dylanj

[dylanj]

The Perception of the Past

“how has scientific evidence affected the view on Tyrannosaurus Rex through popular media”

The Bad Beginnings

Our understanding of the way dinosaurs had looked like and behaved on earth sixty-six million years ago has evolved drastically over the many years of their discovery, for instance, in around 1852, when the first few dinosaur fossils, people had extraordinarily little clue on the appearance of the creatures they had found. They had assumed that due to how reptilian the fossils look, then the dinosaurs would have resembled giant and terrible lizards which is how they got their name (“dinosaur” means terrible lizard in Latin). This had been the norm for how dinosaurs had looked like for many years as scientists hadn’t made the appropriate discoveries, such as feather imprints in the stone indicating that dinosaurs had a very common ancestor of modern-day birds, or the complete skeleton of the dinosaurs the first of all correctly assume what the animals form looked like, but to also to discover that dinosaurs, which had obtained two hind legs for walking and had the diet of a carnivore (this group of dinosaurs had been given the name “therapods” meaning beast foot), had a more horizontal posture rather than a vertical posture; this would allow them to balance more equally while using there tail as a counter balance. The Crystal palace dinosaurs are a perfect example of how the Victorians believed dinosaurs appeared to look like, due to the fragmented fossils which were discovered; they believed that the shells, found from ancient mollusc by the name of ammonites, where the fossilised remains of the creature’s eye.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_Palace_Dinosaurs#/media/File:Mantellodon_in_Crystal_Palace_Park.jpg (image reference)

https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/crystal-palace-dinosaurs.html#:~:text=The%20Crystal%20Palace%20dinosaurs%20were,to%20the%20public%20in%201854. (Information reference)

The Progressive Imagery

Fast forward a few years later closer to modern day and more scientific discoveries are being unearthed regarding the classification of dinosaurs, one in particular in 1902 changed everything they had knew about the general form, shape and appearance of the mighty tyrannosaurus rex. In 1902 in the Hell creek formation located in Montana, a palaeontologist by the name of Hunter Barnum Brown had unearthed an almost complete skeleton of tyrannosaurus rex; and in 1905, a man by the name of Henry Fairfield Osborn who had discovered a second skeleton gave the extinct creature its very name. looking at the photograph, the palaeontologists who were working on the skeleton did do a decent job in putting the bones together, however, they had failed to acknowledge that the tyrannosaurus rex standing in that posture would be absolutely preposterous as the joints in the leg would have given out if it were to reach that far in the socket. The scientists and media had come to the conclusion that due to both how reptilian the creature had looked, and the previous ideologies of dinosaurs from the past, that tyrannosaurus was a very reptile like creature, up to the point to where early sketches of tyrannosaurus rex where that of upstanding iguanas with head too analogous to that of modern lizards. This idea of a vertical posture can be seen in early films depicting dinosaurs such as “Lost World (1925)” where the tyrannosaur stands almost human like in order to take down a plump triceratops.

https://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/permanent/saurischian-dinosaurs/tyrannosaurus-rex (image reference)

https://www.amnh.org/dinosaurs/tyrannosaurus-rex#:~:text=Henry%20Fairfield%20Osborn%2C%20then%20the,Museum's%20Cretaceous%20Hall%20in%201960. (Who named the t-rex)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huoitHFVaBg (media influence)

