Alberto Giacometti 'Walking Man I'

Alberto Giacometti 'Walking Man I'

Doll Reflection + Research Q) 4+5+6

4. Look at this work by Giacometti and describe what you see

Alberto Giacometti 'Walking Man I'

The sculpture is of a man with very odd body measurements; however, the sculpture itself seems very natural. There is a wiry man in mid-stride with his right foot forward. His arms are just hanging there while the head is completely vertical. It is made of something like metal, copper or bronze.

5. How has Giacometti manipulated the form to create feeling in the work?

+ 6. Interpret the work.

Giacometti manipulated the ordinary human body form and created an abstract sculpture. Then man is thin and long, therefore, it looks like he had been stretched up. His long legs and lack of movement show, calmness and relaxing strides; however, the way his head is ahead of his body, makes it look like the man is in a hurry. It feels like the man is suppressing his rush to walk calmly.


Doll Reflection + Research Q) 1+2+3

1. Describe the colour scheme you have chosen
WARM/COOL/COMPLEMENTARY discuss why you chose these colours in detail
My colour scheme for the outside of my doll (e.g. clothes, hair; not the actual colour/pattern on the doll) is an accented neutral colour scheme. It involves neutral colours; black and white, and one comparatively small amount of red. My colour/pattern that is actually on my doll was meant to be a complementary colour scheme. I ‘flicked’ on the paint in this order; red & green, then blue & orange, then purple and yellow. However, I soon realised that all the colours combined because I could not control the direction of a ‘flick’. Therefore, I flicked on the colours in unsystematic order. This caused it to lose the complementary colour scheme. Research shows that this colour scheme does not have a specific name; therefore, I named it the ‘rainbow colour scheme’.
I chose to paint the doll bright and full of energy beneath the clothes. The outside is more dull and silent. This is because it expresses me very well. I am full of energy, active, competitive and talkative but in places such as school, etc, I become more quiet and ‘shy’.
Also, the clothes and the hair style was the type of clothes I like to wear. However, these turned out very dark and dull. The hair especially made me look emo. I just wanted to point out that I am not a dark, dull person and I like bright clothes too.


