Drawing my Hands

For this weeks art making exercise I drew my hands. I’m right handed so I drew my left hand with my dominant right hand and drew my right hand with my not-so- dominant left hand. I chose to do the drawings in pencil for no other reason then I have plenty of pencils in the house. Drawing my own hands was not that big of a deal. I have a six year old daughter and for some reason small children love tracing and drawing hands. I have probably drawn my hands and her hands a couple hundred times in the last few years. The one thing that was different was trying to draw with my left hand. At first I naturally would pick the pencil up and start to draw with my right hand. I had to consciously focus and tell myself to use my left hand. The final result is not too bad. Although it was awkward using my left hand I don’t think the final result is that much worse than the drawing I made with my right hand. It did take a little longer, but other than that, no big deal. Just the same, I don’t think I’ll be using my left hand to draw in the future.

Video Review: The Renaissance

For this week’s video review, I started with “The Drawings of Michelangelo”. This was an enjoyable film on the surviving drawings of Michelangelo and what they show and might show about the man and his works. The sketches give insight into his desire to achieve perfection. The method he used to shade his drawings, straight line hatching and cross hatching, was difficult for the artists in the film to reproduce. He was a self taught sculptor and his work “David” was the first colossal marble sculpture since classical times.

The second film I chose was “Leonardo da Vinci: The Mind of the Renaissance” This film was interesting for the subject matter but I wasn’t too fond of the over-dramatization. This film gave a history of da Vinci’s life from an early age, where he showed great gifts at an early age to the time of his death. One of the things I found interesting was that his Master gave up painting after seeing how skilled he was. He was also the first artist to make a drawing of landscape. He was an accomplished Engineer and served in Italy as an official architect and engineer in charge of fortifications. He studied the flight of birds and insects that led to his ideas on manned flight. Because he was always in search of perfection, he never finished his work and he actually developed a bad reputation for this.

The first two films I chose because of the fame of Michelangelo and da Vinci. The next two, I’m sorry to say, I picked because they were the shortest. I’m a little time constrained this week. That being said, the third film I chose was “Albrecht Durer: Image of a Master”. This was a nice film on an artist I had not heard of before taking this class. A gave a good example of how the Renaissance differed in the north as opposed to in Italy. Dure was best known for his realistic, not idealized, portraits and later in his life, his prints made from his woodcuts. The example shown of the woodcuts he produced in his home later in his life were beautiful. I really liked these. The detail is amazing. He also was known as the first time landscape artist in Europe.

The last film I chose was, “Velazquez”. This Spanish artist was the court painter to King Philip the IV. This film was terrible. It was produced by the Spanish Ministry of Culture and felt like a propaganda piece. I did like his painting “Surrender of Breda”, but besides that I didn’t find this to be very interesting. In particular, I disliked the segment on the court jesters or the “buffoons”. After seeing the portrait of the King with that ridiculous twirled mustache I thought they had a lot of nerve calling those other subjects of his paintings buffoons.

All in all, a good supplement to my reading this week. Especially the first three films.

Video Review: The Human Form

For this weeks video review I watched “More Human the Human” which showed the history of the human form in art. The first thing I found interesting about this video is how ancient human sculptures depicted by different cultures in different areas in the world are very much alike in their look. They show the same exaggerated features of the female body. Another interesting point is the research into seagulls that showed that the baby chicks are stimulated by a stick with a red stripe on it just as they are by the red stripe on their mother’s beak. This study gives a clue as to why the statues are all the same. Early man, no matter the culture, was stimulated by the same thing. The next part focused on early Egypt, and showed how the Egyptian depiction of the human body was virtually unchanged for thousands of years. Paintings were made with the help of a grid and the proportions of the human subjects are uniform in all paintings. Researchers think this is due to the Egyptian obsession with order and precision. Early Greek works depict the human body in much that same way as the Egyptians, but over time their works evolved. Their work eventually led to the most realistic depictions of the human body ever created. It is believed that this is due to the Greek religious belief that they are created in their gods images. Worshippers expected images of their gods to be realistic, to show perfection of form that was worthy of their deities. The one thing the film stressed was that, even the detailed work of Greek artists, depictions of the human body throughout history and even today are for the most part unrealistic. I found this video to be fairly interesting.  I’ve always been intrigued by ancient Greek and Roman history and this added to my knowledge of the subject.

Because of that interest, I chose three other videos on ancient Greek and Roman art for my additional videos to review. “Beyond the Classical: Byzantine & Later Greek Art” focused on art work created in the latter stages of the Roman Empire. These works are heavily influenced by Christianity. Holy Roman Emperor Constantine helped to usher in the Byzantine period of art. During this period art works moved away from the detail of early Greek and Roman works and revolved around a style that was more rigid and stiff with more two-dimensional elements. During this time the Christianity inspired the Icon form of art. In architecture, the renaissance led to a rediscovery of the classical Greek style.

