Title: UnKnown Feelings Size: 6 x 9 (inch) Medium: Block Print / Ink Date of Completion: 08-12-2021
Exhibition
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ UnKnown Feelings is a two piece art that is heavily inspired by the anarchic feeling of David Feingold’s, “Glaring Through Bipolar Eyes,” and the emotion behind “Transcendent” by Joshua Miels. The art is meant to show the uneasy feeling one gets when it is unknown what emotion to feel. Honestly, this art piece may only be completely understood by a few people who gaze at it because, in my experience, most people have a pretty good grip on their emotions, or at least know how to feel them. |
Inspiration
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The art piece with the close up of the face takes a lot of inspiration from David Feingold’s, “Glaring Through Bipolar Eyes,” this is because of the seemingly disorganized and messy lines of the piece. If multiple colors were able to be used on my piece then I would have definitely gone with the multicolored look of that work by David. What was interesting with his peace was the way he made the peace look abstract yet you could still make out the features of the face. I wanted to use that in my peace, not only just for artistic value but also to just make the art piece easier to make, not being able to put in as many details in the work. Similar thoughts were used to create the second piece of the artwork. Although I took more inspiration on the outskirts of David's artwork, with how there seems to be multiple swirls on the borders of his peace. Although his lines went all the way to the outskirts of the drawing, I wanted my piece to flare out towards the ends. David has stated that his work “began as personal, self-therapy, to help process my accidental coming out of having bipolar disorder during a manic phase. My art has a purpose –to bring attention to the inner struggle of having a mental illness…” and I have never related to another artest so much. Every work of art of mine is a showcase of my headspace and the craziness that goes on in there. And after I read that, I knew that I definitely wanted to look more into his art. A brain injury from a car crash in his teen years resulted in challenges from temporal lobe epilepsy and bipolar disorder. He has been to many schools, and has received many degrees such as “Bachelor's degree in Art Education from Southern Illinois University, a Masters in Visual Design from the Institute of Design at the Illinois Institute of Technology, and a Doctorate in Disability Studies from National Louis University.” As such a talented artist, undergoing a very difficult-to-deal-with mental illness, it is very inspiring to see, and I'm sure I will be inspired by him again. As for taking inspiration from “Transcendent” by Joshua Miels, I mainly took inspiration from the feelings behind the piece. An article going in depth about how he does his work stated that he focuses on the "vulnerability of men who suffer from issues." I took inspiration off of that because I knew that I wanted my piece to be for others with mental issues. For taking inspiration from the physical piece itself, the same article states that he breaks down his subjects faces into shapes and lines on a computer software, and then builds up on those shapes. I knew that on both of my pieces I wanted just basic shapes for a person to be able to look at and see what was on the canvas. Joshua Miels is a very talented artist who has made it into a little under 10 exhibitions, and has a few over 10 awards in art. He also has a large following on social media. Unfortunately not much else was found on him, however with such talent, I’m positive that more about who he is as a person, not just an artist, will come to light. |
Process / Experimentation
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The first thing I did when I was planning what to draw, was look at the different elements of art in each of my inspiration pieces. When I was looking at Transcendent by Joshua Miels, I noticed that he uses dull and muted tones of color. With that, he only really uses four colors, just a different tone of each color. He uses very saturated versions of the colors for Shadows and more dull colors for everything else. For his lines it seemed as if uses very swift moving lines, meaning that he didn't put much thought into some of his lines. However, I say “some of his lines” because with the lines of his prominent facial features, he would have had to really think about the placement of his brush in order to get the intended effect. He also used vertical lines on the top of his painting that makes me look at his painting up and down in movement. As far as his style, it's really generically messy. His work reminds me of some of Monet's paintings with how realistic they are from afar, but if you were to look up close and really pay attention to the brush strokes it would just kind of look like a mess of color. After realizing that I wanted to have prominent shadows. I didn't want to just have outlines in my piece. For my lines I wanted to move quickly for the least important lines, but obviously pay attention, and move slowly, to how I'm moving with my carving tool when going into the elaborate details of say, the nose. I also wanted my work to kind of look messy in a generic sense, but I still wanted the viewer to be able to see what's going on. When I was coming up with some generic sketches for what I wanted to do, I was playing around with the style a lot and I was trying to figure out where I'd be able to have a lot of shadows. I was playing around with different angles where the face could be as well. But from my inspiration, I did know that I wanted messy lines and a cluttered background. |
When I was looking at Glaring Through Bipolar Eyes by David Feingold, I did the same process. When I looked at the colors of the Peace I noticed how saturated they were, and how he used different colors for shadow as opposed to only using dark versions of color. I noticed that he used specific colors like a bright red, purple and blue for the foreground whereas for the background he used blacks and Browns. As far as lines I noticed that they're very organic moving, infused with a lot of circles. Feingold didn't seem to really have much intended movement in his piece, meaning that I didn't really have a set path to look at, unlike transcendent in how I was looking up and down most of the time. Fot David’s style I noticed that you can really only see dominant features of the face such as the eyes, nose, and mouth and barely even that. It also seemed like he just took an image of someone's face and pasted it into his work.
