Challenge 3 - Emily's Political Statement

The challenge this week was all about pop art. Basically, the only parameters were to create an original piece of pop art involving current themes and ideas. Sounds simple enough, right? Pop art plays on things that are popular in culture, from politics to celebrities to entertainment. It involves things people obsess about and see or use on a daily basis. (So if you've seen my sister's post, you'll see that her obsession is with me....) I'm a big fan of artists such as Roy Lichtenstein and David Hockney. One of my favorite pop art pieces is this one by Lichtenstein called "Drowning Girl."

For my own masterpiece, I decided I wanted to use popular topics that are all around us now. I chose Lady Gaga, cupcakes, and the green movement. These are topics I consider very relevant to today. This is my final project:

Back to the beginning... My piece includes pictures of a cupcake and Lady Gaga (in the famous meat dress) giving their opinion on being green all on a background of a collage of plastic bags. My supplies and tools included Paint, scissors, glue, plastic bags, electrical tape, and some old magazines. One of the most time consuming parts was probably cutting out all those itty bitty letters...

Decoupaging plastic bags was fun and played with the whole green/recycling theme.

Again, my final piece.

Some close-up shots:

This was a pretty fun project. I think pop art is really neat. It was interesting to see on the show the types of projects the contestants did. There were some pretty heavy topics... My piece was much more lighthearted (in a deep, philosophical way).

My sister's fave:

I knew you'd all be huge fans of my artwork, so click here to find it on CafePress. Get yourself the shirt version, you deserve it. Note: That color is supposedly "kelly green." I don't know what it would end up looking like...Probably amazing, no doubt.

Overall, it was exciting to give pop art my own spin. After seeing what the Work of Art contestants came up with, my sister and I may need to step it up. It seems our minds aren't quite as twisted as theirs. But we're working on it! Can't wait for another challenge. See you next time! Don't forget to vote!

-E

Websession: Kristine's entry for Work of Art Challenge #3

Before I start, here is the final result of this week's Work of Art challenge (see here for the rules). Thank goodness, there was no twist/turn/unforeseen additional component. I really thought something would pop up... after all, it was a pop art challenge! Anyway, as I was saying, here is my final piece:


I committed a whole bunch of no-nos during this challenge. The judges would've kicked me off for producing a piece of art that could be considered "derivative" (c'mon, inspired by Lichtenstein, with modern themes), I decided to use a technique I'd never used before ("how hard could it be??" kiss of death), I used a word no one has ever heard before, I used pictures of Emily (sorry, Emily)...

I guess I should start by explaining the "hoverweb" reference. 2-3 phone generations ago, when we used non-smartphones, we had to text via the annoying T9 system. That is, the phone has 9 keys, and so 2 = a, b, or c, and it attempts to autocomplete words for you. Well, whenever we typed "Inter..." it would automatically suggest "hover" as the word we were trying to write. Really? Hover?? I don't see how that's statistically more likely than, say, "Inter...net." So we added "web" to "hover," and came up with "hoverweb" to represent the Internet. Yay.

Now that you all know the history, I'll digress further. This evening Emily and I finally watched the last two episodes of Work of Art. I don't think our final projects could be further from what they've done so far! Huh. People do interpret the challenges however they like. And I can't figure out why the judges like the ones they like.

Back to my artwork! As I mentioned, I'd never tried this cartoonizing technique before. Armed only with pictures of Emily holding a cell phone, Paint Shop Pro, and various Photoshop comic effect technique tutorials, I was on my way. It didn't take long for me to realize that Photoshop tutorials don't translate nicely into Paint Shop Pro. Here were a few of the test alterations I tried before getting used to some of the more advanced design features:



I won't go through the entire process, but will note that I learned all about techniques like cutouts, posterizing, halftone, masks... look at me. Now I want to take a class on photo editing software!


In all, I created five pieces that were decent enough. Here they are, with my commentary:

I drew in the crazy hair on this one. Yay Stumbleupon! That site is crazy addictive. It creates zombies. (incidentally... Happy Halloween!)

This would have been better if I'd kept it simple. Too colorful. And Emily is NOT that tan.

Also overly complicated... and no, I'm not predicting that Emily will get dumped (by text or anything else). It's just one of those things you hear about these days.

