Arts: Modigliani-Style Self Portriat

Modigliani-Style - Rexican Italian Detective Rex

of Another Timeline in His 30s

In this project, we did the bibliography of three artists. They were Pablo Picasso, Paul Klee, and Amedeo Modigliani. All of them has their own special style with their own elements.

Along with each bibliography, we were asked to copy one drawing / painting of the artist.

Afterwards, we were to pick one artist and draw 3 self-portraits draw a sketch modifying a painting of his and using his style. I chose to modify Amedeo Modigliani's drawing. It might have been interesting, fun, and creative to modify one of Picasso's drawings. However, I thought I wanted to do something different from what many of the others have chosen. Perhaps risk-taking is about trying something new instead of something different. Perhaps I will try something new the next time. Though it was still fun to modify Modigliani's drawing with the long necks of his style.

Then, we pick one of the three sketches and use it for our final drawing. I first carefully outlined the body from my sketch to the A3 sized paper with care and detail to the proportions. Then, I outlined the shape of the head and went on to the hat. I went back later to finish my face with some changes from my sketch. With many tries and erasing, I finished it. Next, I used crayons to colour the self-portrait in with sharp colours, with multiple blending of colours (yellow, peach, white for skin. Blue brown for moustache).

This was a fun project, which not only involved modifying the drawing, but the general style of an artist.

Reflection: Rex's "Dürer's Mum" Drawing

I chose to draw this art, which is the mother of Dürer because before I seldom tried to sketch or paint a face of a person or living beings before, and when I did, I give up because it's too hard and sometimes I just fail. Therefore, I chose to do it, because I want to challenge myself and I can have some assistant of my teacher when I do it as a class project. On general, I think I did pretty well because it looks quite like the original drawing, and it looks very realistic. I believe I gained confidence from this enjoyable and successful experience. The material of the doesn't seem very fancy, and the clothing overall is quite simple. Actually it looks a little bit like a nan. She herself looks kind of old. And her facial features, especially her chin, are something you don't see often nowadays. Together with no colours and that the drawing is black and white makes it looks old. The black and white really makes it look less vibrant and have a feeling that it's fading away.

Tree Of Life Art History Project

Tree Of Life Art History Project

(Some of the below is my opinion because it cannot be found)

Do you know what is the tree of life? Tree of life is a big part of most human cultures, but what does it mean? It alludes the connections of every life in the world, or on the planet. It is a metaphor for descents of different cultures in evolutionary sense.

What is the tree of life actually for? What is its most important function? I think the most important function of the Tree of Life is to tell people how the world works. It is to tell people how the things are connected and related, and how everything is a part of the world. It is a philosophy of people in the past. I think it is really important in the past- people use it, follow it, learn it, agree with it, believe it. They have a better idea of the world with the tree of life.

The tree of life is important in the past. However, I think it is no longer important or useful in modern life, especially in more advanced places. I think so because now that we have science, now we know better than before about how the world works. And how we understand it is somehow different from the concepts of the trees of lives. The tree of life in some ways is a mythology for modern people. Science was against sayings like the tree of life. And Science seem to be taking over- Like you won’t think that there is really a Yggdrasil that connect the nine worlds together.

There are some tree of life that are really detailed and full of symbols. Why? This is because some cultures has a lot of ideas about how things work. They want to say so many things that they have to draw many things to represent them, in order to express all their ideas. That eventually bring the tree of life a lot of details and symbols. Some are really beautiful and decorated because the culture value their tree of life. Others are simple because they have one main based concept. This is why there are some tree of life that are very detailed while some are simpler.

Why is it the tree of life? Why would it be “tree” of life? Why would it be tree of “life”? Also, how are they created? Life is complicated, in the past, people might not understand about life. Therefore, they start to think about what is life, they want to use something to represent life- about how life works, how life is related, what is life… They chose trees. Why? Different cultures choose different things actually. There is a representation of life I like which is a tree. How and why was it created? It is created because people want to have a better understanding of life, they want to express ideas of life. How is it created? Frankly, there is no specific ways. Different cultures created the tree of life with different ways. I will tell you about the tree of life I like and how it is created.