The Best Movie Ever

Around 90 years later in 1993, a famous director by the name of steven Spielberg develop a new movie about the captivity and the reverse engineering of dinosaurs by the name of Jurassic Park. Not only dispelling common dinosaur myth such as the horizontal stance of the tyrannosaur; but Jurassic Park, with the aid of Stan Winston, had created a series of speculation about the long extinct animals which are still questioned today, for example, the inclusion of velociraptor displaying pack like behaviour, seen with the pack of the creatures lead by the alpha female of the group which was nicknamed “the big one” due to its enlarged size. Despite how popular and revolutionary Jurassic Park has been in shaping the view of dinosaurs such as tyrannosaurus rex, there are some inaccuracies with the world-famous movie, such as the statement name by the character John Hammond in which he says, “well we clocked the t-rex at 32 miles an hour”. This fact, for the time seemed correct for scientists, however more recent findings and research into the structure of how the muscles would have been layed out upon the body of tyrannosaurus rex show us a much slower speed, estimating around 15 miles an hour. In addition to getting inaccuracies regarding the tyrannosaurus, there are other species of dinosaur that are given features that are now depicted as inaccurate; for example, in Jurassic Park, we are presented with the terrifying and viscous velociraptor, depicted as six foot tall – this, I reality, was not the case. Velociraptor in reality was around the size of a small turkey, not only that but covered in contour feathers as it was a remarkably close ancestor to modern day birds. If there was a dinosaur within the Jurassic Park franchise that was highly inaccurate was the venom spitting dilophosaurus. In reality, there is no fossil evidence which suggests that dilophosaurus had the ability to projectile venom from within its mouth, let alone possess a neck frill; this is likely a design taken from Steven Spielberg in order to make the dinosaur appear more interesting.

Jurassic Park (1993) Directed by Steven Spielberg [feature film] Washington, DC

https://www.stanwinstonschool.com/blog/jurassic-park-t-rex-robot-almost-eats-crewmember (image reference)

The Feather Revolution

After the years of the constant aesthetic of the tyrannosaurus rex from Jurassic park being the world’s understanding of its appeal, scientists had continues there research, and in 2012, a palaeontologist by the name of Xing Xu discovered the fossilised remains of a close cousin to tyrannosaurus rex in which he named “yutyrannus” which in Latin is defined as “feathered tyrant”; this name was given to the creature due to how scientists discovered evidence of small downy feathers covering the body of the dinosaur. It is assumed that, due to how we now know that dinosaurs evolved into many species of bird, and how the close cousin yutyrannus had a coating of feathers, that many other dinosaurs had this feature, including tyrannosaurus rex. Though this is a possible theory, there is currently no fossil evidence of tyrannosaurus rex obtaining feathers; in addition to that, it is believed that the environment tyrannosaurus rex inhabited within was similar in that to the Florida Everglades, having more swamps and lakes; this fact alone raises the question that “why would tyrannosaurus rex have feathers if it lived in a warm and tropical environment?”. One possible theory that many scientists had come up with is that, if they had feathers, they would almost certainly be used only for display, rather like a peacock with its tail feather; used for attracting mates or intimidating rivals. The whole “feather craze” that conformed the theory of dinosaurs having feathers began in China in which Xing Xu again discovered a small dinosaur by the name of Sinornithosaurus which, even within the stone, showed us feather impressions and sign of fuzz. The idea of tyrannosaurus having feathers has now branched of through media in the form of documentaries such as “The Feathered Tyrant” which does indeed present us with tyrannosaurus rex, but with almost spike like feathers which, even compared with the type of feathers Yutyrannus had been seen with, was completely incorrect. If tyrannosaurus indeed had feathers, they would be much more downy and used primary for warmth, possibly for show in order to intimidate or attract members of the opposite gender.

https://www.everythingdinosaur.com/product/wild-safari-prehistoric-world-feathered-t-rex/ (image reference)

'Feathered Dragons’ (2011) Planet Dinosaur, season 1, episode two. BBC, 21st September.

