Artwork: Project Five
Title: "Walking Art Part One"
Size: 9cm x 26.5 cm each Medium: Canvas shoes, acrylic paint, and Matte Mod Podge Completion: 12/04/19 "Walking Art Part One" is a diptych type piece made on canvas shoes from Hobby Lobby, acrylic paint, and matte Mod Podge. This piece was inspired by Alphonse Mucha's pieces The Flowers: Iris and The Flowers: Iris. "Walking Art Part One" is a painting based on Mucha and the feelings that different feeling connotations they have in connection to my own feelings.
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Inspiration
For my piece I knew I wanted to do something with flowers and that is how I came across The Flowers series that Alphonse Mucha did. I chose these pieces specifically because irises represent faith, courage, hope, and wisdom, while different color carnations represent varying types of love. Alphonse Mucha's pieces mean a lot to me because of the cultural influences from the Czech people, and these two specifically are flowers that have strong feelings that I focus on within my life. I felt these two coming from a series allowed for a better cohesion and unity between the two pieces as well. These pieces inspired my piece because of both the cultural connection and emotional connection to the flowers and the artist as a while as well.
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Planning
I didn't know what I wanted to do with the pieces necessarily because it is my final project for Senior year. I eventually decided to do a more fun approach on it while still focuses on the connotations of the flowers that were important to me. Irises represent faith, courage, hope, wisdom, while carnations represent varying types of love. I have always found wearable art very cool and wanted to make a piece that could be a practical one as well as one I had a connection to, which is how I came across the idea for using shoes. the pieces ended up being more similar to the original, but I wanted to change it by adding more flowers and continuing it across the whole shoe to focus more on the flowers than the actual people on the shoes because of the emotions I connect to each flower. I chose to pick the right side of the shoes to do the irises on because I typically rely more on the right, since I am right handed, and I also tend to rely on the feelings of hope and faith to get me through daily life. I chose to do the carnations on the left side because while I am typically a very emotion-based person, I still don't necessarily rely on that side of me and let it dictate what I do as much.
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Experimentation
For the Mod Podge portion of my process I was very worried with how the Mod Podge would end up drying and whether or not it would dry the glue-white color that it looked originally or if it would dry up and be more clear once it did. also played with the different brush sizes I used in order to spread the Mod Podge across the surface of the shoe more successfully and cover more area with less amount of material. I started out with the large round brush and didn't like how it was spreading the Mod Podge across the material of the shoe as it was still spreading very thick. Eventually I ended up the large flat brush, which helped me to spread the Mod Podge a lot better than the other brush and helped it to dry clear rather than the cloudy white.
Process
To begin, I sketched out the design from my planning sketches onto the shoes once I took the laces out of them and put plastic bags I had around the house to fill out the whole shoe and create support as I was painting them. I then, did a base layer of acrylic paint on each one with a mixture of cadmium yellow and titanium white all around the shoes and began painting the women and their backgrounds first. I used cadmium yellow to create the skin tone, along with cadmium red and titanium white to make it look less yellowish and more realistic.
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For the woman's hair on the iris shoe I mixed cadmium red and cadmium yellow, for the irises I mixed cadmium red, titanium white, and ultramarine blue. On the carnation shoe I used a mixture of titanium white, ultramarine blue, cadmium red, and cadmium yellow. Using a size 0 round brush and the mars black acrylic paint, I outlined the women and the larger details of the piece to make it stand out from the background.
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For the sides of the shoes I continued to paint the flowers that were specific to each type on the shoes. For the iris one I continued with the iris color I had mixed up and then I mixed two types of green up with ultramarine blue, cadmium yellow, and titanium white. I used those greens and the brown I had already mixed up for the girl's hair on the carnation shoes to add sticks and stems. for the carnations themselves I used all of the colors I have mixed up already.
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Once all of the painting on the shoes was dried, I started the Mod Podge process to help seal the shoe and protect it from water and any dirt or grime. I had to spread the Mod Podge on very thin and waited 15 minutes between the first and the second layer on each shoe. I ended up using a large flat brush in order to help spread the Mod Podge easier rather than using a round brush.
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Reflection
Compare & Contrast
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CritiqueCompared to the last piece that I did, I did not think this piece was as good. I wanted to push myself to do something that I have never done in art before, which was painting on a form of clothing, but I think I would have executed it better to look more unique as well. I did end up liking how it looked after the Mod Podge was added.
If I were to redo the project I would try playing with the colors more and make the flowers look way more realistic and put more detail into the shoes themselves. |
ACT
Clearly explain how you are able to identify the cause effect relationship between your inspiration and its effect on your artwork?
The meaning of the flowers and the colors that Mucha used in my inspiration pieces had a direct impact on my piece. What is the overall approach the author has regarding the topic of your inspiration? The author has a generic, technical approach to Mucha's piece because it is just a generic website because it is just an archive of Mucha's pieces. What kind of generalizations and conclusions have you discovered about people, ideas, culture, etc. while you researched your inspiration? I have generalized that artists will find meaning for their pieces in nature and make nature a main inspiration for the feelings that they associate within their pieces. What is the central idea or theme around your inspirational research?. The central idea behind my research was the meaning of flowers and the feelings that we can associated with the symbolism of nature. What kind of inferences did you make while reading your research? I inferred that flowers can hold the same feelings and meanings for most people, even though there is bound to be some type of cultural differences in the feelings associated with symbols in nature. |
Bibliography“History and Meaning of Iris.” ProFlowers Blog, 14 May 2015, https://www.proflowers.com/blog/history-and-meaning-of-iris.
“Meaning & Symbolism of Carnations.” Teleflora, https://www.teleflora.com/meaning-of-flowers/carnation. Mucha Foundation. Mucha Foundation, http://www.muchafoundation.org/gallery/themes/theme/art-posters/object/273. Mucha Foundation. Mucha Foundation, http://www.muchafoundation.org/gallery/themes/theme/art-posters/object/274. |