter which emotion a person triggers with their art, it will be a lot more memorable than just a long line of information.

Connection: Farnsworth and AP Art Hearts of Glenview

This week in AP Art we were given an assignment, make a heart for Hearts of Glenview. We were all supposed to work together and make two sides of the heart. Right away there were people who took the leadership role and tried to boss others around. We saw how hard it was for a group of people to work on a single project together, all mutually adding to the final product.

There was one person from our group who tried to take the main leadership role. She came up with the idea and told us where each of us was going to draw. Even though every person contributed to the idea and the placement of the drawings- she wanted full credit.

This reminds me of Farnsworth. He was the first to make a television camera yet wanted full credit for the invention of television. He did not understand that many people were involved in this invention and that his addition to it was only the beginning. Not getting his full credit- he died down and started to destroy himself instead of finally collaborating with the rest of the inventors; thankfully, our "Farnsworth" decided to join us. She figured out that we were all working on this project and stuck to doing just her part.

We see this type of behavior very often with projects in and out of school. Most class projects involve a main leader and people who sit back and watch the project develop. The leaders tend to want most credit, if not all, because they started off the process. Things don't work this way. A group is a group and each person gets recognition, no matter how small their contribution was.

The article about Farnsworth definitely shone a different light on how I look at these leaders. I never understood how they thought and why it was that they wanted full credit for only doing a part of the work. I am a leader at times and seeing now from my Art friend and this article, how people look at the people who want full credit for a group work- I will be more careful about my reaction to the product. I'll try to give each person their recognition and not hog the credit.

Hearts of Glenview Examples