Logo Project
Self Portrait
I think that art criticism has its place in our society but is not needed everywhere. First, I think that art criticism is useful when it is getting at the message or meaning behind the art rather than the art itself. This is part of the reason that art exists in the first place, to let us express what we feel and think. When people disagree with that, it is not destructive to criticize. Also, it is very useful when it is constructive and can help add to the message. Although, when criticism is in the name of itself and not helping the artist or society in any way, then it becomes dangerous. I think that a piece of art is entirely dependent on the artist’s message because art is something that we use to convey meaning and without a message it can only appeal to us in a visual way, not emotional. Since art equally involves the viewer and the creator, interpretation is a big part of it. When the artist makes his product, he makes it based on how he thinks people will interpret it. While some artists leave it open-ended, some try to convey a direct message and for that message to count, it must be seen and appropriately viewed by whoever is looking at it. Self portraits allow artists to say something that they normally would not get the chance to. They get to tell people how they view themselves. For instance, this can look like someone drawing themselves in dim lighting because they feel dark or with an sad face because they feel despair. The idea with self portraits is to portray yourself in a way that other people never would have seen. It is supposed to show your audience another side of you.
Spray Paint Project
Reflection
For this project I teamed up with Eno and we decided that we wanted to create an art brand. We wanted to be able to spread our design and patterns and have that be the premise of our project. We decided to pick spray paint because it is a form of art that we can put in a lot of different places. We also wanted to get a feel for marketing and branding because we are thinking of going into entrepreneurship for our careers. We saw this as a perfect opportunity. The first thing that we did was make our brand. It is e=mc^2. We chose this because it had the perfect acronym for our names. It stands for Eno and Max clothing company. Although we are not actually making clothing yet, we plan on making designs that could be put on t-shirts and eventually we will consider it. Then, after we made our brand, we made the stencils. To start, we just wanted to spread the name of our brand so we each made stencils of our logo and brand name. We then put this in various key locations throughout the school just as real marketers would. If I could do this part again, I would probably have made our stencils out of thicker paper so that we could always use them. Next, we painted our section of the spray paint wall. We made the text read, “dress to impress.” We chose this because it could be a potential slogan for a brand, and if we were actually selling things we would want slogans. We made it look like the rocky mountains because it is applicable to our target demographic, Colorodans. This is on the way to our school so a lot of people will see it and that is why we felt that we had to get our message across while being concise. If I could do it again, I would have made a draft on a normal piece of paper so that we could decide how much room we had for our text instead of just guessing.
Lastly, we painted a tile. To paint this tile, instead of choosing to do a picture or stencil, we did a pattern. At first, I thought that I was going to spray paint random colors and use a semi-circle stencil. When I made this stencil I did not think that it was different enough and that I could make beautiful art out of it. So then, I decided to cut a corner out of it. What this did was create a slight imbalance in the stencil itself, but not in the whole pattern. It also looked a lot less redundant when it was on the tile. Then, instead of doing completely random colors, I chose to stick to a general pattern. I started with a different color on every row, and I did not repeat that color until I ran out of colors. This allowed me the freedom to still place colors where I wanted them while still maintaining some uniformity. If I could do this portion of the project again, I think that I would pick less vibrant colors in order to make it look less childish.
Lastly, we painted a tile. To paint this tile, instead of choosing to do a picture or stencil, we did a pattern. At first, I thought that I was going to spray paint random colors and use a semi-circle stencil. When I made this stencil I did not think that it was different enough and that I could make beautiful art out of it. So then, I decided to cut a corner out of it. What this did was create a slight imbalance in the stencil itself, but not in the whole pattern. It also looked a lot less redundant when it was on the tile. Then, instead of doing completely random colors, I chose to stick to a general pattern. I started with a different color on every row, and I did not repeat that color until I ran out of colors. This allowed me the freedom to still place colors where I wanted them while still maintaining some uniformity. If I could do this portion of the project again, I think that I would pick less vibrant colors in order to make it look less childish.