alexiaoscpsarts-blog

[alexiaoscpsarts-blog]

per·se·ver·ance

/ˌpərsəˈvirəns/

noun

steadfastness in doing something despite difficulty or delay in achieving success.

[alexiaoscpsarts-blog]

I’ve decided to use colored pencil and lining pens to add more definition to my work. I’ve noticed that my watercolor style is quite muted, so I’ve been using prismacolor colored pencils and lining pens to add a little more detail!  When comparing the left (old) to the right (not the most recent, but more recent than the first), it definitely helped with increasing the depth and saturation in Brandi’s face.

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Can you recognize your fellow scholars?

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CPSA Process Progress Reflection

After looking through everyone’s pages, I find it really interesting how different each of our capstones are. If I were to make this more personal, I feel as if they all capture us as people and who we are as artists. I can clearly see the personality and talents of my peers through what they’ve shown. Speaking of talent, it’s just so crazy how I have the honor to share a class with such amazing artists of all mediums! Aren’t they just amazing???

It was nice getting feedback from my group members as well. Because they had questions with our presentation, I want to make it clear that we’ll be showing both a projection of our video (shows the BTS scenes action of our capstone) and a table holding the physical aspects of our capstone (i.e. my watercolor paintings and Merissa’s photography).

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UM OKAY IM CRYING THIS IS GORGEOUS. 

I’m sorry for all the trouble you’ve been going through for this! And I definitely understand the feeling of wanting to redo something. That’s definitely okay! High key, I end up hating a lot of my pieces after doing them ahaha! Ugh and lighting...it’s so hard capture good lighting. I always try to get natural lighting, but 1.) that means I have to be awake and productive during the day and 2.) I’m too lazy. 

But although you say you don’t think the lighting does it justice, I can assure you the makeup looks great! This definitely makes me want to try out green (never really thought about using it was an eyeshadow color before because of how bright it is on me). I hope we can see a glitter look soon! 

3/18/17

Today I attempted look 2 for my project. I think I might redo the look. I only feel “okay” with how I did. I want to make sure I feel “over-the-moon happy” with it before I include it in my project. I also have yet to find a background and consistent lighting. I don’t think the light in my room does the look justice and neither does my phone. Also, one of my models had to drop out. That sucks, but I’ll probably just use myself unless I can find someone last minute. Creating this look made me feel more encouraged about using color. Originally, I was doing a glitter look. That didn’t turn out so well. I didn’t make a cut crease the way I wanted, glitter was EVERYWHERE, and I just wasn’t happy with how it was going. So, I removed that and started over with this green look instead. Hopefully, the glitter will go well next time.

[alexiaoscpsarts-blog]

Omg I love this slay my life I totally feel you with the pencil issue. I only use the Royal Graphite Pencils, so I wouldn’t know the difference between the two. But the H does look darker for some reason...maybe it is the brand? I’m not sure... 

But nevertheless, sketching looks like it's going great! I’m still in awe of the way you draw though. Everything just seems so light and fluid! I’m the type to sketch too hard and leave pencil smudge marks everywhere ahaha. And I’m sure painting will go well! Also, I’m curious -- which bird is does this character represent? 

…I realized too late that I should have used a different pencil to outline with.. The 2H should have in theory been lighter than the H, but for some reason it came out much darker than I intended it to be. :/ Gonna use the H for everything else…As you can see, the sketch on the right is much lighter than the left one lol. Hopefully this doesn’t cause any problems in clarity once I put on paint. (Perhaps the difference in hardness was because they’re different brands..?)

[alexiaoscpsarts-blog]

I really love how this looks, just like you Maddie, ohohoho) I only wish the picture was a bit clearer so I could see what the poem says. I like the choices of colors for this as well; the blue and yellow together really give off a nocturnal feeling --almost like Van Gogh’s “Starry Night”. It emits a very tranquil ambience! I can’t wait to see what songs are on the playlist! If the songs you chose are as calming as your blackout poem, I’ll surely be in love with it! 

