Perfumed: Kristine's entry for Work of Art Challenge #8

Emily? Emily? Are you still there?

*silence*

Well, I'm sure we'll hear from her eventually. Just pretend she's on a backpacking trip through Central Eurasia, where Internet connectivity is limited. (no, she's not, but we're helping her have an excuse)

*ahem*

On to this week's challenge. According to the rules, this week's Work of Art challenge was to create artwork that could be sold on the street (or somewhere else) AND shown in a gallery. I think I successfully ended up with a piece that might not succeed at either. But that's okay! It was a fantastic learning experience, which, really, is the purpose of all this. Here's the final piece:


"What on earth is that??" you might ask. Well, I was trying to expand upon "Surf's Up," taking pixel art to a whole new level. I've had this idea for a while... I took an old keyboard, pulled off all the keys, and discovered... that if you buy a used keyboard off eBay, it really is USED. With all the cheezy puff crumbs, chocolate bits, and who knows what else its former left behind. Ewww, nastiness... So Step 1 was to sanitize the keys:

Since we started our blog in October 2011, I decided to make a 10x11 piece of pixel art. Just kidding, it was a math exercise. Given the number of keys pulled from the keyboard, 10x11 was the biggest I could make it. Huh, both explanations are equally geeky. Never mind.

I went back to my MS Paint method for transforming photographs into 10x11 pixel graphics. Here were a few of the others I considered:





Eventually I settled on this picture of a purple flower:


I then used acrylic craft paints to paint each key according to the colors in the grid. Minor detail--I didn't exactly have the right paint shades to recreate the colors from the inspiration picture. So I approximated. Nah, I just plain made it up. Good enough. Here are some work-in-progress pictures:







Keys are kind of hard to paint... The bottoms are uneven, and each key has a different shape and size. As you can see, in some cases I used a long key (shift, space bar, ...) to represent multiple keys. Key shapes work well for typing efficiency, but they certainly complicate repurposing keys for mosaics.

After painting all of the keys I considered background options. A chessboard? It took me a minute to remember that a chessboard is only an 8x8 grid (what can I say, I never got into that sport - and I mean chess boxing). Then I remembered I had some black and white skull wrapping paper. Yes, that's right, I do have that lying around my home. Don't judge me.


Back to the important stuff... I used that craft gluey stuff to affix the painted keys to the wrapping paper.


And voila, here's the final result!



And a tiny version (to verify that the pattern is at least consistent with the original pixelated flower):


Since it's not so much a flower as the essence of a flower, I decided to call it "Perfumed." That is, a perfume takes the essence of a flower, and... ok, I'm gonna stop talking now. Stop laughing at my attempt at a work of art with commercial appeal. Just go and watch the chess boxing videos.

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