Ink Print Choice Piece
"Anxiety"Medium: 8in x 10in
Water based ink on poster paper October 2020 Exhibition textAnxiety has been a major component within my life, It plagues many people within our world, and makes life feel like a drag, a slog, hopeless, or even not worth it. Anxiety took my life over after I had gotten my pet, had to worry about the pandemic, and had to deal with the stress of online schooling. I took inspiration within the form of Symbolism for this piece, working under the likes of Odilon redon, and hiding meaning under work.
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Inspiration/Thought Process
Anxiety has always been a struggle within my life, and I can assume many others also suffer from this mental disorder, We all have it, and it is the worst feeling that I can explain. This piece was my attempt at vocalizing my struggle and anxiety within a specific moment within my life, and How I could show the pain and depression I felt from the moment that gave me this struggle of my emotions. Starting from my inspirations within the art world to give me I loved the feeling of dread and anxiety and just darkness that Odilon's symbolic work gives off, like within the piece "The Crying Spider" It gives this haunting almost unsettling feeling. This type of movement and changing within someone's feelings is critical in making a piece stand out and fit within the symbolic art movement, which was my goal within my piece, I wanted to use the technique that Odilon used, not in the making of the art, but in the feeling and the message of the art. I wanted to convey a feeling of sadness, Dread, anger, and stress, but I could also be making people feel or relate to other emotions, maybe its suppressing anger through sadness through the red, I wanted to convey emotion through images like Odilon Redon.
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The story of my anxiety that fueled my piece was from the anxiety of owning a pet, I had just recently purchased a chameleon as seen in my project 2, who was my model, I had so many worries about her well being, I had to manage her food, her enclosure, her water, temperature, etc. and that was manageable at first, until she had eggs. This shocked me, I had no idea how to fix this issue, I had spent days frantically researching, looking up all help and sources I could, on how to let her lay the eggs so she didn't become egg-bound and die. This was the fuel to the fire, that made me inspired to make this piece. I needed to really think, and I poured my soul into this piece. From this my inspiration was amplified behind the lenses of a symbolic work, to try to symbolize the human condition, this being Anxiety.
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Planning sketches
This was the thumbnail sketch I went with and wanted to focus on and work on, so I made it a 8x11 size to be able to translate it to a better surface to make my print eventually, I wanted to show the radiating anger and anxiety from the person in the middle (myself)
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The first ideation of my project. I used some techniques from my Miad classes which involved making thumbnail sketches to give me more options, and to give my ideas some area to fall back onto. I wanted to convey anxiety in as many different ways as I possibly could for this printing project.
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This is the final version of the sketch I chose, which I inked out and made look clean so I could use it to carve out a solid print for the final project, I think it looks really good. I also added the middle section to give the piece some more complexity
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Process
Experimentation
I was prompted to create multiple experimental versions of the final piece For this one I wanted to create a secondary image, so I put the printing press and the actual Stencil on an angle after first printing it how I normally would to create a secondary image on the top of it. I wanted to do this to see what interesting ideas could come from this, and to see what advancements I could come up with from this being that I needed to innovate with this piece.
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The next idea that I played around with was a sort of ghostly figure behind it by using a lot less ink on my second print of the project, I really enjoyed this one because it had a nice look to it and I thought it conveyed a different emotion, which made me question what the actual project and Idea I had for it was in the first place. But I obviously scrapped this one, even though I liked the look of it a lot.
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This experiment was an experiment with color, which I think turned out fairly well, I was experimenting with media, and wanted to see what I could use to get my Idea across. This particular media was a water color, that was light in hue so It gave me room to try new ideas. In one of the corners I tried salt to give it a new look but It ended up backfiring so I didn't want to continue that method. I stuck with the color and water color for the final because it looked so rough.
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Process
This project had a very long and interesting Process, which I enjoyed a lot during the creation of my project. The project prompt was to take a raw and deep emotion and make a print about it using geometric shapes and little detail that wouldn't muddy up the printing process. We needed to write a story about the strongest emotion we've felt previously and try to make 20 thumbnail drawings for that deep emotional feeling. I made 20 thumbnail drawings and each one of them I feel tackled a different feeling within the grand scheme of anxiety. I really wanted to get the point across of the stress and pain that went into the torturous feeling that the story I told gave me. From the thumbnail sketches I was to choose one of these, and recreate it in a 8x10 format to then cut out and transform into my stencil for the rest of the project. I went with a modified version of the first Idea i had because I felt the silhouette was very strong. Now from here I had to use an exacto knife to cut out the graphite parts to create the stencil I would be using. From this stencil I had to set up my large and frankly fun to use printing press provided by MIAD. Before I used the press I had to rip and size my paper correctly to make sure that I could fit it onto the paper. I used a ruler to rip the paper to make it seem more stylized. After this I built the contraption and placed a sheet of plastic to catch the ink design on it to print onto. I placed my stencil under the mesh. From here I used the water based India Ink and poured a sizeable amount into the press, covering the top to make sure that it extended to the entire paper. I used the large ink "brush" to move the Ink onto the entire paper to make sure that the whole thing is covered in ink to make sure that It had enough ink. I repeated this process about 6 times until the actual stencil broke and ripped on me from being covered in too much ink, but I did end up getting 6 prints all varying in quality, and depth. From here I took the best looking 2 that I wanted to use and colored them, one with water color and the other using markers that I wanted to experiment with. The water color was started with light guidance colors and then I piled it on to get texture like look to it, from here I cleaned my press and I made sure everything else was also cleaned off.