When I was looking at elements that I wanted to use and be inspired by I was looking at the way he had very organic lines, and I knew I wanted to have a very organic feeling to my piece as well. I also wanted some sort of circles going on in my piece. I wanted to use my lines to make the viewer just have random have to look at, I didn't really want a set way the person should look at my piece. As for inspiration of style I knew that I wanted to have the dominant features have a lot of detail.
I was playing around with some sketches, and I came up with the idea of having some lines going throughout the eyes. I'm not really sure where this came from, but I know that this is the point where I thought of it. I also played around with the idea of having some circles around my piece because I knew I wanted some of that. Originally I was playing with an idea of having some circles at the bottom that eventually just turned into squiggles. I obviously didn't stick with that exact idea, but I do have some aspects in it.
When I was looking at elements that I wanted to use and be inspired by I was looking at the way he had very organic lines, and I knew I wanted to have a very organic feeling to my piece as well. I also wanted some sort of circles going on in my piece. I wanted to use my lines to make the viewer just have random have to look at, I didn't really want a set way the person should look at my piece. As for inspiration of style I knew that I wanted to have the dominant features have a lot of detail.
I was playing around with some sketches, and I came up with the idea of having some lines going throughout the eyes. I'm not really sure where this came from, but I know that this is the point where I thought of it. I also played around with the idea of having some circles around my piece because I knew I wanted some of that. Originally I was playing with an idea of having some circles at the bottom that eventually just turned into squiggles. I obviously didn't stick with that exact idea, but I do have some aspects in it.
Process / Experimentation
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ When I was first going into this project I didn't know exactly what I wanted to do but I didn't know that I wanted some mental illness aspects of it. My first idea was a three-part piece about mental health. It was to show someone bringing themselves out from a mental breakdown. And it was going to have a lot of texture and movement going on. I liked this idea because the idea of someone bringing them sleeves out of a difficult situation was something that you don't hear a lot about. There is a lot of coverage about the process of a person going into a mental breakdown, and how they act in that state, but rarely do you see someone being able to bring themselves out, and by themselves at that. My second idea was a two-part piece that showed mental health in a similar way. This was going to show a person looking up for hope after having a mental breakdown. It was going to have a little bit of texture but a lot of shadows. Most of the texture was going to be in the lines showing the shadow. This is when I started to really think about what I wanted to do and look into more inspirational pieces. After I'd seen my inspiration pieces and had those sketches I came up with some final thoughts. My third and final idea that I sketched up, was a two-part peace. I was going to try and think of a third piece to do, but I wanted to have a safeguard in case I messed up, so I decided to keep it at two. This idea showed a person having a mental breakdown of some sort and a zoom in kind of look on their face. The first piece took a lot of inspiration from my second idea. It showed some sort of shadowy tunnel going down on the person. I used a lot of the texture and messiness from idea one in my final piece as well. For the second part of the art, I again took the messiness of idea one and put it in this. It was surprising to see that even before I saw my inspiration pieces and knew that I wanted some sort of “squiggles” in my work, but I guess it worked out in the end. I ended up on this being my final sketch, because, not only did it include a few aspects of each of my first two sketches, but I also just liked the idea of being able to see what mental illness can look like from a far, and as well as if you were able to see what mental illness does to the mind, just in an interesting idea. You don't see both aspects in art a lot. |
Process / Experimentation
