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.

Ubercorn: Kristine's entry for Work of Art Challenge #1

Emily and I have completed our version of "Work of Art," Season 2, Challenge #1! Here is my thrift store treasure, before and after. As you can see, I made a few minor alterations...


The Challenge:

Turn a kitschy piece of thrift store art (our limit: $5) into something worthy of being displayed in an art gallery. (click here for our challenge rules)

My process:

On Friday evening I visited Goodwill in search of a piece of art that I could upcycle. When I first saw all of the $20-30 items, I feared I'd have trouble finding something within our $5 challenge limit. And then I saw it: a unicorn picture in a cheap gold frame, for only $3.96. Perfect!! I grabbed it and went home. (yes, after paying for it)


In keeping with the "Work of Art" TV inspiration, I guess I have to select my personal art style. Umm... is "nerdifying" a valid art style? That and line art, I guess. I decided to start with the decorating of the unicorn. OK, let's back up... in line with reality TV, we've gotta include drama. I managed to cut myself removing that cheap gold plastic frame! Yay, first war wound goes to me!


Back to my artwork. I decided to go with line art for the hair, horn, and hooves. For the body, I went for cyber. Teensy tiny zeroes and ones from head to hoof! 0 = light area, 1 = dark area. Man, that took a long time!! I watched the entire season of "Marcel's Quantum Kitchen" during the decorating process. That was actually a fascinating show! I don't understand why that show aired on Syfy; regardless, the creative process was fun to watch.

Back on topic now... Here are a few pictures of the work in progress:




After what seemed like forever, I finished adding my cyber texture to the unicorn. I then probably spent another few TV shows cutting the obnoxious thing out. Ugh, so many pointy blocks of unicorn hair!! And then I moved on to the process of finding an appropriate background. My initial choice was an image of Jupiter that I got when I was at NASA last week for the premiere of "The Wanderers," a fantastic new film that they project onto a globe-shaped screen. It's like having each of the planets in our solar system hovering mid-air in front of you!! Gorgeous. Go see it!!

I digress again. After ruling out the Jupiter picture because of all the text on the poster I remembered that I had a few posters of fractals lying around my apartment. Perfect!! I pasted the beautifully cut out cyber unicorn onto a red and yellow fractal.


I wanted to stick with the general vibe of the original poster, which meant I needed to add some clouds around the outside edges. Hmm, what to use?? I decided to go with the weekly coupon mailer that I hadn't yet recycled. I tore out some rough circles, then pasted them into an arbitrary cloud-like layout.



The clouds weren't quite standing out against the bright fractal pattern, so I grabbed a Sharpie and outlined some of the cloud edges. If I were to redo the challenge, I'd probably go with solid-colored clouds, or something that produced more of a layered effect. Ah, well. I'm still proud of the finished product.

My final piece of art, "Ubercorn"


This evening Emily came over to compare artwork and watch last week's episode of Work of Art. The contestants went in very different directions than us... two dimensional, three dimensional, performance art... in some cases, it was difficult to see the original inspiration in the final piece! We went for a more literal interpretation of the challenge, leaving the original artwork visible in our final pieces.

Don't forget to admire Emily's upcycling (when she posts it--I won't give it away!), and then vote for the challenge winner!

Rules for artwork inspired by Work of Art, Season 2, Challenge #1

This is going to be fun!! Here's the first challenge + mutually agreed upon rules... or so I unilaterally proclaim. Emily went to bed early. But I'm sure she'll be fine with this. Right, Emily?

The challenge: Transform a kitschy, thrift store-type piece of art (painting, picture, sculpture, ...) into something you'd see displayed in an art gallery. Make it work within your personal artistic style. Some part of the original work must be visible and recognizable.

Our rules: We have a limit of $5 to purchase a piece of art from a local thrift store. We have 'til Saturday at 3:00 pm (Eastern time) to upcycle our items, after which we will compare/contrast, then watch the show. Blog posts detailing our creative efforts to follow.

Game on.

Update: (10/14/2011)

OK, maybe I should've coordinated the rules with Emily before posting. Sorry, Emily, that I conveniently forgot that you work on Saturdays. Whoops. New deadline: Sunday, 5 pm! You'll see our first posts sometime Sunday evening!