Finished my blackout poem and the page where my first playlist will be written. It was a lot of fun to do, and I’ll probably add some more to it, but I’m happy with what I have so far. The poem and the colors I used were supposed to relate to anxiety which is the theme of my first playlist, so hopefully that comes across.

[alexiaoscpsarts-blog]

Penthathlon: Fine Art 

When Julia, Merissa, Natasha, and I drove to West Virginia for Spring Break, we visited Julia’s hometown, Charleston. It was great having Julia show us around since we haven’t been there before. One of the great places we visited was a small bookstore that also included an art gallery. There were so many different installations that deserve praise! 

On one of the walls, there was a pixelated piece creating the shape of West Virginia out of several squares of artwork. It was quite large; I still wonder how long it took the paint all of the separate tiles! I’ve also always found it cool how people can somehow make a blown-up image out of smaller pictures. 

One of the artists that had my full attention was Christopher Schultz. The piece that I have taken a picture of is called “Jeremy”. It was made from oil, acrylic, and spray paint on panel on a 40″x48″ canvas. It’s crazy how artists find so many different means of creating their work. I’m over here working on my basic watercolor paper and canvases while others are going wild! It’s so cool! Not to put down my artwork, or anyone else who paints like I do, but it’s just very unique. 

I would still like to know the artist’s thoughts when constructing this piece; was he thinking of another person when doing this? Mayne the dog snout has to do with this “Jeremy” individual.

This piece is selling for $6,000. Trust and believe, if I was rich, I would love to purchase it! But I only make art --I can’t afford anything ahaha!

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What Have We Struggled With?

As amazing as this project has been, we’ve run into some problems --very annoying problems.  

1.) Having participants show up late. I think that because we are students and we know the participants to some extent, punctuality was one of our biggest problems. For our first interview, for example, our interviewee woke up late and came almost 2 hours after her scheduled meeting. One person even forgot we had a meeting and needed to reschedule. It was especially annoying having to reschedule these people; we had everyone sign up by February 11 so that we knew which weekends we had free. We also asked them to respond at least 24 hours in advance if there were any problems. Because we had to reschedule some people, it got in the way of the time we had to complete other assignments. 

2.) The weather. Maryland is a mess. Just a mess. When it comes to the weather, Maryland never knows what it’s doing. We adjusted by doing most of the interviews inside, which was fine. But towards March, we had the belief that it would be warmer outside. That’s when we scheduled interviews and photoshoots at Centennial Park in Ellicott City. Maryland lied to us; it was so cold! 

3.) The wind. There were some moments where you could hear wind in our audio. Thankfully, I learned how to edit some of it out, so that isn’t much of a problem. HOWEVER during one of our photoshoots, it was extremely windy outside. For literally half a second, I let go of my tripod to grab my bottle of water. That’s when the wind made my tripod topple over. My camera fell on its lens, ultimately breaking it. 

4.) The McKeldin cameras. I’m glad McKeldin had extra cameras we could rent out. It was annoying having to go back every two days just to return it and re-rent it. But that wasn’t the worst part! Towards the last few photoshoots, the camera would suddenly stop working and say “batteries exhausted”. We had to stop and get NEW batteries at one point, which was an extreme waste of our time. 

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What’s it’s Been Like Meeting Different Women of Color:

In the end, we interviewed 14 different women of color; asians (south and east), middle easterners, africans (west and north), caribbeans, latinas, and women with mixed ethnicities. It surely was an experience meeting with all of them and listening to what they had to say. Just like what Merissa and I wanted, we wanted to hear something different from what we tell ourselves everyday. 

As two black women of the same age and living situation, our experiences as women of color are close to being the same; because we had a variety of women, we received multiple answers to questions we always ask ourselves. However, there was one question that ultimately united all of us together; what do you love about being a woman of color? Every single woman we interviewed responded with, “I love being different”. There’s such a liberating and exhilarating feeling connected to having another culture tied to you. As we all learned to accept and love who we are in a society where misrepresentation is prevalent, our culture is what pushes us up. 