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ After I had my sketches all drawn up, I put them on to the lithium block prints slabs. I did the close up one first, because I figured it would take the most amount of time saying how it had the most detail. I started out by just drawing the basic shape of the face and then I started working on the nose. It was challenging to get the lines as small as I wanted them. After that I started working on the lips. Really, I was just procrastinating because I knew that the eyes were going to be the most difficult to do. But nevertheless I started working on the eyes. Throughout the process, and after working on the cheekbones and a more fine facial structure, I had learned that it's easier to do the curved lines first and then do any straight lines I need to do. Using that method when I was trying to do the details of the curved lines I wasn't constantly getting stopped by any straight lines that I'd already carved. After that I moved on to the background. After I finished all of the squiggly lines of the background and realized that it kind of looked plain, and not as messy as I wanted it to, I decided to add some little straight lines. I don't know why that's what I chose to do, instead of just adding more squiggles, but it kind of reminds me of when an image in a video game or something is glitching and it gets those lines, or if something is supposed to be 3D. After I was done with that, I wanted to do a test run to see what it would look like with ink, so I tried putting acrylic paint on it. I'm not sure if it was my technique, or if it was because I didn't make my lines thick enough, or if it was just because you don't put acrylic on this medium, but none of my details were coming out right. Some of the main ones that were really thick lines came out, but the smaller center lines that I really liked weren't showing up. I tried seven different ways of doing this, I tried more paint, less paint, I even tried putting compressed charcoal over it and seeing if that could help anything or at least give me a stamp of some sort, but nothing was working. After that I went back in and made my thin lines thicker, even though the small lines are what I liked about it, because it was very difficult to do, I just thought it'd help. But after all of that I made those lines thicker and I tried it again and it kind of worked a little better. So after all of that I figured I'll just try to do thicker lines on the second piece and I'll try to use the proper ink for my final piece. After I was done, when I moved on to the tunnel piece, I started with the left side of the tunnel's shadow thing. I still don't really know how to explain what that is, maybe it could be described as the aura of a person. And then when I got to the person, it was really hard to get the details and I wanted to because I had to make those lines thicker. The person, in the end, kind of just looked like a squiggly blob, more than a person, but I know it's a person and that's all I care about. I then put in those lines that I had from the first piece again, and then I was done. |
Reflection
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I do really like this piece, It has a lot of meaning to me. I really love putting my own emotion into my art, and that's exactly what I did. Its no secret to anyone who knows me, mental illness is important to me, and I feel like as a society, we need to talk about it more. as an art, this was difficult for me to do, because I don't have that much experience in this medium. I was a little upset I couldn't get as much detail work as I wanted, but maybe Ill go back and try again another time.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I do really like this piece, It has a lot of meaning to me. I really love putting my own emotion into my art, and that's exactly what I did. Its no secret to anyone who knows me, mental illness is important to me, and I feel like as a society, we need to talk about it more. as an art, this was difficult for me to do, because I don't have that much experience in this medium. I was a little upset I couldn't get as much detail work as I wanted, but maybe Ill go back and try again another time.
Similarities and Difference
similarities-
- mental illness as a theme of the art - line, organic, fast moving -style, heavy detail on the main details of the face -movement, with the directions of the line being so messy, intention was to have no real set way too look at the piece -color, will have multiple colors differences- -movement, although the intent was to have no real way too look at the piece, that no how it turned out. the tunnel makes the eye look up and down, and the eyes of the second piece make the eye look left to right. -color, as of right now, there is no color |
Similarities and Difference
similarities-
-line, fast moving lines, organic. -style, realistic yet, at the same time, abstract -movement, the use of lines make the eye move around in a set way, even though it was not meant to. -color, my piece has no color as of right now, but it will have color. differences- - style, the inspiration piece is more realistic than mine. with my use of "squiggles," it moves it farther away from realistic. |