MIAD Project
Backgrounds
United through Passion
Size: 3ft x 3ft
Medium: Photograph
Date: 10/13/18
Three people, one love
Size: 3ft x 3ft
Medium: Photograph
Date: 10/17/18
My inspirations
The Dance of the Little People By: William Holmes Sullivan
The Three Graces By:Antonio Canova (sculpture)
Process photos
Reflection
This project overall has taught me many new skills and techniques that may be very useful for me in the future. I may have had a tough time with the backgrounds and the stencils and the Photoshop but things have resolved in the end. I have went from a basic understanding to a proficient fluency in Photoshop. I sharpened my self-management skills and learned to be more focused on certain things before others to get the job done in the end. I also learned more practical things such as how to silk screen an image onto a fabric or a material and that is something i may keep in mind later if I want to design t-shirts or something related. This project has overall been good to me mentally as it has made me tougher and smarter and will probably help me in the future in up-and-coming projects that may require certain skills I may have retained form this project.
Experimentation in background
Exhibition text
For this project we were given the task of representing community in a piece. When I think of community I think of soccer because that is really what brings my city of Milwaukee together. It is the reason people meet of different backgrounds and neighborhoods in a city so separated and segregated. I wanted something that would represent soccer's diversity and how it can change the state of our city and really bring out new things for the people of Milwaukee.
Research
William Holmes Sullivan was a British painter who painted mainly war scenes and portraits in the 19th and early 20th century. Not much information is out about this man but he is a known for painting in a very dramatic and exaggerated manner, which matched his preference to paint conflict and war scenes. I chose his piece "The dance of the Little people" because it matched my ideal image perfectly when it comes to unity as it shows a circle of people together and that is something that fed off my real life inspiration which was the German national team during the 2014 world cup final. It was the moment that team huddled together around the trophy and celebrated the victory together that really stuck with me and taught me more about unity. I learned that despite difference, we need to work together to reach a common goal and that may break boundaries and norms and bring people together. I wanted to capture this concept with a photo of my soccer team from Reagan HS, which is a very diverse group of people from many cultures and backgrounds. My photo depicts people of 9 different nationalities in a circle huddled together as a unit. I want them to be in the same form as the people in my inspiration piece, except they will not be holding hands and they will only be facing the camera instead of anyone having their back to it. I want everyone facing the same way because the photo will be from quite close up, so if people were facing the other way some people would have their faces covered and that would ruin my plan. Everyone will be huddled close together and the ends of the group will curve out at the edges to better depict a huddle or a circle.
The inspiration for my second piece was the Three Graces sculpture by Antonio Canova. He was an Italian sculptor and artist who was also alive during the 19th century and is considered one of the greatest sculptors of all time. He is considered a neoclassical artist and is known for his incredible carving abilities. I loved his piece the Three Graces because It, similarly to my first inspiration, had great unity in it, noticeably it its pyramid configuration that evenly distributes attention and brings out every subject in the piece evenly as a unit, which is exactly what I was going for. The pyramid configuration method is a method mainly used by painters but it is something I really wanted to implement in my picture. This sculpture (the Three Graces) is a very nicely structured piece in general when it comes to movement and organization. The piece is also very aesthetically pleasing with its smooth cuts and clean lines all around, cleanly representing actual human flesh. Although the actual texture and specific aspects of the piece don't affect my piece, I still found it significant as Canova did an incredible job in making it look as realistic as possible. When I think of the word unity I think of three different elements combining into one, and the number of subjects in my second background was something I deeply considered. I was thinking about using only one or two people, but I knew that wouldn't properly represent diversity. I also considered maybe 5 people, but then it would be too similar to my other background and wouldn't be very special on its own. When I remembered pyramid configuration and saw the piece the Three Graces I knew 3 was the perfect amount to both show diversity and evenly distribute focus and movement within the piece.
Process, Ideas, and Intentions
The Process of working on this whole project has taught me many new things and has allowed me to develop so many new skills. I learned how to silk screen which is an amazing and fun technique that I'd enjoy using in the future (if the materials are present) on future artwork. I also developed my abilities on Photoshop and know how to edit photos better and how to properly crop and refine a cut piece. I am now more fluent with the basic and more complex tools in Photoshop and know how I can utilize them better in the future. I think this process overall was quite unforgiving for me and my mistakes did come back and hurt me although they were resolved somewhat in the end. I solved my Photoshop issue and ended up making a much better version of something I originally had. I went back through many many times and fixed some of my issues, ultimately returning and making tweaks over 7 times. I started over about 4 times and it has payed off in the end with my Photoshop skills being better than ever before. I had originally started off wanting to leave both backgrounds the same, then went on to change this and played around with many different ideas for backdrops in my backgrounds ultimately coming with these two final products.
I had an issue with my stencils as I had come up with a solid idea but only one copy of the idea survived the drawing board. Other copies were ultimately not good enough or were messed up in some way and they were discarded. I went through many ideas as to how to edit my backgrounds such as leaving both backdrops and editing out both backgrounds and creating my own sky. I also considered having the sky for my first background be a faded out Milwaukee flag and to put the stencil in the middle as the center sunrise in the actual flag, but realized that there would be too much going on in the piece and simplicity is the key in the end.
Overall I think my piece is fantastic in concept. Having the Milwaukee sunrise as the stencil in the sky is a great representation of rising change in the future of our segregated city and how it can change through athletics and specifically soccer. I used a soccer ball intentionally as the sun itself because I have played soccer myself for many years, and I know first hand how it has changed lives and brought people together of many different cultures and backgrounds in one common pastime. I personally have played soccer all over the place with many different kinds of people such as Burmese, Arab, Hispanic, Somalian, European, etc. I know the diversity and the fresh prospective that comes with the beautiful game because of all my experiences in it.