Sue The Tyrannosaurus Rex

Now we move on to the present were our perception of tyrannosaurus rex had undergone a few minor but also major changes to its appearance; for example, in very recent research, scientists have come to the conclusion that tyrannosaurus rex, along will many other therapod dinosaurs, possessed the feature of lips to cover their teeth; this was made clear due to how the teeth would need to remain hydrated for their health. The idea of tyrannosaurus rex and other predatory dinosaurs having their teeth on display is due to how their modern-day close relatives (crocodilians, for example crocodiles and alligators) having their teeth displayed in this fashion; however, crocodilians like alligators are able to achieve this due to how they can hydrate their teeth due to the water in which they inhabit. Another major discovery that has changed our perception of tyrannosaurs rex was the extraordinary example of skin impressions left from the creature as it died. The fossils show that tyrannosaurus possessed, not large thick scales like that of a crocodile, small and rounded scales giving the texture of the animals’ skin similar to that of leather. After the many revolutionary discoveries, based on all the scientific evidence around the fossilised remains of the tyrant lizard king, a palaeontologist by the name of Sue Hendrickson (who was responsible for the discovery of the most complete skeleton of tyrannosaurus rex) put together a team, and in July 2020, they had created a life size model of a tyrannosaurus rex based on the size of the nicknamed skeleton by the name of “Sue” featuring a young or small species of hadrosaur within its jaws. Due to the fattening up of the animal due to the amount of muscle mass, people have now given the model the nickname of “Fleshy”. The new dinosaur documentary by the name of “Prehistoric Planet” I said to take a more scientifically accurate approach to dinosaurs, displaying chunkier tyrannosaurs with lips, and small raptors with contour feathers.

Red Raptor Writes (2021) The Truth About Killer Dinosaurs (2005) Accuracy Review | Dino Documentaries RANKED #9 [online video] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6YOtq-ZGLU [Accessed 12/04/2022]

https://twitter.com/starlegelg/status/1294029870675177480 (image reference)

[dylanj]

life drawing: the end of an era

today is a sad day for me as it is unfortunately the last day I would have with my first year life drawing teacher. countering my self suggestion from last week, I did not zoom in upon a specific body parts, but instead I had learnt something in which had aided me throughout today which was the saying that “its not what something is, its what its doing”, this meant that it doesn’t matter what the body part looks like, its about how the body part is interacting within the plane of view; its better for the observer to make out what the different body parts are, but its the artists job to make sure to make those body parts are interreacting with the environment around it. during the first three minute paintings, I did begin to go into old habits which meant I completely filled in the shape of the form of the life model, however after that began to do more of an outline design which meant I had the colour of the paper as the colour for the model. the more i focused on what the different body parts (particularly the legs and hands), the more interesting the paintings began to look; rather than a mannequin looking object being presented, I feel that I had successfully painted a human form upon the page of paper. I had used a variety of different brushes in order to create different marks upon the page; one thing in which I had learnt about marks is that they have pressure, direction, and speed. i had used a medium brush in order to dab the paint upon the red block giving it a form of texture as i wanted to differentiate that object from the texture of the other objects in the piece such as the curtains or the pillow. overall, today was a very successful day in terms of the development of my time in life drawing; looking back on my first lesson of life drawing, i can visually view the progression of the quality of my work as the model looks more like a human rather than a deformed stature.

[dylanj]

life drawing: negative space

in this lesson of life drawing, i decided to return to the fun learning environment that is the studio due to me wanting to come in and see what im drawing. as my life drawing instructor says, "the diffeence between a camera and us is that a camera doesn't measure space or air, but only light." this meant that if i wanted to paint the full extent of the namure of the objects around the studio, i had to be within the studio to understand how they ineract with one another. in this lesson, i wanted to do something different to see what would happed, so rather than me painting how i normally do (making a blob then molding it into the form of an arm for instance), i instead painted around the the edges of the body, almost letting the colour of the paper displaying the form of the model. this i will practice with as i need to also include the objects around within the negative spaced person. perhaps next week i may experiment with zoom, in terms of focusing on a specific object such as the headless mannequin, or the models face in order for me to finally have facial features upon one of my paintings.

[dylanj]

in today's lesson in life drawing, i had to stay at home for this session to recover from a medical emergency which i had experienced on sunday after work. today, i had continued to use the paint with the medium of oil as i wanted to see if i coupd improve on the tonal values of my paintings. with the first four starter paintings, i did indeed paint the background before the rime time started; i did this in order to capture as much of my field of view as was possible. unlike last time, i managed to capture the differenrlt stages very well; the different postures overlapping each other almost tell a story while displaying movment with the the differently positioned model. despite my admiration for the first four images, unfortunately the same can not be said about my longer painting. i just dont like how i went about painting the face of the model; there is litte to no detail upon the face aside from some small tonal values. also the shape of the head seems a bit wonkey, a tad bulbous and too elongated.