2. Describe how you created the work from start to finish including the techniques you used
+
3. Describe what you like about your work and any difficulties you faced so far
First, I was given a long piece of wire and a sheet of paper with the outlines of the ‘bone’ of my doll. I bent the piece of wire to replicate the bone structure. Next, I tore and scrunched up pieces of newspaper and masking taped it onto the wire to represent a more human like form. The scrunched up pieces of newspaper had to be small bits, as this way, it was much easier to make the doll look more realistic. It helped to put ‘bumps’ into certain places and the thickness of the overall body. For example, at the end of the arm, where the shoulder-joint is, there is a little round ‘bump’. An example of the thickness is the thigh being thicker than the arms. When all this was complete, air was squashed out of the newspaper muscles and a final round of masking tape covered up the newspaper. However, more newspaper was put on. Paper-Mache came next. I tore up more newspaper, horizontally, and used the glue to paste strips of it on my doll as the ‘flesh’. This part was brief and easy. After a few layers of paper-mache, the gesso was put on. I had to dab the gesso on with a special, round sponge with a handle. The gesso soon hardened and I was ready for my face. A special type of clay called ‘paper clay’ was used. This type of clay was very good to work with, as I only needed small, light bits to softly touch up my facial features. A bit of clay was put on the forehead to create the socket, where the eyes go. A little pyramid nose was added and pinched to form a more realistic shape and tiny lips were also added. Even though it was a short process, I learnt a lot about handling paper clay. It took a short while for the clay to harden and it was very important to cover the face with glad wrap, if it had not been finished. The next lesson was when I came up with the ‘flicking’ paint idea. I experimented on my visual art diary and when it turned out a success, I started flicking onto my doll. This process was great fun and I was so into it that I failed to notice the paint I got on the art block tiles. About 2 more lessons later, I realised this and I had to mop it up. This was very unsuccessful. The paint was already to dry to mop off with water so I went and got the hard, scrubby, green objects. I scrubbed off the paint in triumph and proceeded onto the next step; clothes. This was a very sad process as I had to cover up my bright, flicked-on paints. To show the paint as much as possible, I dressed my doll with a tank top. However, this doll was suppose to be me and I usually wear do not wear tank tops outside without a jacket. So I made an unzipped, puffy jacket for my doll. I obtained some wire from a mysterious white bucket, full of mysterious looking wires, and starting at the wrist, I swirled it around the arms of my doll to get the ‘puffiness’ of the jacket. The wire went past the neck and onto my other arm. Then, it came back down to my neck to make my ‘bling’; the gold chain, then towards the back and into the shape of a hoodie. I paper-mached my clothes and painted it in a colour scheme I explained earlier. I made shorts and shoes for my doll. Then I got to the challenge; the face. I wanted to do a normal expression; happy, kind of excited, but not to outrageous. Just the expression I have when I skateboard on smooth grounds. The expression I have is different for the place where I skateboard. It’s normal when I do simple tricks or just skate on smooth grounds and a mixture of angry, disappointment when the ground is to rough. Then there’s my face when I skate on the ramps! My face looks extra excited. The face painted on the rock aided me on my journey to complete the doll. Some notes I remembered all throughout painting my doll’s face was: 1. Small, delicate strokes 2. Small amount of paint on my brush and 3. Do not be afraid to stuff up. This helped me too. I chose the colour base I liked: red – because this matched my hair and clothes (an accented neutral colour scheme). A dark shadow on my eye socket. Big white blob, followed by red pupil with a hint of white inside. More dark colours underneath my nose and on my top lip. By this time, my doll looked like a blood-thirsty vampire. I erased the red paint that got flicked onto my chin and showed it to Ms. Hampton. Blue was added to my pupil to cover up the white –there was too much white, and this one little dab of paint changed the entire look on my face. It looked much more realistic and I learnt a lesson, ‘even the smallest amount matters’. Tone was gradually created on my cheeks and nose by overlapping small amounts of dark and light paint softly. My face turned out amazing; however, it was bald. I quickly wanted to fix this problem. First I was lazy and tried to solve the problem with one long piece of soft, paper hand-towel. My hair turned out wonky. I decided against this and quickly ripped off the hand towel. I tore an even thinner bit of hand towel. I wetted it, twisted it, and placed on my head. My first strip of hair was what inspired me to keep going. I was sure it would look very good. Soon, my fringe and side was complete. I had the option of keep doing this way for the back of my hair. However, I decided against it because I was running out of time. I layered small bit of hand towel and pinched them to make the lines which ran down to form a great look. A few more individual strips were added to paint and highlight red. I liked how my black hair blended into my jacket. I decided to leave most black and paint in some red streaks, however, it was white to start with and I decided that black, white and red matched my colour schemed better. Creating a doll form of myself was a very enjoyable, exciting and interesting task, where I got to learn how to express myself better, in a more creative and artistic way.

Negative body images





These are some negative body images. I do not get what the negative body images are so, so far, I just got some advertisments on losing weight.

Reflection - 16/3/10

Today, we continued with painting out paintings. I spent the whole art lesson trying to make my skin tone and I succeed with the help of Jessica and Ms. Hampton. Next lesson I'm planning to put tone into my skin and finish painting my head.

Colour wheel (above)



Warm and Cool colours (above)

Definitions

Tone create depth and atmosphere in a drawing. In order to make a drawing look "realistic" you need shadow because in the real world everything has a shadow. If you draw something with only one width line and don't render shadow, your drawing is going to look flat, two dimensional, and unrealistic. Adding shadow automatically adds a small bit of perspective to the drawing because the shadow indicates that something is in front of and/or behind the object that would cause it to cast a shadow.


Line is the most basic element of the drawing. And in it's most basic definition, it's what separates one area of the drawing plane from the other. A single line will segment your piece of paper into "that area" and "this area". The more lines that are added, the more complex and numerous the separations become: light from dark, foreground from background, positive space from negative space. Line can be uniform and all one width, or to be more interesting, and to convey more information with a single line, a single line can be of varying widths.
Shape.


Shape occurs when the first line is drawn. The most basic definition of shape is the white area on the paper. Shape is the information that is presented between two or more lines, or is the thing that is enclosed by line. Shape helps define the object that is depicted as much as the collection of lines that make up the object in the drawing. Incorrect use of shape will cause the drawing to "not look like what it's supposed to be."