My pieces do differ from my inspirations in many ways. My first background is very different form my inspiration "The Dance of the Little People" because it isn't in a circle formation, rather a huddle in a horseshoe type shape around the camera man. It also has no main figure in the middle seemingly orchestrating everything, although I toyed with the idea of putting my coach in the middle of the photo. I ultimately, however decided not to because that would throw off the meaning of the overall piece and add some doubt about the concept itself making it much harder for me to keep track of everything and forcing me to fabricate another meaning which would take away from its authenticity. It is also different in setting. My inspiration has a forest setting, changing prospective on the piece and making it much more secretive. My piece is lighter in setting being in the middle of a soccer field, which is exactly where I would want to see a photo like that being taken. One similarity between the two pieces is the mood. Both have a more happy and uplifting mood with what is going on in the images, despite one having a much dimmer setting.
My other piece is also quite different from its inspiration in many ways. My inspirations is a sculpture, which is a quite different format than my piece which is a photo. It is also different in the formation of the subjects. My inspiration has one of the subjects facing in a different direction from the others, while mine contrarily has all the subjects facing the same direction, towards the camera. A similarity however is the number of subjects and the use of movement, both using pyramid configuration in a perfect way to properly move the viewers eyes throughout a piece.
Overall the process was challenging but also a great experience with new things an has allowed me to sharpen many of my skills in different areas of my art career.
Experimentation
I did experiment a lot with these pieces mainly with the backgrounds, as I had my concepts down since day one and would not change them. I did play around with my backdrops, changing them very often, occasionally leaving it out and then going back in and editing it back it. I experimented with the idea of adding many different flags as stencils over all the subjects heads, but dropped that idea as it took too much of the background and may not have flowed well with the image. Also it would be hard to view from a distance. I then moved on to including the Milwaukee flag in the photo as a single piece as it is what stands in common between all these different people. I experimented with the Photoshop a lot too changing things over and over again and going back in many many times to get these two final products.
Capture of the eagle (*example piece)
By: William Holmes Sullivan
Antonio Canova self portrait (*example piece)
By: Antonio Canova
Connection to ACT
1) My inspiration caused me to want to use the a circular formation in my photo to show unity. I wanted people to be linked together as well similarly to my inspiration: "Dance of the Little People".
2) My inspiration the Three Graces directly influenced my work in its configuration and how the three figures are placed together. Mainly however the unity of 3 different subjects in one piece.
1) The approach of William Holmes Sullivan in the Dance of the Little people is probably to make a normal painting with good movement pleasing the demographic of the era which generally preferred his style of painting in his dramatic and exaggerated way.
2) The approach of Antonio Canova in his sculpture the Three Graces was probably to create a respectable and ascetically pleasing piece with deep and realistic detail, something that he usually goes for in his work
1) I have discovered that artist that make things that are very normal to their current society or people generally don't stand out and can be forgotten, while artist who make outrageous things that may get frowned upon in a certain era may end up honored in another era.
2) I have discovered more about pyramid configuration and that i can be used in sculpting as well as painting. I have also discovered that people love clean looking realistic flesh when it comes to sculpting people, which is something I never really considered.
1) The central theme is dramatic painting and portraits, mainly fairy tale scenes and things of that nature. My specific inspiration is based around a scene looking like a fairy tale with the subjects in the piece having very unrealistic features. The background story to the piece itself isn't too clear but the idea is resonant in Sullivan's other pieces.
2) The central theme around my piece is religious art and was something very popular in these times especially with European artists. The three graces represent the three daughters of Zeus from Greek Mythology.
1) I have come to a conclusion that this artist likes more unrealistic and fairy tale related artwork and this work only included the people in that form for aesthetic purposes and to allow for flow and movement, it probably wasn't intended mainly upon unity like mine was.
2) I have concluded that I have fallen upon one of the greatest sculptors of all time, Antonio Canova who could carve smooth texture and line out or rough marble with incredible precision like a surgeon.
Compare:
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Both use 3 subjects
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Both have subjects standing
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Both utilize unity through motion and pyramid configuration
Contrast:
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Medium: one is a sculpture one is a photo
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inspiration has pieces more apart while my piece has them close and compact together
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clothing on figures
Inspiration 1 (the Three Graces)
Background chosen
Critique
My piece here is quite different from my inspiration, although there are tough to compare critically. Comparing a statue to a photo is hard, but I believe my photo was overall to the expected quality in this project as it has high resolution and fits the required size perfectly. It may not be as a high quality as the statue bu Canovo but It is hard to compare a photo to a stature and an all time famous artist to a high school art student.
Planning sketches
Compare:
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Configuration of the group of people
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Both include a group of multiple figures
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Both have unity in shape and motion of the piece
Contrast
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Medium, one is a photograph and one is a painting
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Color: one is in darker contrast (black and white) while inspiration is in color
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direction of flow of piece
Background Chosen
Inspiration 2 (the Dance of the Little People)
Critique
My piece is quite nice in its movement and overall form with the team holding together as a solid unit. It does represent my inspiration well as it is a nice photo and represents community quite positively. It is better in my opinion in utilizing movement to capture every subject of the piece and distribute attention well, while my inspiration has subjects quite low and may not have as smooth of a flow through the piece.