[dylanj]

in todays life drawing session, i once again had to stay in the sanctuary of my home due to a bad case of hayfever, however this had given me a perfect opportunity to test out my new set of oil paints i had recieved not too long ago. i understand i am meant to use the media of acrylic paint to use, however i wanted to experiment with a different type of paint on order to see for myself how the paint behaves on the mediam of my choice that being coloued paper. i did enjoy the process of the starting paintings as it allowed me to gradually progress in adding detail to the painting such at the reflection of the light on the sholder, or the folds in the background of the curtain. overall I am very pleased with my final painting: through out my time in life drawing class i had always found illustrating the clothes to be cumbersone and confusing, however know i have discovered a way of making it easier for myself...by concentrating of the form of whats infront of me and not what it actually is, it allowed me to unwind and treat this more like a painting than sonething ultra sentimental.

[dylanj]

life drawing: missing stages

in this lesson of life drawing, we had continued to paint using the colour pallet from an artbook found within the classroom in order to create the paintings; however in this life drawing session, I had made a fatal mistake in the beginning of the lesson. before we had the task of doing our 3 minute paintings, I had decided to paint ahead and fill in the area of my page with the surrounding areas in order to fill in the painting as much as possible. for each 3 minute paintings, I wanted to overlap the model over the previous painting in order to try and play around with the idea of movement and position; however, I had made the grand error in not taking photographs of the separate stages of development, or at least the separate model paintings in order to show the different layers and how they shift with each other. aside from that mistake, I used the painting techniques in which I had learnt last week (the process of dabbing the paintbrush on the page in order to create a differentiation of textures) in order to fill in the patterned and differently textured objects around the studio: i have learnt to paint as much of the world in my field of view as I could, not like a camera as all they do is capture light - they don't capture the full nature of the object or the texture of the material. overall I have, once again, very much enjoyed this session of life drawing, and I admire my paintings as a result of attending the sessions, however one thing that happened in today’s session of life drawing can only be described as a display of my clumsiness.

[dylanj]

For this essay, I have decided to chose the topic of the action of taking a photograph of food. I had chosen this topic for a personal reason and opinion of mine which is the following; I personally cant stand it when I am eating out somewhere and my sister or mother decided to take a picture of there meal, which in turn leaves the rest of us to wait until said person has taken there photograph. This separate topic is a tangent to the theme of social relevance and how people have this obsession with becoming socially important in a shallow and underserving manner. This photograph you see before you was taken in a small bar by my young step sister who's name I shan't disclose for moral reasons. The story behind it was that this was her first time visiting me in harrow, so we went to the bar to get some drinks and food. I had ordered a burger with fries and onion rings, however, she had stopped me in order to take a photograph of my food. I asked her “do you want to get something to eat so you can take a picture of that?”, and in response, she replied with “nah, I'm not hungry, but that looks so nice though”.

Sontag, S. (1933-2004) On Photography. New York: Penguin, pp 6.

"photographs will offer indisputable evidence that the trip was made, that the program was carried out, that fun was had"

For this photograph, we again went to a restaurant together, this time it was in archway, it was my first time visiting my father and his girlfriend in their new apartment. My father suggested we go to the new Italian restaurant a few blocks down in order to have our lunch; however my stepsister, after eating there the previous day, wasn’t too keen on the idea of returning to the same place again for her with her, and my sister, they will not eat the same food for more than one time for around three weeks. We had arrived at the restaurant and rather reluctantly, my stepsister orders a peperoni pizza as she didn’t want to have the same food as she did last time. When her food arrived, she gasped in how nice and delicious the pizza looked, but rather then take a bite out of the pizza like I would, she reaches for her phone to take another food photo. The strangest thing about that day was after she had taken that picture, she was satisfied with everything, including the fact that we had brought her to the place we had eaten at before; almost as if taking a photograph of something pretty had calmed her down, and the likes and comments would cheer her up in the end.