If we had more time, I would have loved to meet up with other women of color. Many of them told us to continue with this project if we could. It’s something we’ve been thinking about actually. We now know that we aren’t the only ones who find this topic so important and close to our hearts.

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How I’ve Changed as an Artist:

Not only has this capstone given me a chance to explore different drawing and watercolor techniques, it has also showed me how much I have developed as an artist.

I’ve been drawing for a very long time; if I were to go back to when I can remember, Sonic characters were all I drew. Now, I’ve had experience using so many mediums and drawing in different styles. I can say that I’ve grown to develop my own style of drawing/painting based on artists I’ve observed in the past. My ability to draw from a reference picture has improved as seen from progress photos and videos for my capstone; although guidelines are not a bad thing (they are actually really important), I have grown from having to entirely depend on them to using them only when I need to. In addition to this, I can definitely say that my ability to use watercolor paint has grown along with my experience. It took a while to realize that watercolor is more versatile than it appears to be. 

Of course, there are still spots I still want to improve on. I did not delve into perspective very much for this project, mostly because it makes me very uncomfortable. When it comes to facial features, I’m entirely confident. When it comes to backgrounds, I struggle quite a bit. I sort of regret avoiding the implementation of architecture in my capstone for this reason. However, I’ve been playing with this in the World Building Workshop. Another thing I still struggle with is drawing hands. I had the chance to include hands in many of these portraits, but I purposefully avoided them to make it easier for myself. There’s something about appendages that I just find too difficult to draw. Since I am not finished with all of the sketches, I will try to include hands more to further challenge myself. 

When it comes to art, whether it is visual, performance, etc., you are always learning. This is why I find it important to reflect back to previous work; surely with experience and active attempts at learning, anyone can improve! 

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CPSA Pentathlon: Presentation

On March 3, I, along with other sophomores (and Anna), took part in the Art Scholars Open House Presentation. We sat with a couple dozen future art scholars and told them of our experiences as scholars and UMD students. 

It was sort of weird; these kids were basically us not too long ago, sitting in front of sophomore students. It was actually sort of funny to see how anxious they were for their freshman year, considering I was also the same way. One of the points I made referenced finding one’s self and discovering who/what you wanted to be. College isn’t easy and you won’t succeed at everything, which is okay. That’s what I learned over this year and a half.

Justin and I had a good talk with a couple future students on a personal level. One of them was a Zelda fan, so I brought up the new game, Breath of the Wild. He eased up a bit more and ended up having a really good conversation with us. It ranged from computer science (more up Justin’s alley) and LARPing Club. 

I really hope these future scholars took what we said to heart. Justin, Maggie, and I were thinking of taking a TA job for art scholars, so maybe we’ll see them later! 

(Sorry, I didn’t take a picture there!) 

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RIP my camera :(:(:(:(:(

Welp. As we were filming outside, the wind knocked my tripod over. The bad news? My camera lens is broken and that costs $$$ to fix. The good news? I’m currently using a Nikon Coolpix B500 and it’s nicer.

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I’ve starting watercoloring and I am very proud of it so far (I’ve been told that my painting of Brandi looks like Beyonce, which is probably the most flattering comment I’ve ever received, so that’s cool).

I’ve finished the layers of paint on Brandi’s face; honestly, the face is the most exciting part. Once I have to paint everything else, I get sad. Once I add more layers of watercolor to the hair, flowers, and background, I’ll go in for more detail with my prismacolor pencils. 

I haven’t bumped into any problems (yet), so that’s good (and also surprising). However, I am a little worried about how long it takes for me to complete a painting. I am someone who takes way longer than needed on my art; with all of these assignments, doing multiple portraits AND a behind-the-scenes video is going to be time consuming. Hopefully, if I really put my all into it, I’ll do a lot of the work I don’t complete during school over Spring Break.

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I’ve finally started sketching for one of the three interviews we’ve had so far. I’ll admit, I’m afraid to start watercoloring in fear of destroying everything, but we’ll see! 

