lets all pretend I spelled consciousness correctly

pdf: final project

Material research for lessons 1, 2, and 5!

Lesson 2: Working off Lesson 1, we will be creating Art Nouveau pieces inspired by Alphonse Mucha to help us learn how to simplify the realism we learned into forms that are easier to illustrate.

Lesson 5: Combining everything we learned (self portraits, art nouveau, perspective, storyboarding) we will create a one page comic about anything we like; whether that be a personal anecdote or a silly story about characters.

Lesson 1: create a self portrait expressing an emotion of your choice through color theory

yet to be fine-tuned!

Cai Guo-Qiang is a Chinese artist who creates installations, paintings, and all kinds of art using gunpowder. He currently resides in New York City and continues to make art expressing his love for nature and a world without violence. Many of his pieces express his concern for conservation as well as a beautification of the connotations that gunpowder has. Guo-Qiang was raised in a time where there was a lot of gunpowder involved violence and claims that he uses gunpowder in his art now to show the beauty of this substance that is often weaponized. In his own words, “Why is it important to make these violent explosions beautiful? Because the artist, like an alchemist, has the ability to transform certain energies, using poison against poison, using dirt and getting gold.”

Q1. What’s the first thing you think of when talking about gunpowder?

• I’m reminded of guns or bombs since that’s what they use to for them. Just weapons in general
• I’m reminded of the old canons and how you needed gunpowder to use them, or like old guns and stuff.
• Guns are the first thing that come to mind because it’s in the name, but I also think of fireworks since they require gunpowder.

Q2. What impact does the medium choice have on the context of the art?

• Well in general, the medium might be relevant to the artist, like a collage can be made of important images to the artist, or maybe they’ll have relevance to the piece.
• In the context of Cai Guo-Qiang, it’s pretty relevant since he witnessed a lot of violence caused by gunpowder when he was younger. It brings deeper meaning to his art pieces since they contrast the implications of gunpowder.
• Maybe if it’s like an old art piece, the medium will allow us to know what tools they used to create the piece, or if they used a rare medium you could assume it was an important art piece. I feel like the mediums always have some relevance to how the art should be observed.

Q3. Why might an artist want to create art based on their traumas?

• Maybe to help them cope better? Or to create a better relationship with their trauma?
• To shine light on their troubles because others might relate or feel understood when they see it.
• Maybe to highlight an issue that wasn’t being discussed before?

Q4. Can you think of any examples of movies or art pieces where the artist tries to find beauty in the darker moments of life?

• A lot of Miyazaki films are very beautiful and cute to watch but have side stories of war and violence. I feel like Miyazaki does a good job of finding beauty in the darker moments of life.
• I once watched the movie the Pursuit of Happyness and while most of the movie is really sad I feel like as a whole it’s a beautiful art piece as a film and feels very hopeful. I guess the plot of it doesn’t really fit the idea of “finding beauty in the darker moments,” but rather the movie itself does? I mean in some scenes it does!
• This might be a stretch but, the Titanic was a very dark moment in history but the director chose to make it into a love story- a tragic one nonetheless- but still finds beauty in such a hopeless event. Like when you think of the Titanic you think of Jack and Rose first, and then the ship wreckage that killed many people- it’s like the last question, we’ve made this moment in history more digestible by creating a tragic romance around it.

Q5. How would you transform a bad memory into something beautiful?

• You could take something relevant to the memory and change it’s use like Cai Guo-Qiang. For example, maybe you failed a test? You could take the paper and fold it into an origami swan or something. It wouldn’t change that it didn’t happen, but it would transform it
• Reclaim the memory by creating a new unforgettable memory to outshine the other one.
• You could make a painting that expresses our emotions on the memory. Like venting but on a canvas.

For this “How-To” comic I interviewed Lindsey and she taught me how to grow Zinnias. Lindsey has a background in botany so we agreed going for something relating to plants would be cool. Figuring out which steps to put was difficult for both of us, but I think we both found proper ways to set up our “how-tos.” For the task of growing Zinnias, it took about 6-7 steps to clearly express what needs to be done, which is still very reasonable and quick! It was fun to illustrate and was reasonably concise which helped a lot in the comic-making process. When we checked in with each other she said that everything was looking good and accurate- no corrections were necessary!

I just realized these were not supposed to have descriptions, but rather just visuals. I guess that would be the most difficult aspect of the how-to comic. Even so, I feel like the comic would still be legible without the text. Overall, it was a very fun collaborative task- both as an icebreaker and just a skill that we can use in  future classes.

These are the artists I’ve picked !

1. Cai Guo-Qiang
2. Kimsooja
3. Liu Xiaodong

Hi! My name is Brianna. I use she/her/hers pronouns. I’m from the Bronx and I’m currently a junior majoring in Art Education here at SUNY New Paltz. I love making illustrations- whether the medium be watercolor, ink, oil, colored pencil, or even digital. I was inspired by my older sisters art work when I was younger and kind of followed in her footsteps since! Except for wanting to teach, haha. I’ve wanted to be an educator of some sort since I was in middle school. For a while I really wanted to be a history teacher, but after doing some teaching under my high school teachers supervision I realized I really enjoyed teaching art.

Besides all that good stuff, I enjoy drawing (of course), listening to and playing music (piano, currently learning guitar… or at least trying to!), watching movies, riding my bike, learning languages, and several other things! I look forward to one day being able to teach in a classroom of my own 🙂

I was trying to figure out which of these sustainable goals felt the most important- which was a hard task since they’re all so prevalent. Nonetheless, I decided that Inequality would be the issue that I create a hero for. I feel like we as a people can’t get to the bigger issues if we can’t even fix the inequality amongst ourselves. My hero would use her “equalizing” powers in every setting that she can in order to cross the barrier and finally reach equality.