For this photograph, unlike the previous ones, wasn’t taken by my stepsister, but by my biological sister with 25 years of age with whom I live with. On this occasion, we went out to celebrate my fathers birthday when he had reached 50 year old at a different Italian restaurant by the name of ZAZA located within pinner. The plan was to had dinner there, then walk down to the dessert lounge 5 minutes away for dessert. This however, did not take place that day as you will later come to see. Before we had arrived at the restaurant, I and my sister were taking the mickey out my dad and making a few jokes about how old he had become; my dad, understanding the joking atmosphere didn’t take what we said to heart. When we went in to receiver our food, my sister was rather excited to see what my dad’s order due to how delicious and appetising it looked. What was baffling about this situation was the fact that my sister took a day that was meant to be all about dad and his birthday, but she had decided to stop everything everyone else was doing in order to only take a picture of the meal which he was about to have. This is a grey area in my opinion because there are two sides to the coin; she was taking a picture of what my dad had ordered and was about to eat for the likes and tad bit of attention, but on the other hand, we have a photograph on what my dad had ordered on his 50th birthday and where it had taken place within.

In the case of this particular photograph, it was taken again by my sister. It was a Sunday evening, and I had just ended my shift at work. I was tired and hungry; then my father rang me on my mobile phone to inform me that him, his girlfriend, my stepsister, my actual sister and her boyfriend were to meet each other at a Greek restaurant located in Holloway road.  The travel too a rather long and tedious time as my oyster card had ran out so I had to use my debit card which annoyed me because I don’t like spending my money, so as a result I had to ask my sister to drop me off at the house to which she had obliged. I arrived in the restaurant after a lengthy search in a new area, to which my dad congratulated me on finding the place by myself. They had already ordered their food as I did arrive a half hour late, so I had a scavenge on everyone's plates such as there fries, a few scrapes of salami, and their salad. As I only had to remaining scraps from everyone else, I had to order some fries for myself; when they had arrived, I was rather surprised about the presentation of them, as they had been wrapped within a salad with two bits of bread along with a salad. Unsurprisingly to me, my sister had spotted this and immediately reached for her phone to take the photograph.

This photograph, unlike all of the previous photographs, this particular photograph was taken by my father at a diner within pinner. It was a Saturday in the afternoon, my father had travelled down from archway to give me and my sister a visit. We decided to go out to eat to catch up upon each others endeavours within the week. One thong to know about my father was the fact that he had a nasty habit of combing desserts with lunch and dinner together to have a full day course meal of some sort- he had told me once he had curry with ice cream on a cone, so this wasn’t a challenge to eat for my father. He had ordered blueberry pancakes along with chicken strips and a small bowl of maple syrup. Not to my surprise, my sister had a plain look of disgust and cringe at the mere sight of this amalgamation of dietary nutrition, however the same could not be said about me as I found the entire situation to be rather humorous and interesting, mainly due to both his reaction of not understanding what he was doing being social bizarre, but the strange looks we would get from the other customers as he proceeded to indulge in his Frankenstein lunch.

 Sontag, S. (1933-2004) On Photography. New York: Penguin, pp 6.

“A way of certifying experience, taking photographs is also a way of refusing it – by limiting experience to a search for the photogenic, by converting experience into an image, a souvenir. "

[dylanj]

life  drawing: collaboration

in today’s lesson on life drawing, we had continued to decipher our pallet via an artist within a book in order to have an interesting and related source of media; except in this lesson, we were told to walk around the studio and edit another students work. what I had to remember was to discard any emotional attachment I had towards other peoples work, and instead be as impolite as possible in order for me to actually edit there work; aside from being impolite, I had to consider re-arranging the composition, maybe looking at another angle at the model, or zooming into my field of view at a particular noun. in my honest opinion, I didn't like the practice of other people editing my work as I had a vision of what the the final piece would look like, however saying that, I did like the process of using different types of paint strokes for different objects and textures. with all the techniques I had learnt by editing the other students work to compose a painting my using all the area of the page a painting is all about using as much space as possible. overall, i enjoyed this lesson as, not only did this allow me to continue the practice of drawing the proportions of the human being, but it also taught me to use different types of mark making with the paint such as dry strokes, wet strokes, or even dabbing the paint on the page.