This was the first cartoony image I attempted. It looked and sounded better as a concept. In reality, meh.

When I narrowed it down to my top six (one didn't make the blog) I sent them via the hoverweb to the nearest cheap photo printing place that came to mind: CVS. Huh, wonder what that acronym means... Ah, well, here are my final printed cartoon art thingies. The printouts weren't bad!


And, one last time, my final art project:


'Til next week! :)

Rules for artwork inspired by Work of Art, Season 2, Challenge #3

This week we will be creating a piece of pop art! We are supposed to take inspiration from classic pop artists, but create our own modern interpretation. Due date: Sunday at 5! Hmm, this sounds deceptively straightforward. I wonder if there is going to be a twist!! We'll decide when we watch the show whether to complete any twists... if they exist.

In the meantime, here is a reminder of our last challenge (art inspired by motion):

Crayolava - Emily's Week 2 Challenge

First things first, sorry for the delay in posting. I had my wisdom teeth yanked out and, naturally, I could have died. But all is well. On to the challenge.

This week's challenge was all about motion. We had to create something using motion and parkour as our inspiration. I decided to hit the dollar store to look around and come up with my final plan. After searching through all the Halloween decor and random housewares, I finally decided on some colorful crayons (that's pronounced "crayins" if you're Josh). I returned home and decided what to do. I would use crayons and heat to create my masterpiece. These were my tools:


I wanted to use motion in my actual art piece, so I got to work. This involved removing the wrappers from the crayons and lining them up by color.


Then came the fun part! Using a heat tool, I heated the crayons to create awesome dripping patterns. The motion of the dripping crayons created the art. I love the way it looks!


Now for my final project, called "Crayolava."


This was a fun project. I love color and this was just my thing! I learned a lot along the way, too. For example, some crayon colors don't melt. They just bubble and start smoking. It's very strange. And some melt very quickly (as you can see by the longest drips). I also wanted my final project to have a more unexpected look, and that's why I decided to display it with the drips going up instead of down. Take that, gravity! Well, that's all for this week. What do you think?

Ttylbffs,
-E

Surf's Up: Kristine's entry for Work of Art Challenge #2

First, the bad news... Emily's art project for Work of Art Challenge #2 is delayed. There definitely is a difference between reality TV shows and real life... they only have their show to worry about. We have work and all sorts of other things. Don't be too hard on Emily; she's getting her wisdom teeth pulled tomorrow! She's promised to submit her final project by Wednesday evening. Good thing we make our own rules!

In the meantime, here is my project...

To recap, this week's challenge was to design a piece based on motion, inspired by parkour. It was a team challenge for the Work of Art contestants... since it's just me and Emily, we were on our own.

Here are my before (the photo that served as inspiration) and after pictures:

I decided I wanted to make pixel art. My medium: oil paints. I looked through old pictures I've taken that represent motion, and used Microsoft Paint (sometimes the simplest solution is best!) to resize the main part of the photos to 30 pixels wide. Here are some of the ones I liked:




After much dramatic internal debate, I settled on this surfing picture:


I took this picture back in August 2005, at the East Coast Surfing Championships in Virginia Beach (we were actually there to see Carbon Leaf). I chose this picture because both the surfer and the wave demonstrate movement, and even though surfing isn't parkour, it's something athletic that I can't do. Yet. :)

Now that I'd selected my photo, I prepared my canvas. Using a pencil, I drew my grid:

As you can see, I opted not to use squares. Instead, I took more inspiration from the idea of motion. In sci fi movies, when a spaceship goes into warp speed/FTL, you get this sort of stretching of the image. I recreated that idea, with narrower columns on the left and wider columns on the right. Did it really make much difference in the final painting? Well, no, not really. But hey, I was trying to demonstrate motion!

I then used the pixelated image (26x20 pixels) as a guide, and used oil paints to create my version of the surfer. Here are some pictures of my process. If you're wondering about my painting order, I was trying to go by color themes (reds, then flesh tones, then greens, etc.).





