Medieval is a Weird Word.

Full-Art Mountain

My Ears Wax and Wane like the Moon

Explosion

I have always really like art work that has the appearance of a doodle, but is of a higher quality that mindless scribes. This is what I strive for in the art work I do during class. This fish picture is a wonderful example of artwork that I used to admire and now I am capable of doing. Doodles carry such a profound degree of instability in them. The picture looks like madness, yet at the same time, one can see the logical connection between all the images. Separate but equal is best together.

Rinse and Repeat

Repetition. A brilliant process for creating interesting art. There is something magical about repeating a powerful image over and over again until a page is filled. People have an appreciation for works that clearly have had a great deal of time spent on them. The Hands is an example of my interest in such a concept.

                Repetitive works have a number of common features. Generally speaking the inspiration for a regressive picture comes from an obsession with an iconic image. Hands, soupcans, beetles, mickey-mouse, anything. With The hands, I was fond of them because the design that I used was the first design for hands that I like. For novice artists, hands are generally frustrating to do. No matter what it is, if an artist becomes fond of an image they may try to create a regressive picture with it. Typically, that image has to be a powerful to both fascinate the viewer and draw the interest of the artist. In The Hands, all of them are reaching out to one another. This could be considered symbolic for both desperation, -or- friendship. Finally images associated with repetition are rarely detailed. For obvious reasons it is frustrating to repeat a complex image over and over again. The simple icons become powerful when repeated in great number. That is makes up the complexity of the image instead of detail often desired by traditional art.

                To be fair repetition is a fairly often used art technique but I feel like it never losses it’s intrigue. The idea was in vogue during the 60s with Andy Warhol and his contemporary Pop Artists. They experimented with repetition using Campbell’s soup cans, coke bottles, and other popular cultural items. The idea however can be expanded to any new cultural symbols that emerge, for example the Facebook logo could be incorporated into art today. I’m not saying that hands are somehow important cultural symbols but rather making the case for repetition in the modern day. 

Hello
and
welcome

Purple Sky, Grand Mountains

Loose artwork represents a strange phenomena amongst painters. Most of my favorite paintings of all time are very loosely done, with hardly any attention to detail. I feel it is important to recognize why detail is not the most important element of a picture and why quick, effortless, and loose styles of painting are the way to go.

Like many people, I believed the quality of art depended on its detail and realism. I was confused by the success of names like Picasso and Van Gogh. The problem is that detail actually does not represent a good picture, but rather a good part. If one believe detail or exactness is what makes a good picture good, then simply look at Kazimir Malevich’s “Black Square”



Ah yes! Black Square perfectly depicts a black room, or the details of my armpit! Is Black Square not a perfect close up of my black suite? I jest however as I don’t believe that Black Square is actually an enjoyable painting, simply a highly detailed one.

Secondly, detail and realism go hand in hand. Realism however has many flaws, too many for me to cover in the space of this article however for completeness of arguments sake I will present some surface ones. Realism is not truly art because it is not creative. The artist is simply demonstrating his mastery of techniques that can replicate god’s art. On this note, all realist painters have failed their demonstration because they can never do a better job than god. Photographs do a better job than paints at depicting detail and those still generally fail to capture the full beauty of a scene, atleast in the hands of an amateur. Therefore, detail can’t be the metric of quality art.

So what makes art good and what does that have to do with loose brushwork? Most of the great artists will tell you the secret to remarkable art is almost entirely composition. Composition is both the arrangement of elements on your picture and the way the picture manages the flow of attention of your viewer. If you are interested in improving your own work, there are plenty of books and web articles on the topic. All of the elements in a picture can be broken up into different shapes, and lines that the eye follows. Following in love with a picture is a very immediate thing, far faster that the time it would take to pay attention to details. This leads me to believe that as long as you master composition details become less relevant. In fact, I believe placing extensive details in your picture will both slow you down, and increase the likely hood that the eye becomes distracted while examining a painting.