[dylanj]

life drawing lesson: the green man

in today’s lesson of life drawing, I had returned to campus in order to undergo the lesson as I wanted to get back to working within an educational environment, but also as o decide which angle of the model I was to paint. for the colour palate of these paintings, I once again chose a painting from an art book and used some of those artist colours. I had chosen to use green as, not only could you easily increase the number of shades within the pigment, but also due to the fact that one of the other colours which I had chosen was yellow; this is relevant as I had thought to use the yellow acrylic paint as the lighter tonal value for the green, however I did end up using the yellow more as an abstract colour, for example, the colour of the first models shirt; the colour of the shirt was originally white with red, blue and yellow sided cubes as a design; with this being the case, I had decided to instead switch the white with a yellow in order to both make the piece appear more abstract and varied, and to also bring out the brightness of the shirt without giving it so much visual attention. with the first set of paintings, the model was running rather late, so as a result Aldous stepped in a became the model himself. it was rather fun and amusing to see him up there as, even with him posing in a position for a curtain amount of time, he continued to give us artistic advise and digressions.

[dylanj]

life drawing: superhero version

in this lesson of life drawing, I had continued to work from home to further my experiment to see if I could still create nice and developed painting from home rather than a life drawing studio. this session was rather different as we would normally have a nude model come in so we could see ever part of the human body and how each part moves and what they do; but in today’s session, we had a model fully clothed with every so often a switch of costume. in my case, the switch to drawing nude to clothed people was rather interesting to me as it meant I wouldn't have to paint skin and muscle, but the creases of trousers and the folds of the costume. in compassion to my nude paintings, painting the model with clothes was particularly hard for me as I was so used to illustrating and painting unclothed models, that when it came to painting this model, I was not prepared with the skills for drawing the clothes. aside from that, I feel that the results were satisfactory to me as I had made sure to use up as much space on the page as possible; I had remembered a quote from Aldous telling us “painting is always about using area” which meant that I was to paint as much as i could in order to both fill the canvas, but also to capture as much of the world as possible.

[dylanj]

life drawing: art from home

in todays life drawing session, i wanted to test an idea in which i had on monday, which was to see if i could still paint within the rules of life drawing sessions before, but within my household; and to my surprise i was correct in that i can be just as or even more efficient in painting the life model. i decided to use the same colour palette i had used for last week as, not only did i feel that the colours which i had used that day were very interesting, i wanted to see if there was anything i could do with the colours in this session which i didnt use them for in last weeks session. in conclusion, i had fun working from home, not as much fun as i would in the studio, with what i believe to be successful painting painted with eater colour paint as a substitute for acrylic paint.

[dylanj]

life drawing: painting boldly

in todays life drawing session, i had the task of using paint yet again to create art pieces of the model presented in front of me. when i begun to paint these particular paintings, i decided to fill in much more area and space within the canvas size in order to capture more of what is happening around the model and what is interacting with him and how they are doing it. i had chose a blue and orange-yellow paint as, not only where they a reference to a painting which i had seen in an artbook, they are very opposite colours; yellow is a light and soft colour which can be used for areas with lighter areas of tone, whereas the blue is a much bolder and heavier colour which makes it ideal for the darker areas of tone within the painting. something which i had learnt and taken down in my notes is “colour only works with what’s next to it.”, meaning that until you have a colour on its own, it wouldn’t mean anything in terms of what it is or what it’s doing, however if you have a second colour beside the first one, then much more sense would be made about how the colours communicate what it is the painter is trying to tell the viewer. overall, i am quite happy with the outcomes in which i have painted, especially the last painting as, not only did we have more time on this particular painting meaning i could get as much detail on the painting as is humanly possible, i had learnt from all my previous paintings before how to improve and add curtain details within the painting, whether it be the mixing of blue and yellow to get my darker shade, or using my pink paint in order to highlight the more light exposed areas.

[dylanj]

contextual studies homework: the snap that smiles back.

Sontag, S. (1933-2004) On Photography. New York: Penguin, pp 6.

