Monday, October 26, 2009
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Toulouse-Lautrec
Most famous for his posters of for the Moulin Rouge, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec was French post-impressionist artist who dabbled in various art forms such as painting, printmaking, and illustration. Toulouse-Lautrec lived from 1864 t0 1901. Due to a debilitating disease mostly from a family history of inbreeding, Lautrec only grew scarcely to five feet, with child sized legs and adult torso. Lautrec turned to art as means of passing his time as he was unable to physically take part many other activities, and during the twenties years of his art career he produced an estimated 737 canvases, 275 watercolors, 363 prints and posters, and 5,084 drawings (source: wikipedia).
Lautrec's work is best known for depicting the bohemian lifestyle of Paris at the time, and is mostly comprised vibrant buildups of color to create forms, heavily lines outlining figures, and noticeable brushstrokes to create an exciting and lively sense of movement.
Monday, October 12, 2009
PAFA and Welcome House
Last Thursday I met up with a friend that goes to the Academy of Fine Arts to attend an model drawing session at PAFA. It was open to the public for a few of ten dollars. Since I haven't had an ample chance to draw since high school it was a good opportunity for me brush up and break out the pencils that where collecting dust in my room.
I had never been to PAFA before so it was an entirely new experience. I had considered PAFA in my college search but I disregarded it as "too tradition" and I felt I was too unsure of my career path to be locked into a strictly art school. But after checking out PAFA I kind of regret writing it off so quickly.
Before the session started, my friend gave me quick tour of the cast hall, which was pretty amazing. One cast was so massive it nearly touched the ceiling and took up a good portion of the room. The foot of the statue was wider than the with of my body and my head barely reached its knee.
A few students where drawing the casts, and one of them showed me that they had complete control over the lightening of the room.
Many rooms and galleries at PAFA are only open to the students so that really limited where my friend could take me, which was very disappointing because I would have loved to check out the sketchbook they with their art vault.
This is probably where I would then compare PAFA to my time at Tyler but alas, I won't be able to do so until the spring. Then it will very be interesting to see how my experience compares with my friend's.
After the drawing session, my friend and I took a small detour to Love Park to check out the "Welcome House" that was still in the process of being set up. It didn't look like much then but I sure it would have been pretty cool to see the artists at work during the day.
I had never been to PAFA before so it was an entirely new experience. I had considered PAFA in my college search but I disregarded it as "too tradition" and I felt I was too unsure of my career path to be locked into a strictly art school. But after checking out PAFA I kind of regret writing it off so quickly.
Before the session started, my friend gave me quick tour of the cast hall, which was pretty amazing. One cast was so massive it nearly touched the ceiling and took up a good portion of the room. The foot of the statue was wider than the with of my body and my head barely reached its knee.
A few students where drawing the casts, and one of them showed me that they had complete control over the lightening of the room.
Many rooms and galleries at PAFA are only open to the students so that really limited where my friend could take me, which was very disappointing because I would have loved to check out the sketchbook they with their art vault.
This is probably where I would then compare PAFA to my time at Tyler but alas, I won't be able to do so until the spring. Then it will very be interesting to see how my experience compares with my friend's.
After the drawing session, my friend and I took a small detour to Love Park to check out the "Welcome House" that was still in the process of being set up. It didn't look like much then but I sure it would have been pretty cool to see the artists at work during the day.
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Collections
Two images of nuts I found wandering around the grounds at my work. I scaned them on my home scanner and this is how they came out with little to no editing in photoshop. I found the images to be kind of interesting, and almost unidentifiable as nuts but this is probably due to my fairly basic scanner. Tomorrow I will try scanning them on the more high tech ones they have at the tech center.
Monday, October 5, 2009
Sunday, October 4, 2009
Art Experiences
The week I was quite busy and had trouble making it out to some kind of outside art experience. I really wanted to go First Friday in Olde City and check out what was happening in the galleries, but I was really worn out after work so I decided to just rest that night.