I like the Celtic tree of life because it is simple and it is really meaningful to me. It is designed by a Welsh artist, Jen Delyth, in the 1990s decade. This is one of the celtic tree of life drawings:

What does it actually mean or represents? How is it created? Why is their crosses and knots all around the tree? The tree of life is found in many culture including the celts. The crosses of Celtic origin incorporate tree symbols in their designs. The celtic tree of life represents the concept of nature’s forces that converge to create harmony and balance: It can be thought as how individual trees go together to form a whole forest. The trees are so tall and expansive they spread widely. They link together, forming knots and crosses, combining their forces of nature. Their existence provide home for thousands and thousands of species. The knots and crosses are also how everything in the nature connects and relate to each other. And they also represents cycles of stuffs. These are how the concepts of the celtic tree of life built, and how its design people thought of came out. These are also why the celtic tree of life is so important to celts. How does it connects to human? It is very simple, this tree of life shows us how nature gives us homes and how they nature is important to us. The celtic tree of life also represents how nature and human are related. I like and agree with the celtic tree of life and it’s concept. Why would I agree with it? It is because I like the nature very much and how it works by itself by its cycle. I like how nature is so pure and how they provide us resources and homes. I like how they form their big forest and let so many species live in it. I like how they fight through extreme and worst conditions. Therefore, I think trees in the nature is really important like how the value it. I like the design and the drawing of the celtic tree of life too. Why? I like how the lines connects and intersects. I like how the tree is so neat and its pureness in its design. I like it that it doesn’t have all messy symbols all over it, but it has one main design that shows everything.

By now, I hope you have a better understanding in the tree of life. Which tree of life do you like most? Why?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_of_life

http://www.buzzle.com/articles/tree-of-life-meaning.html

http://firstlegend.info/thetreeoflife.html

http://www.astrologyoftheancients.com/celtic-tree-of-life/

Art Reflection- Tree Of Life

Tree of life symbolises different things in different cultures, but most of the culture has one tree of life, and we are asked to draw a tree of life in art class.

When I started, I was didn't know what kind of tree of life or what details or styles I should do. At first I want to have the tree trunk twisting at first.


Then I found one photo of a tree of life on the internet (the first picture below) which was a beautiful piece of art and a great picture for me to follow. I thought I could use this idea. Like, with circle outside and the leaves coming down a bit around. Afterwards, I found this picture on the internet and I thought the leaves looked really nice, so I took that idea too.
     

 And I drew this (the second picture on the right) which is mirrored). As you see, there is that sharp thing coming out of the tree trunk. My art teacher said that doesn't look that good, which I agreed. He/she also said that the tree trunk was too fat, which I totally agreed, too. And I tried to have the roots like the first photo, the one in the circle, but it was kind of difficult to draw, so he roots don't look so good and they are too neat. Well, at that time, that's the feedback I get to draw a better one in a big paper. Here comes the good drawing!



Here, you see the final, better drawing, on the left. It is still mirrored and the photo is lighter in the colour and may not look as good. But I have to admit, the drawing is actually better that what I expected. The ideas are same with the draft. But I came up with an idea called the "heart leaf". I came up with the idea because I would like some heart things but they kind of look girly, and this is about plants. I wanted flowers as decoration and I made it the same style with the leaves. I made the whole tree including the stems flow and look smooth. I also made them look random and messy but with some rhythm. And then I coloured it with pencil. and the idea of inverting the colour (above ground and below ground) and I thought it would look nice and creative and it would really really give out the contrast.





Here I will talk about what's good about my drawing (the drawing looks better than the photo, because I honestly can't think of something bad as it turned out better than what I thought it would be. Except that circular flowers may be drawn not so equal and the gaps between each line of the circular flower may not be equal, others were how I wanted it to be or even better.
The best thing I like about my drawing is that the lines flow very well- The lines are not just not shaky, but they flow, like, there aren't angles. The second thing is that the lines are dark enough and there is contrast, I liked my idea to inverse the colour (above and under ground) very much. Then what I also liked is that the drawing is balanced and it has a rhythm. Then I like the decorations around the circle, hearts leaves actually. And the circular drawing with the heart leaves pointing one direction shows motion actually, which is the leaves are moving around the circle, and it means everything is a cycle. I liked my drawing, and I hope you do, too!