"photographs will offer indisputable evidence that the trip was made, that the program was carried out, that fun was had"

for the assignment in which i was tasked to do from home, i was asked to read through the book by the name of "On Photography” and take a quote which interested me, then take a photograph of something in which the quote can be matched with in a sense. for my quote, which is above, i chose a photograph of a sunset in the amazon win which a had take a holiday in. in any doubt that i did indeed go to the country Brazil, i have a picture of me with the Christ of Redima. i have chosen to select my sunset photo as this very quote is telling people that i have indeed been to the amazon and i did have fun in the rainforest. however, one thing i have realised while typing this out is how despite me actually going to Brazil, and the quote stating that taking a photograph in a location is definitive proof to said person going to that one spot, i have noticed that sometimes the photograph can be covering a lie, meaning that the person didn't infact go anywhere and instead got that picture from the internet; in addition to that, with the freedom of Photoshop, people can still get away with pretending they went somewhere when in reality they didn't.

[dylanj]

life drawing: here comes the paint

This week in life drawing class, i had the opportunity to work with acrylic paint as a media for my artpieces. i was tasked in using predominantly the three primary colours of yellow, red and blue, however i mixed the blue and the red together so that i have my yellow paint included with a newly made purple. i chose these two colours as i had learnt during the class that these two particular colours happen to be complimentary as they are somewhat opposites towards one another. unlike using the ink, using the paint felf more restrictive as with the ink i was doing monotone pieces whereas with these new ones i had the choice of 2 colours. however, there were some successfull outcomes which i had pained, for example the first painting. i captured the form of the model nicely, i used different brush techniques for the shading of the body, i increased the amount of water used on areas with softer shade transitions. overall, i would say i enjoyed todays life drawing class.

[dylanj]

artist research project 3 contextual studies

Who is Alex Solis? What does he specialise in?

Alex Solis is an artist who specialises in illustration which, in my mind, branches along many different themes such as pop culture, nature, and many more. One particular theme in which Alex Solis seems to enjoy working with is the theme of pop culture icons such as horror movie stars such as Freddy Krueger or Jason Voorhees. The way that Alex Solis manipulates the characters into the different themes is what I find quite interesting; for example, with the art piece by the name of “Baby Freddy”, it depicts a world-famous slasher villain as an infant: more importantly is how Alex Solis used the knowledge from the “Nightmare On Elm Street” on Freddy Krueger­­­­­ to have the horror icon sleeping, acknowledging the unique nightmare-possessing powers of Freddy Krueger. The main point of Alex Solis depicting these famous pop culture icons in this sort of manner is to illustrate them in a way in which the audience has never visualised them before; altering their identity if you will, to experiment with different appearances or characteristics in order to capture a different side to the characters personal persona.

Which particular theme of Alex Solis’s work do you most admire and why?

In my opinion, the theme I find the most interesting about the work of Alex Solis is his art collection by the name of “The Adorable Circle of Life” as I find the animal in which we share our environment with on earth. What I find most interesting about this collection of Alex Solis’s art collection is how he illustrates their identity and personality in the form of extreme cartoonism in addition to graphic imagery involving the maiming and consumption of the prey animal within the illustration piece. One of my favourite examples of this the art piece of his by the name of “cobra and mongoose” where Alex Solis Depicts a sort of battle between predator and prey as he illustrates both predators inflicting critical damage towards each other as opposed to having the single predator achieving more damage to the prey animal without them defending themselves. This characteristic of the mongoose in this illustration gives the animal more personality and more of an identity as it has the courage and will power to defend itself through the medium of an attack upon the snake’s body.

Explain what you most dislike about the artwork of Alex Solis. Why?

If I had to select one characteristic from the work of Alex Solis in which I dislike the most, it would be the plain but bold coloured backgrounds in which he has placed his characters within. I feel that if more effort was put on wit a possible background to match the character illustrated in the foreground, then the illustration piece would be more effective an appealing to his particular audience who I believe to be people around the age of early teens as they are more knowledgeable and more easy to identify the characters; for instance, take the illustration piece in the collection “icons unmasked” by the name of “Squidward as Benson”; by itself I find the piece interesting as both characters match each other’s personality and behaviours, however in my opinion, what would make the piece even better would be an intersection of a setting illustrating a cross breed of there respective worlds; for instance the background could be set in Jellyfish Fields to fit in with Squidward’s world, and within the field there would be elements of the tv show “regular show” such as the shed of the park or even the park house where the character Benson would be most commonly found or sighted in.