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Watercolor Inspiration: Laovaan, a.k.a. one of my favorite artists!

Laovaan is a young, German artist who I’ve been following on social media for a very long time. His creates pieces of various media and styles, but I absolutely adore his use of watercolor. He tends to use very bright (sometimes muted) colors and elements of nature in his artwork, capturing the captivating essence of each piece. 

I’ve been observing his youtube speed paints to try and experiment with my own watercoloring style; granted, I’m not as experienced as he is, but I plan to develop my watercoloring skills over the course of this semester. 

Please follow him on social media; his artwork is amazing: 

http://laovaan.deviantart.com/ 

http://www.deviantart.com/users/outgoing?http://bit.ly/patreonlaovaan

http://www.deviantart.com/users/outgoing?http://facebook.com/Laovaan

http://www.deviantart.com/users/outgoing?http://bit.ly/laovaanstore

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CPSA Capstone Advising

Purpose/Mission Statement: We plan to expose the underrepresented beauty within colored women using visual art and cinematography (Alexia), as well as photography and poetry (Merissa). By conducting these interviews, both of us want to learn more about the struggles we face, but through the life of others; we want to understand the perspectives of our peers.   

Learning Objectives:

Merissa: 

1.)   I, along with Alexia, will conduct interviews with 15 women of color. 

2.)   I will photograph these 15 women of color. 

3.)   I will use editing software, such as Photoshop, to enhance their natural beauty.

4.)   I will collect the best images into a 15-20 based off the interviews and my own personal feelings of the idea of representation.  

Alexia: 

1.)   I, along with Merissa, will conduct interviews with 15 women of color. 

2.)   I will take what the women told us to create individual watercolor portraits

3.)   Depending on what they say, I may or may not include other elements in these portraits. 

4.)   I will edit the videos captured during the interview and include voice overs from Merissa’s poems, creating a “behind the scenes”-like video lasting at least 4 minutes.  

Workshop Process: We have created a google a doc where we documented all our preliminary ideas (i.e. people to ask, possible shooting locations, emails to send out, who said yes or no, etc.) We also created an exce document where we made a sign-up sheet available: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1PGp7Hviv5DCxJRIntE5vPUBSnTem3laI_KvGFfNVT7A/edit?usp=sharing 

 We will do research on things how colorism, representation issues outside of black women, the affect the media has on self-esteem, etc. We need two separate cameras for photography and video, an external sound recorder, external hard drives for extra space, tripods for the cameras, batteries, access to photo and video editing software, watercolor paint and brushes, paper, pen   and inspiration. We will both take process pictures and screenshots of our work and post them to our respective Tumblr websites.  

Resources: 

 Atlas of Beauty 

posing models 

 YouTube for examples of  cinematography 

Tumblr and Pinterest pages as inspiration for lighting 

Lib.umd.edu 

 Merissa’s high school photography teacher 

Project Timeline: 

February 10: Deadline for interview sign ups 

February 12: Being photoshoots

Each photoshoot date can  be seen in the excel google doc: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1PGp7Hviv5DCxJRIntE5vPUBSnTem3laI_KvGFfNVT7A/edit?usp=sharing

After each interview, we  will begin our individual projects 

Compile important parts of each interview for the behind the scenes video

  February 18: Have a good amount of research done about the     internal mechanisms of underrepresentation and how it affects women of     color mentally/physically. 

February 22 – March 1: Have some of work finished

 have at least 2-3 watercolor portraits finished or close to done. If not, than at least have the sketch and base colors

have those who have been interviewed photo-edited

have a basic script of      video (choose music, what goes where, etc.)

Spring Break: For those who could not make any of the times     made available, Spring Break photoshoots will be made available.

have half of artwork,  photography, and poetry finished

have a solid plan for the      video.

Begin planning out showcase poster (get all materials)

April 1: Finish all interviews

April 12-20: Have about 75-80% of work done.

 Wrap up video editing  

April 27: MUST BE FINISHED ALL WORK!!