For the final two videos, I chose; “The Greek Awakening: Art from the 5^th Century BC” and “The measure of all things: Greek Art and the Human Form”. These two videos seemed to be little more than a re-hash of information I learned in the first video. I did enjoy seeing the some of the images again, but aside from that, I didn’t get much more from these two.

Video Review: Architecture

In this weeks video assignment I watched four different videos. The first, titled “Prairie Style” showcased the works of Frank Lloyd Wright and his influence on today’s architects. Frank Lloyd Wright was innovative in the way he chose to design homes to blend into the natural surroundings. He believed that the home should reflect the landscape of its surroundings and have an organic look as if it grew out of the surroundings. The term “Prairie View” is used to describe his use of layered horizontal design in the homes he created in the mid-west. The prairie being a flat landscape, he wanted the homes to reflect that in their design. For the interior of homes he wanted to get away from the established practice of creating separate segregated rooms within homes. He favored open spaces to link rooms. I enjoyed this film. Frank Lloyd Wright is well known in the city of Buffalo and it was nice to have learned more about his philosophies and to see some examples of his earlier work.

The second film I watched, “Architecture: The Science of Design” was more about the technical aspect of architecture than the artistic side. For the most part I enjoy learning about various technical and scientific topics. But I found this film to be rather dated. The show a proposed “smart house” run by computers and I could tell that from the reel to reel stereo and the fax machine that it is a little behind the times. I did find the discussion on the effects of wind on skyscrapers interesting. The idea that tall buildings can sway up to one meter in heavy winds is something most people probably don’t think about to often.

The third video titled “Classical Architecture” is about ancient Greek and Roman architecture. I enjoyed this topic so much that for my fourth video I chose, ”Imperial Rome, Ostia, and Portis: Ancient Architecture and Technology”. The first video describes the effect of ancient Greek and Roman Architecture on today’s designers in England and the U.S. One thing I found particularly interesting was seeing how Prince Charles influenced a return to classical design in the 1980’s. The second video was my favorite. I find it fascinating to think about how technologically advanced the ancient Romans were.

Rome at the time of Constantine had a population of one million people. By today’s standards that might not seem out of the ordinary but when you think that this was 2000 years ago that number is staggering. The film goes into a lot of detail on the various materials and techniques used in the construction of Roman buildings, but I found the information on how this affected the culture and economy to be the most interesting part. The use of sewers and aqua ducts to move water through the city, the use of glass windows and central heating, public toilets and baths, moving materials from coastal port cities to Rome all show just how sophisticated and advanced the ancient Romans were. No wonder they still have such a large influence on today’s societies.

All in all I thought the videos were a good supplement to this weeks reading on architecture.

Blog Review.

I just finished checking out some of my classmates blogs. I looked at Mellisa's http://kellmr35.blogspot.com/, Stephani K's, http://artinquiries.blogspot.com/, and Karen's, http://eyesonart-karen.blogspot.com/

I looked over the projects and left a few comments. I didn't do the first assignment. I’m not an artist. My primary job responsibilities over the last several years have been concerned with efficiency and cost effectiveness. I’m having a hard time tapping into my “artistic” side. But visiting the other blogs and seeing some of the examples from project one has given me a better understanding of what I should be looking for.

I noticed in both Mellisa and Stephanie's postings from their respective museum visits that they both chose a few of the same works I did to review. For the most part I think they chose these works for the same reason I did. Pure visual enjoyment. Stephanie lives in Brooklyn so her choices were of works I’m unfamiliar with.

Video Review: Sculpture, Glass & Ceramics, Installation.

I've finished watching the videos "Through the Eyes of a Sculptor", "Glass and Ceramics", and "Installation Art" and these are my thoughts:
I found the video on sculpting informative. I found it interesting to see the complexity involved in completing the marble statue. It's a very elaborate process that included many people with different specialized skills. The process of trying to find the right piece of marble was particularly interesting. Overall, it showed that the process of creating the statue was as much a technical endeavor as an artistic one. The information in the video also gave examples that related to the reading this week. It showed how the process of creating the statue included clay modeling, plaster casting and final stone carving, all topics in chapter eleven.
I also enjoyed the video on glass and ceramics. I like glass work and the video enhanced my appreciation of the process involved. The making of the stain glass windows is another example, like the sculpture video, of how much goes into the creation of certain works of art. The general perception may be that artworks are created by a solitary artist. The videos showed that this is not the always the case. Sometimes many people with different skill sets are needed to complete a work of art. This video also supplemented  this weeks readings by showing first hand what goes into glass and ceramic creation, both of which are topics in chapter twelve.
The third video on Installation art was my least favorite. the concept of three dimensional art that encompasses large areas is interesting but I didn't find most of the examples shown very appealing. The only one I did like was the rotating section of the building.
All the videos were very informative and for the most part left me with a greater appreciation for the amount of work that goes into these creations.