Explain your first impression of the artist. Has it changed overtime?

To be perfectly honest, I had discovered Alex Solis purely by chance. My first encounter with Alex Solis’s artwork was when I was in high school when I was around the age of 14 years. I had to find an artist in which I had interest in, however I had not a clue who to create a research paper upon, so I had typed into the google search bar “cartoon animal artists,” in which I had stumbled upon Alex Solis. Quite frankly, at that age I was slightly squeamish about things graphic and violent, so when I first witnessed some of the illustrations presented to me via the internet, I was quite uncomfortable at the sight of many of the characters seen before me, whether it be the gore in nature presented to me from the collection “The Adorable Circle of Life”, or the disturbing imagery of the collection “Baby Terrors”. However, despite my first impression of the illustrations by Alex Solis which I had witnessed when I was 14 years of age, now that I am more mature and used to seeing more horror movies in my time, I can say that I much more appreciate and understand Alex Solis’s artwork in terms of what he is attempting to communicate towards his audience.

Would you recommend this artist to your friends or family?

In my opinion, I would very highly recommend this artist to many of my friends. I would do this, not only to bring more awareness towards Alex Solis’s, but one of my friends in particular (who I met in college) absolutely adores everything dark, disturbing, and gruesome. In addition to that friend in particular, I believe most if not all of my friends would appreciate Alex Solis’s artwork for what the artist is trying to communicate in terms of an artistic level. If I had to recommend Alex Solis’s artwork to anyone in my family, it would have to be either my mother or sister as they could observe more what is going on in the illustration as opposed to my father, who  most of the time doesn’t understand most if not anything relating to the subject of art; the most he could possibly say when being asked “what do you think about this artist’s work” is ‘that’s nice’.

[dylanj]

100 artists manifestos homework. find a manifesto

after a read from the book by the name of “100 Artist Manifestoes from the futurists to to Stuckists”, which was written by Alex Danchev, I have located an example of a manifesto which I find to be rather interesting for personal reasons.  Danchev, A. (2011) 'The Foundation of Manifesto of Futurism (1909)',100 Artists Manifestos. London: Penguin, pp. 1. is where I had discovered a manifesto concocted by the Italian poet by the name of “Filippo Tommaso Marinetti” which had read;

[”we wish to free our country from the stinking canker of its professors, archaeologists, tour guides and antiquarians.

For far too long Italy has been a marketplace for junk dealers. We want our country free from the endless number of museums that everywhere cover her like countless graveyards. Museums, graveyards! … They’re the same thing, really, because of their grim profusion of corpses that no one remembers”]

based from this text alone, I can safely say that in the mind of F.T Marinetti, he strongly disagrees with the very idea of museums extraordinarily upsetting as he finds them to be a sadistic and mortifying place filled with the decaying bodies of historical memorabilia such as ancient ruins from archaeological landmarks, to historical paintings which in his opinion “painters and sculptors, who are furiously stabbing one another to death with colours and lines, all along the walls where they vie for space.” he is upset and outraged that the people of Italy had been displayed with the lack of integrity; “what I won’t allow is that our miseries, our fragile courage, or our sickly anxieties get marched daily around these museums.”

[dylanj]

life drawing class: inky blinky

in this lesson of life drawing class, it was mainly an experimental experience for me as ink isnt usually a choice of media i would prefer to use, but after todays lesson, i come to find that using ink is rather enjoyable and produces rather successful outcomes. in one piece, i had used a method of using mixed media in order to colour in certan areas of the surrounding areas such as the clothed stage. i had also leant a new word today by the name of "irodencent" which is refering to the refractive suface of ink which could be compared to the armour of a beatle or the texture of black oil.