I don't know if this counts as an outside art experience, but I do work at an art gallery as a visitor representative, I work Fridays and weekends at the Barnes Foundation in Merion. During my break I decided to browse through the gallery because I often don't a chance to look around because I'm so busy dealing with the visitors.
Most of the Art on display is French Post-Impressionists works, with some artifacts from around the world and and various time periods such as the ancient Egypt relics.
My favorite piece to see is The Postman by Vincent Van Gogh. The colors are very vibrant, it's interesting to the sort of trademark of Van Gogh, the small strokes of color that are used to build up the from and face of the "Postman" and the sense of movement that is created from those brushstrokes.
It's always an entirely different experience to see a print of something and to see the actually painting. I consider myself very lucky to have gotten such a great opportunity to be surrounded by such amazing piece of art on a weekly basis, and getting paid to do so is not so bad either!
I don't know if this counts as an outside art experience, but I do work at an art gallery as a visitor representative, I work Fridays and weekends at the Barnes Foundation in Merion. During my break I decided to browse through the gallery because I often don't a chance to look around because I'm so busy dealing with the visitors.
Most of the Art on display is French Post-Impressionists works, with some artifacts from around the world and and various time periods such as the ancient Egypt relics.
My favorite piece to see is The Postman by Vincent Van Gogh. The colors are very vibrant, it's interesting to the sort of trademark of Van Gogh, the small strokes of color that are used to build up the from and face of the "Postman" and the sense of movement that is created from those brushstrokes.
It's always an entirely different experience to see a print of something and to see the actually painting. I consider myself very lucky to have gotten such a great opportunity to be surrounded by such amazing piece of art on a weekly basis, and getting paid to do so is not so bad either!
Trip to the PMA
Because of some scheduling issues, I have not been able to attend the foundation lecture series. So instead I've taking a few art-related excursions to make up for that loss.
Though I forgot to document it here on my blogger, last weekend I took a trip to the Philadelphia Art Museum for an assignment for my Art Heritage Class. For the assignment we were travel through the galleries of European Art (1100-1500) and then compose a paper on the importance of the curatorial decisions made.
During my trip I saw many interesting pieces of those period works. Especially intriguing was the Virgin and Child in a Landscape by Master of the Embroidered Foliage. The hyper-detail included in the piece from ornate trim of the Virgin’s dress, to the actual words of the pages of the book held in her hand, and to the individual leaves upon trees and each painstaking blade of grass, it is just amazing. It’s Mind-blowing really, to just think about the time, patience and precision that must have went into this piece, it’s really hard to fathom.
Straying from my project, I explored a few of the European Art 1850-1900 galleries. My favorite piece hands down was At the Moulin Rouge: The Dance by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. It was just really lovely, with a myriad of warm yet softly subdued colors, and energetic lines. I kept coming back to it as I made my way through the galleries.
I also really enjoyed the prints and drawings, the fine etching and pen and ink works where really inspiring to see.
All in all my trip to the PMA was extremely worthwhile as always.
Though I forgot to document it here on my blogger, last weekend I took a trip to the Philadelphia Art Museum for an assignment for my Art Heritage Class. For the assignment we were travel through the galleries of European Art (1100-1500) and then compose a paper on the importance of the curatorial decisions made.
During my trip I saw many interesting pieces of those period works. Especially intriguing was the Virgin and Child in a Landscape by Master of the Embroidered Foliage. The hyper-detail included in the piece from ornate trim of the Virgin’s dress, to the actual words of the pages of the book held in her hand, and to the individual leaves upon trees and each painstaking blade of grass, it is just amazing. It’s Mind-blowing really, to just think about the time, patience and precision that must have went into this piece, it’s really hard to fathom.
Straying from my project, I explored a few of the European Art 1850-1900 galleries. My favorite piece hands down was At the Moulin Rouge: The Dance by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. It was just really lovely, with a myriad of warm yet softly subdued colors, and energetic lines. I kept coming back to it as I made my way through the galleries.
I also really enjoyed the prints and drawings, the fine etching and pen and ink works where really inspiring to see.
All in all my trip to the PMA was extremely worthwhile as always.
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