The painting process took FOREVER! I did the big reality show challenge no-no--I chose something that was waaaay overcomplicated. I could have scaled this back a lot (smaller canvas, convert to fewer colors, ...). As you can see, I wasn't even worrying about being all that neat in my painting... still, it took ages. My arm is sore. I do like the finished product, though.

Along the way I discovered that I had accidentally painted a creepy face into one of the boxes:


It's a little bit easier to see the surfer in thumbnail-sized pictures of my process. Here he is, from start to finish:

Rules for artwork inspired by Work of Art, Season 2, Challenge #2

This week is all about Parkour. That means Emily has to jump around walls and stuff, and make art out of the blood that results from her experience. OK, not really... but the Work of Art challenge is indeed about motion, inspired by Parkour. Technically this is a group challenge--the show's contestants were divided into two groups, and are making individual pieces that individually and collectively represent movement. So, naturally, Emily and I performed extremely complex differential calculus and divided ourselves into two groups. She is the team captain of her group, but I am just a lowly peon in my group (the team lead has something against me... I predict lots of dramatic team conflict, which is pretty much the lifeblood of reality TV).

Team Emily and Team Kristine will complete the Parkour-inspired challenges no later than 5:00 p.m. (East Coast time) on Sunday. Supplies can be purchased, but we're not going crazy... unless Emily was serious about building a car from scratch. I bet she'll do it.

Tune back in Sunday evening for our final products!

As a reminder of our past artistic glory, these were the end products from Challenge #1:


(and p.s., you still have time to vote for my Challenge #1 artwork as the winning piece)

-- Kristine

Getting Kitschy: Emily is #1!

Our challenge this week was to take a kitschy piece of art we found at the thrift store (for $5 or less) and transform it into something much more interesting that was our style and worthy of hanging in a gallery.

This is what I came up with.

"It's All in Your Head"

Before and after:

But it didn't happen THAT quick. My first step in this process was, of course, to head to good ole' Goodwill.

I was pleased with their selection. They had posters of cars, pictures of animals, paintings of flowers, and interesting and eclectic sculptures. I had a hard time deciding what to pick.

Most of the bigger pieces were too much for my $5 budget, but I found some great kitschy art that made my decision pretty hard. Among them was this interesting fabric covered closet/shelf thing:

I was also a fan of Raggedy Joshua.

Joshua was the front-runner for a while, but I eventually decided that absolutely nothing could be done to improve him, so he ended up back on the shelf. Besides, I already own one Joshua, and two would be too many. Moving on... These dancers made of carpet were also neat:

You find some crazy things. This was an interesting note on the back of one item I found:

My original plan was to find a of picture of a horse and turn it into a unicorn, but I had no luck. (This is especially funny, if you've seen what my sister Kristine ended up doing...) Something I found interesting was the large number of family portraits that people had abandoned at the thrift store. It was kind of sad to see the school portraits and family pictures that Grandma had apparently rejected. I found some I really liked, and was eventually able to pick my final selection. So here it is, this is what I finally decided on... A cheesy Olan Mills-style picture of some lovely abuelos in a tacky gold and floral frame. And for only $1.96? That's a steal if you ask me.

After I got this picture home I started having second thoughts. What on earth was I going to do to transform this picture?! I was almost ready to quit, but I remembered all my millions of dozens of fans and just couldn't let them down. (Or maybe that's one or two fans that might click through this blog a dozen times? Hopefully?) I photocopied the picture a few times and did some tests before finally committing to one idea. I decided to paint the frame, while still letting some of the former glory shine through.

For the actual picture, I pulled out my needle and thread and got to work. I'm a big fan of sugar skulls and decided to turn my unsuspecting models into these colorful creations. I also used some vintage piano music to accent my design. With some careful cutting, gluing, and my trusty Modge Podge, I started to create.

After finishing up all the final details, my masterpiece was ready. My challenge was complete! I created a lovely piece of work I call "It's All in Your Head." Ta da!!!

Some detail shots:

And if you get the lighting behind it just right...

Overall, I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out. This was a fun challenge, although I don't know if my masterpiece will be hanging in a gallery any time soon. Be sure to check out what my sister Kristine came up with, it is pretty good! And don't forget to vote on your favorite! See you next week to find out what crazy project we end up with. I have a feeling it will only get harder from here.

Ttylbffs.

-E