End of the Year Reflections

   This year has been such a learning experience. Even though the school has taken away our art program some how my art teacher, Mrs. Kiick, has managed to do it all. From sketching fruit to creating a place setting just out of clay. Honestly, I thought by taking this class it was going to be an easy 'A,' but over the year I have realized art is so much more than just a grade. It takes time and effort. What you put in is was will come out. 
   There have definitely been some challenges along the way. I'm not that strong at drawing. I mean, I can draw if you give me something to draw, but the skill to just draw whatever comes to mind isn't my strong suit. What made me better at drawing is the freedom and interpretation Mrs. Kiick gave us have by choosing what we wanted to draw each marking period. Each assignment did have some 'ground rules,' but it gave us a bunch of possibilities. 
   Some of my favorite projects this year were definitely metal and clay. I really enjoyed the end results of both of them. The metal was quite tedious, but it was fun to see my ideas spring to life. The hardest part about the clay was the anticipation. "How will it turn out?" "Will it blow up in the kiln?!" "What if the glazes aren't right?" all these questions and no immediate answers. Once all those fears passed the completed look was spectacular.
   Overall I would say it's been a pretty great year. I will take the lessons I've learned and hopefully put them to the test during the summer. I've found the art can be relaxing. You just can't go into is thinking it's going to turn out perfect, but if you let loose the outcome could be amazing!

Noa B. Portfolio - slideshows

The Dinner Party

      Over the past couple of weeks we have been working with clay. It's gooey, cold, and messy, but sure fun to play with. The first week or so Ms. Kiick let is practice making bowls just to get the hang of clay. It's quite tricky actually. You have to roll out a large piece of clay which is really tiring. I was even breaking a sweat! Then you place the piece of rolled out clay onto a form. After that you cut off the excess clay and then use a heat gun to speed up the process of getting your clay off the form. When your clay is hard enough to peel off the form you then use the heat gun to achieve the basic shape of your bowl or whatever your making. The best stage of your bowl is called leather hard. It's where you can shape, trim, and almost do anything to your piece. After that you can then add any design or 'doo-dad' you want. Ms. Kiick then put our pieces into the kiln. Here a link that will explain what a kiln is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiln. When a piece comes out of the kiln it's time to glaze. This is really fun! It's basically like painting. You can mix a bunch of colors together to come up with your own unique color. After you glaze the piece it goes back into the kiln and then its basically done! 
      Once we conquered bowl making we moved onto our dinner piece set. I will be making a bowl, plate, and cup. I have finished the sculpting of the bowl now I'm on my plate. Everyone had to pick a person that they would represent through this set. When we are all done we will have lunch together using the ceramics we made. I chose to make my set with the influence of my family's friend Kate. She is more like an aunt to me since my mom and she really close. Kate loves sailing, sewing quilts, and nature. But, she is very honest and kind hearted. If I'm having any problems going on in my life I will always go to her to talk. She will listen and comprehend, but she definitely tells me if out of line in a situation. She doesn't sugar coat anything, but she is very loving.
      So, I decided for the bowl I would base it off of her love to sail. I don't have a picture unfortunately because it is in the kiln, but I'll describe it. It's pretty basic, but on the edges of the bowl I have waves coming off of it. I want it to look like an ocean and the waves will be whirling around the bowl. For my plate I am using her love to sew as my idea. I made a spool of thread and wiggled a long and skinny piece of clay around the plate, then I made a needle. My plan is to make a design on the base of the plate and have the needle be making a quilt in a way. I'm going to make the design some type of wave pattern so it will flow with the bowl. I'm not really sure what I'm going to do with the cup, but I'm brainstorming ideas, so I'll update when I know more. So far it's been a blast working with clay, but here and there I have my moments where I do get frustrated with it. I'm really eager to see how everyone's finished dinner sets turn out!

Here's a picture of my plate! It's not finished yet. I still have to make the quilt design, but so far I'm really pleased!

Finished Metals!