The other thing that loose brushwork does for you is it increases your ability to express emotion. The same apple still life can be done, with violent, big, aggressive brush strokes -or- soft, swirly, brushstrokes. When your no longer restricted to portraying the reality of scene, it becomes much easier to express the emotion in your picture. Emotion is so important to painting as it gives meaning to the images you create. Instead of “here is a picture of a horse, here is a etc....” your have a meaningful tender nosed horse, not just in physically appearance aspect but every element of your painting allows your express that same tenderness. This is something I feel I could have done a better job with in Purple Sky, Grand Mountains. Nonetheless, it can still dramatically make a difference between a mediocre painting, and a classic.

This is our Decision to Live Fast and Die Young

like really, "live fast and die young" is the way the go.

From the moment we are born, we are constantly approaching death. It sounds grim doesn't it? Not to get too distracted here but...

During my time playing competitive magic I've learned a lot about life. In magic for every strategy their is a counter. People will put cards in their decks in order to beat your deck. In response you can do three things: change decks, counteract their counters, or ignore them and make other elements of your deck stronger. Often times people will fight strategies using ineffective methods, they try to directly fight what they see as the obvious solution. The best solution to most strategies usually involve creative thinking.
End Aside

We are faced with death on every front from the time we are born. Disease, Violence, Natural Disasters, shit hitting a fan (to reference Airplane), the list is endless. I once theorized that every physical object could be used to end life. (Wipe Cream is scary!!!) So when faced with these problems we learn to protect are selves. Death is one deck, we are the other. We see death playing lots of cards that kill us, so in turn we add lots of cards to protect ourselves. In the end we end of with a deck that can never win but instead can only survive. Unforntately death has this one card called "time" that will kill anything that lives for a long time. This directly parallels real life. Death is stronger than any amount of protein shakes, vitamins, workouts, or anti-aging chemicals. While flood insurance will help you rebuild after disasters, death will kill you eventually. You can't beat death.

If i concluded my article here, things would feel very grim, wouldn't they? The good news is that this new knowledge can be used to make you happier (YAY!). Because the risk of death is 100%, every thing that can kill you isn't actaully going to end you life, as you were fated to die anyways.

Risk and reward generally scales in a direct relationship, as as the risk of death of already 100%, their is nothing in this world but rewards. Lets say you enjoy painting, but you could also make a reasonable living computing numbers for some business or another. As a painter you're unlikely to make very much money at all, with a small chance of becoming enormously famous. (Think Banksy, modern day artist who brought street art to the public eye. His paintings sell for a couple hundred thousand. He could piss on a piece of paper and sell the thing for atleast $50,00) As business person who doesn't ever do anything fun except buy new a house, and they realize that life is out to get you, as the bank forecloses it later. The painter is the riskier profession because you likely not be able to make much money, starve and die, but that was already going to happen, eventually as i proved earlier. Let me demonstrate another example, owing a business. This is actually the perfect situation to showcase Risk-Reward relationships. The simple explanation of owning a business is often "All the profits with all the risk". This is exactly what you need to do with you life, I think everyone should try to own a business. We always hear about these crazy success stories like the people who invent Facebook and Google, now millionaires. "But really, is everyone going to be that successful?". No of course not, just make sure to invest everything into making it a success. If your business crashes, you die, but so what?!?! Like it's not that you've lost something you weren't already going to loss anyways. Think Romeo-Juliet type commitment. I'm one hundred percent serious about the dieing part. Think about the possible outcomes:
1. Crazy success, the ability to do whatever else you want to do with your life.
2. Moderate success, that good feeling you get from owning success.
3. Failure and starvation, I hear heaven is actually a really nice place.

None of those are bad!!
So in conclusion, take risks because once the risk of death exceeds 100% you have nothing to loss.
You have nothing to loss from the day your born. Never shoot for a moderate living. Shoot for the ridiculous.