-46.3-

"" Day 9

I drew the theme "Incredibly good-looking" along with the medium "surveillance photo."
At first I planned on taking a photo of someone I considered incredibly good-looking, or a photo of a collage of surveillance photos of a favorite celebrity, but as I was looking at the mountains in Colorado, it occured to me that "amazingly good-looking" could apply to non-human sources, too.
My idea shifted to taking a beautiful nature scene through the window of the as we were driving through the mountains, but as I was about to take a picture, I noticed that I really liked the lighting on my Mother's face. This inspired me to focus on both my Mom and the nature outside whilst taking shots.

I narrowed them down to four:

I liked the scenery here but you can't see the other subject

And chose this shot:

-45.3-

"" Day 7. I drew the theme "Infant" and the medium "Filmstill."

There weren't any infants in the STAC room that day, and I wanted to get this prompt done before the end of the day, so I decided to make my own "infant" and photograph it. I came up with the idea to make a "family" of objects and photograph a filmstill of the "family" in the progress of taking a family picture.

However, I was at the airport and I encountered real infants, so I decided to take a couple shots.
Here's three that I liked because they were action shots:

-44.3-

"" Day 6. I drew the theme "Mugshot low-life criminal" with the medium "tape recording."

I was going to draw a picture of a stereotypical "low-life criminal," but I didn't have a lot of time in STAC that day to complete this. After brainstorming, I decided to draw a picture of an interrogation room, then use it in a video with an over-dub of the interrogation of a "low-life criminal."

This picture on a google image search stood out to me 

My drawing, using the "sculpting" technique

I have to finish the audio and put the video together. I will post the video when its finished.

-43.3-

"" Day 5. I drew the theme "Toddler" and media "Sergei Eisenstein Montage." 

Drawing on my previous definition of montage, a bunch of scenes showing either time passing or the plethora of something, I was going to draw many pictures of toddlers from all over the world (since I didn't have any toddlers to photograph). However, I decided to research a bit on what a "Sergei Eisenstein" montage was, in case this definition expanded what I already knew. Through Lisa's blog and google I found a few sites that helped explain. What added to my definition was the fact that montages can be used to convey a certain feeling. A line jumped out at me from the Wikipedia definition "each sequential element is perceived not next to the other, but on top of the other." This led me to thinking, "Wouldn't it be fun to compile images that reminded people of toddlers, but aren't of toddlers themselves?" Using this idea, and the line from Wikipedia, I decided to print out many images of toddler-related images and string them on top of each other to make a complete "thought."

---
It's a little over a week since I did this, and I'm getting thoughts that if I decided to continue with this, perhaps making more of these "thought montages" would make the overall effect more poignant. "With great numbers come great strength."

-42.3-

This weekend I watched three documentaries: "Happy" "Babies" and "Waiting for Superman."

The first two that I watched were very good.For "Happy" they had the right mix of narrative, personal stories, and diagrams to convey different ways people can be happy. "Babies," on the other hand, was effective with a "hands off" approach (no narration, and leaving the families, seemingly, by themselves) in order to create an authentic document of the four different cultures portrayed throughout the film. Although the environments the four babies were growing up in seemed extremely different, all babies were loved, and all had the same milestones. (The establishing shots were beautiful, too. I loved the vibrant colors and clarity of the film.) For "babies" it was an interesting director's choice to not feature the whole family unit. Often the babies were seen by themselves, or they were zoomed in on during scenes with interactions with a parent.
"Waiting for Superman," so far, seemed a bit dry. The diagrams shown were effective in conveying messages, such as the view that "tenure" is causing problems regarding teachers who can't teach (my favorite diagram being the lemon dance), however when they put in personal bits, they seemed a little too long, so the whole picture was difficult to keep up with. I also thought more narrative would have helped tie everything together (but I haven't seen the whole movie yet...I had to go to bed in the middle of watching.)

-41.3-

Yesterday we watched "The Big Lebowski." What a crazy movie!
It was great fun to watch (partly because it seemed like everyone was having fun with their acting). But I noticed that the Coen brothers did a great job at setting up characterization (for example, when they introduced The Dude with The Dude drinking out of a bottle at a supermarket.)

The plot was so ridiculous that nothing could be taken too seriously, and yet it was a surprising to find out what actually was going on (it was funny that there were random characters in the plot such as Jesus at the bowling alley and the Nihilists pretending to kidnap Bunny). The next day, when we were talking about the movie, it was interesting to find out how the movie was a big mesh-up of sorts, with real-life people going on an adventure, and the concept around finding a kid's homework in a stolen car. Somehow the movie seemed to work.

Misc. point:
Luke mentioned mentioned how it may have seemed funny to people who've seen this movie to see Jeff Bridges in "True Grit" as a completely different character, but it was the opposite for me. I saw him in "Ironman" and "True Grit" before seeing him in this movie, and this may have made the movie even funnier (a gritty cowboy/businessman in a completely different role as a carpet-loving bum!) However, The Dude did seem to be quite serious at times, which sort-of seemed to fit in with the other roles I've seen Bridges in (In Ironman he contrasted Tony Stark's flippant character and in True Grit he contrasted the other guy, LeBouef's, relaxed personality.)

-40.3-

"" Day 4
I drew the theme "middle aged" with the media "old photo album."
At first I was going to take a nice sepia picture of...my parents, but I felt in the mood to draw and I wanted to get this done during the period. So, I decided on printing out an old-fashioned photo of a livingroom, then drawing in a middle aged person. I also decided I wanted the person to have a big grin.
When I looked up pictures of old photos, the first photo that caught my eye was one of a 1920's train station. I decided that, instead of a livingroom, I wanted to use this picture.

I also decided that I wanted to have a middle aged conductor (with the stereotypical handlebar(?) mustache.) I found a reference of an old train conductor and printed it out.

I tried the "carving" technique again, this time with pencil.

An unintended result of cutting it out, but it looked neat!

I was going to draw the person right on the picture, but then I realized that the drawing wouldn't have shown up, so I drew on a separate piece of paper and cut it out. I also cut out a "matte" for the picture, then pasted the whole thing together

The "shadow" on the left isn't the final product. I was having a bit of fun with the remains of the paper after I cut out the conductor

-39.3-

---- day 3.
I drew the theme "Rich and smug" along with the medium "charcoal and chalk."
Immediately, an image came into my head.
Peirpont Finch (in charcoal) smiling his trademark smile while a line drawing (in chalk) of a businessman  is in the background/future (the businessman would be done in the style of a cartoon by Puck that I saw in social studies. Finch must have popped into my head because "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying" rehersals were going on at the time.
First I drew Finch, using the "sculpting" technique I found with charcoal (I wrote about this in a previous post, but "sculpting" is pulling the light values out of a dark blob in order to draw a picture)

After that, I found the cartoon so I could have a reference of the style (it took me a while, since I forgot what the name of it was called at the time).

With the red chalk I drew a stereotypical businessman behind finch (I was afraid that it'd mess up the charcoal -which I liked- but...the picture would have looked empty without it.)

-37.3-

I've been thinking about my process for my big art endeavors...and it seems that the way I go about a project is similar to when someone has a baby.

First I have an idea, and I'm all excited about it and I get to work.
I work hard and make a lot of progress.
Then, there's a point (after or inbetween the progress) where I get stuck, and it takes a lot of effort to push through and find inspiration again. Tears, yelling and cursing optional.
Finally...the project is done and I feel satisfied...then, when looking back, I remember the fun and excitement more than the tough times, and want to go through the process all over again.