A couple of months ago I was working on my metals project. Well, I finally finished! I gave a couple pictures of what I envisioned my metal to look like on my previous blog post. The finished product looks quite accurate to the one I had in mind. The colors are a little different, but the textures in the piece are extremely cool. Once I cut all my pieces of metal out I textured them the way I wanted. For my main two bronze pieces I hammered little circle indents to the ends and with my two copper pieces I added a fish net design. After aligning all my pieces together I had to solder.  Here's a link on what soldering is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soldering. I used little pieces of solder to hold each of my metal pieces together. Sometimes picking up the solder and positioning it to the place you want was tricky, but I eventually got the hang of it. Then came the fun part! I took a torch and melted my metal pieces together. It was interesting seeing the metals dissolve into each other. My metal came to life. It had texture and different variations of colors. When I was done with the torch Ms. Kiick immediately dunked my metal into water. I heard a sizzle and saw a bunch of steam. When she took it out of the water I was in awe. It shocked me that I was capable of making such a creation. It was a pretty good feeling. 

Here are two pictures of my metal. The top one is my metal on a black piece of velvet and the bottom one is my metal hanging up on the board. It's interesting how my phone camera picked up both pictures. Then again my phone camera is very low quality.

Metals in Progress

 A picture of the cutting process of my metal

This week I started working with metal. I came up with three designs, but it came down to one that I love. Working with metal is very demanding to say the least. Once you have your design you have to make a prototype of it. When you like the way your prototype turns out you then have to figure out the type of metal you want for each part of your design. Then you have to outline each of your pieces on the appropriate metal you want to use. Finally the most irritating step up all. Sawing. You have these tiny saw blades that will cut through metal. It's actually quite astonishing how powerful they are. Did i forget to mention that this is all by hand? You have to saw up a down in a light motion. The slightest bit of pressure and snap! There goes your saw blade. Once you finally get into the metal from the edge it takes a while to achieve a simple cut. For the past four days all I've been hearing are saw blades against metal. Not the most pleasant sound. Although the process is monotonous the outcome is very rewarding. I'm not nearly finished yet, but what I'm seeing so far is satisfying. I can't wait to see all of my pieces textured and put together! I'll keep you updated throughout my process.

 A picture of my design. The color of the pieces represent the type of metal I'll use.

i.d.entity

This marking period I created a self-portrait, which portrayed my physical identity. I then created a collage that illustrated my hidden identity. An identity that wasn't obvious to the naked eye. My collage is fairly clustered. I started out with magazines, cutting out pictures that drew to my attention. I then brought in some of my own personal pictures. When I went through all these pictures I picked out the ones I enjoyed the most. Figuring out how to put feelings and emotions on a piece of cardboard was a challenging for me. I started out with crumpling little pieces of tissue paper. I then went over them with paint of the primary colors. Mixing those colors to make different ones. I then added pictures of icicles which represents the sad and dark feelings I've had and winding string that symbolized my never ending thoughts. There are some hidden pictures of my friends, events that have occurred in my life and even some quotes. I learned from Mrs. Kiick how to make pictures less evident. Techniques where you could make a transparent sheen over pictures or make your paint matte and not shiny. As an art class we all had to write a lune that went with our collage. Mine is... 

slowly opening up

masked by colors and textures

emotions deeply buried

It was a fun process making my collage. Being able to to glue on a bunch of stuff, but have it mean something more than just stuff. 

  

A Painted Face

Over the past couple months I've been working on my self portrait using the method of tempera batik. Here's a link I found that describes tempera batik- http://www.juliedunnfineart.com/content/view/46/94/. I worked for a long time on a substantial painting/portrait of myself. Right off the bat I had a feeling I wasn't going to like this assignment. The more I worked on it I found out it was pretty interesting to see if the finished product would look like me. The picture I decided to use for this assignment was a picture of me smiling pretty straight on. The most difficult part about this project was the painting. The paper we used was rather thick so the paint seeped right into it and dried quite quickly. It was hard to figure out how to shade with paint. All we were allowed to use was the color we created with black and white added to it. The black paint making your custom color darker and the white paint making it lighter. I found to be using more of the white than the black, but the black did come in handy, especially with the shadows of my face. Once I finished the painting part I inked it. I was hesitant to ink. All that work on the painting and now i have to cover it up with black ink?! I knew it had to be done though. Once the ink dried I rinsed it off and then went back into my portrait with colored pencils. I only used four colored pencils to achieve my finished portrait, a shade of purple, tan, white and black. My favorite part of this whole process was working on my teeth. Sounds kinda weird huh? Well it seemed to be that I was the only one who had braces in the portrait. It surprisingly wasn't that challenging for me to draw and paint them in. I think they give my portrait a unique touch. While it was long, tedious journey, I am exceptionally happy with the end result.