Project 4: Self Directed Project -- Final Blog

In this project, I found inspiration from multiple artists in books in the library. All these artists had similar looks in their art which focused on the use of lines to either fill the page or create abstract images with the lines. They also used color in interesting ways to create their pieces. Because I had a lot of freedom in this project, I started by creating 4 pieces of paper and experimenting with different ways of creating lines and incorporating color. I felt that I was able to create a piece that really expresses my intentions and overall is helping me create an art identity.

My final product changed significantly from my initial ideas. At first, I wanted to incorporate tape to create the lines but I found that it was extremely hard to create the lines I wanted and make the lines straight. I decided to create lines using a ruler to still get straight lines without the tape. With these lines, I began painting inside the lines starting with a dark blue on the top most lines. As I progressed downward, I began to form a gradient. At this point, I decided I was going to form a multi colored gradient that went from darker, cool colors to lighter, warm colors. As I progressed down the paper, the lines went from blue to green to yellowish. Looking at the final piece, I saw it had vague reminisces of a landscape. However, the lines and negative space kept it from looking to much like a original landscape piece. My piece also had a lot of negative space in the top half of the paper. I really like the piece with the negative space there but it also adds an additional intriguing aspect of adding an object or objects to compliment the lines. Since the lines were all very horizontal and straight, I was thinking of adding organic (circular) shapes to create a contrast between the lines.

I think my further work with geometric shapes and lines have increased my understanding of the process and hopefully has helped me improve in the formal aspects of my paintings. In the future, I will continue to incorporate geometric shapes or figures into my pieces and build off of that, for example finding geometric shapes in nature to use in the next project with the artist in residences.