Reflecting on the Year

It has been an amazing, stressful, interesting, but overall fun year in AP art. I've loved getting to know everyone in the class and having a chance to be creative during this crazy senior year. As for advice...

Dear future AP Art kids,

Enjoy your time in this class! Even though it can be stressful at times, it is all worth it because when everything is said and done, you'll come out of it having had an amazing experience and having created a fantastic body of work. Also, choose a concentration that will make you happy. Don't do something because you think it's out of the box or it's easy. Choose something that you'll enjoy creating because that will make class much more fun and art much easier to create. Just remember: art should be fun! 

Concentration Questions

What is the central idea of your concentration?
The central idea of my concentration is a focus on reflections in water using exaggerated colors. Overtime, it has also grown into an abstraction of reflections. 

How does the work in your concentration demonstrate the exploration of your idea? You may refer to specific images as examples. When referencing specific images, please indicate the image numbers.

All of my pieces are paintings of reflections in water. In the beginning, my pieces were much more literal. They showed the objects that were being reflected and it was pretty clear what they were. As I continued to work, my pieces began to focus much more on solely the reflection, making my concentration much more obvious in my work. My pieces also began to be much more abstract as I tried to focus more on the reflections themselves rather then what was being reflected. I've also tried to push and exaggerate my use of colors throughout all of my pieces, making many of them very vibrant. 

Update on my Concentration

Hi guys! I don't have a picture of any of my pieces with me and the ones I really need the most help with are at school, so I'll just have to explain them. The first one I feel that I need to work on the one of a foot/leg reflected in a puddle. I never really got very much feedback on it, and I'm curious to hear what you guys think. I feel like it doesn't look finished and is a bit flat. The other one I didn't love was one of my last concentration pieces. It has a lot of orange and red in it, and the whole painting is a reflection. It's very abstract, but I'm not sure if it's finished or not. If anyone wants me to show them these two pieces at school tomorrow in order to give me feedback, I can do that too. Sorry I don't have pictures, but I didn't know I would need them!

Concentration Critique

 

My concentration is reflections with exaggerated colors. With these two pieces, I was trying to make them more abstract and decided to just have fun with them instead of paying too much attention to detail.

 



AP Art Poster

 

Chad Poloni bought an ad on the AP Art Poster for his company, Mojo Custom Coffee.

 

 

 

What is a Concentration Assignment

 

Leonid Afremov

http://lookslikegooddesign.com/paintings-leonid-afremov/

Leonid Afremov is a Russian-Israeli artist who paints mainly using oils. I think the main purpose of his work is to create incredible paintings that capture people with their use of color and texture. In each of his pieces, the lighting in the painting creates a really beautiful reflection on either the surface of the water or the ground and the bright colors make the pieces very vivid and full of life. Also, the use of lights and darks in each of the paintings help guide your eyes through each piece.

 

 

Salvador Dali

http://en.wahooart.com/A55A04/w.nsf/Opra/BRUE-5ZKEQP

Salvador Dali was a surrealist painter who painted using oil paints. His paintings were created to create a skewed and interesting perspective for the viewer. Some of Dali's work is very crisp and clean while other pieces have a lot of texture. He does a great job creating contrast in his pieces to make certain elements pop even his simplest works are still beautiful and interesting.

 

 

 

Mario de Biasi

http://everyday-i-show.livejournal.com/171786.html#cutid1

 

Biasi is an Italian photographer and photo journalist. He uses interesting perspectives in his photos to create captivating images. The lines and reflection in the photo on the left create a very strong and visually interesting photo. It makes it difficult to tell where the buildings actually start and stop. The middle photo is my favorite. I love the few blurred ice skaters surrounding the people in the center of the photo. It draws your eye in even though there is a lot going on. I also love the perspective of the photo on the right. The people are at the very bottom of the photo, but using the sky to take up so much space really causes the viewer to focus on the people even more. Also, the clouds look amazing and I really like the contrast between the bright sky on the right as it fades to darker clouds on the left of the photo. 

 

 

Summer Photos

I really enjoyed taking the photos this summer, but I procrastinated a little bit. I was at Stanford until the end of July and didn't take my camera with me because I was worried something would happen to it. Once I got home, I sort of spaced out taking my pictures through the month of August. I would take a bunch of pictures at a time though, so I have a lot of groups of pictures that were taken in the same areas. I really like how my pictures turned out though and had a lot of fun with this project!