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Compare/Contrast
Similarities
Differences
- Both pieces use darkness and warm shades to emphasize emotions and bring these emotions onto the viewer
- These pieces seem to have the same ethereal and methodical choices that follow the idea of hidden emotion
- These works both emphasize human emotions into a non human being, My case being a human like shape, and in Odilons work its a human like spider. Which creates sympathy for these seemingly haunting figures.
Differences
- Odilon's work seems to have been made on a tinted textured paper, that has a grainy quality to it, while my work was on a similarly textured but lacking in the same yellow hue that his was.
- Both are expressing different emotions, one is experiencing stress and anxiety, while "the crying spider" seems to be experiencing dread and loss
- Odilons work wasn't a print, It was made using I believe graphite or some form of charcoal like material to create the same kind of symbolic dustiness to it to give it some kind of emphasis. In the contrary mine was made using a printing press and ink
Reflection
Looking back on this piece I had a very good experience going through the long process of getting the printing press ready and making the size of the paper correct. I think My piece was a little too different from my actual inspiration as It was a different media, But mostly I wanted to show the idea of symbolism more. I didn't take inspiration from the ways Odilon made his art, I wanted to show off my capabilities within the field of symbolism. I conveyed my story effectively and I feel that I also conveyed other peoples stories too if they were to see and possibly relate to this work. I want to refine my work with the water color making it darker and less orange in hue, although it could possibly be a mixture of warm colors and the actual yellowish light within my room when I took the photo, so in the future I will try to take my picture in Neutral lighting, like outside.
ACT Responses
Clearly explain how you are able to identify the cause-effect relationships between your inspiration and its effect upon your artwork:
The inspiration and my art work has the same methods used in the inspirations, I wanted to recreate the same symbolism they used. like using applicable emotions to non human figures.
What is the overall approach (pov) the author (from research) has regarding the topic of your inspiration?
Symbolism is the idea of taking a non human figure and giving it human ideas and emotions, to symbolize the human condition within the context of the art piece.
What kind of generalizations and conclusions have you discovered about people, ideas, cultures, etc. while you researched your inspiration?
Symbolism doesn't have to be made a certain way, but it is a piece that is seen a certain way, so any media can work, but the idea behind it has to be applicable
What was the central idea or theme around your inspirational research?
To find similarities in the actual message of my work that are similar to other works of art.
What kind of inferences did you make while reading your research?
Symbolism is a gateway to a hidden or deeper meaning within a work, and can be used to express strong emotions.
The inspiration and my art work has the same methods used in the inspirations, I wanted to recreate the same symbolism they used. like using applicable emotions to non human figures.
What is the overall approach (pov) the author (from research) has regarding the topic of your inspiration?
Symbolism is the idea of taking a non human figure and giving it human ideas and emotions, to symbolize the human condition within the context of the art piece.
What kind of generalizations and conclusions have you discovered about people, ideas, cultures, etc. while you researched your inspiration?
Symbolism doesn't have to be made a certain way, but it is a piece that is seen a certain way, so any media can work, but the idea behind it has to be applicable
What was the central idea or theme around your inspirational research?
To find similarities in the actual message of my work that are similar to other works of art.
What kind of inferences did you make while reading your research?
Symbolism is a gateway to a hidden or deeper meaning within a work, and can be used to express strong emotions.
Bibliography
Musee-orsay.fr. 2020. Musée D'orsay: Paul Signac The Red Buoy. [online] Available at: <https://www.musee-orsay.fr/en/collections/works-in-focus/painting/commentaire_id/the-red-buoy-3000.html?tx_commentaire_pi1%5BpidLi%5D=509&tx_commentaire_pi1%5Bfrom%5D=841&cHash=a14676cc> [Accessed 7 October 2020].
Metmuseum.org. (2020). Retrieved 7 October 2020, from https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/cmon/hd_cmon.htm.
Metmuseum.org. (2020). Retrieved 7 October 2020, from https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/cmon/hd_cmon.htm.