Welcome back!

Well here we are again!  Welcome back to a new school year!  Remember you can make this year be the best or the worst, it is all up to you and your attitude!

I would like to start off by hearing what all of you did this summer.  Here is just a little bit of what I did.

Saw famous works of art in the Louvre museum in Paris.

Made art with Art Camp kids.

Watched my boys blow up fireworks.

Saw the largest and oldest cathedral in Europe in Koln, Belegium.

Saw where they filmed Harry Potter!

Recreated history with my hubby in Belgium.

Took a few girls to meet Mona.

Toured Paris and climbed the Eiffel Tower.

Had fun with photography on the 4th of July.

So now I want to know what you did this summer?  Give me some of your best moments or your worst?  What did you love doing?  Did your summer feel really short or really long?  What are you looking forward to with this school year? 

Trapped in layers

The artist Alicia Tormey is an Encaustic artist who works with layers of wax long with other mediums.  For this piece she has trapped layers of a material (my guess is string) under layers of clear wax.

What do you think of this piece?  Is this something you would like to try?  What type of image would you create if you could trap thin pieces of material between wax?  What material might you use? 

American Parody

I bet I could ask you if you have ever heard of the painting "American Gothic" and you would probably say you have never heard of it.  But if I showed it to you I bet you would not only instantly know it, but you could tell me some other way that you have seen it.  You have probably seen a parody of this famous Grant Wood painting in magazines or on a commercial.  Heck you might have even seen it in an episode of Spongebob.  It is probably one of the most recreated works of art on the planet.  And why not?  It is a fun piece that is easy to use in a joke.

American Gothic by Grant Wood

The top image is the original and the rest are parodies of it.  Can you name me another parody that you have seen using "American Gothic?"  What would you do if you could create a parody of this famous piece?  Would you stick with the original characters or would you swap them out for two completely different people/characters?

Painting with light

One of my favorite photography lessons that I teach is called "Light Painting."  This is where you take really bright lights and use them to create an image in front of a camera.  You have to set the camera to leave its lens open for an extended period of time, but the fun you can have with the images is only stopped by your imagination.

So what do you think of these images?  Most of the time you can use cell phone light or a flashlight, but what other lights can create really interesting images?  What would you do if you could?  Would you light up an object or draw a picture?  What would you draw?  What object would you light up?

They don't make them like that anymore

While I was browsing Pinterest looking for new things to blog about for this site, I stumbled across a beautiful perfume bottle.

These glass birds on the side of the bottle are what caught my attention.  It had to click on it to see if there were any other bottles that were just a beautiful and luckily I was not disappointed.

Maybe it is just me, but I instantly wonder what the perfume smelled like?  Was the scent as delicate as the bottles that held them?  And what kind of woman had one of these bottles?  What type of bottle would you have bought if you could have afforded expensive perfume in the 1920s?  Do you think these are art, or do you think this is something that any glass artist could do?  Is this a lost art?

"Shopped" without the computer

So in the art world, "shopped" refers to photoshopped.  Often art critics don't really like photoshopped art because they don't think the artist really had to do any work.  Don't get me wrong, there is a true talent to using Photoshop, trust me, if you know how to use the program I think you are a master artist in your own right.  But some critics think that all these people do is take images off of the internet and put them together.  And in some ways they are right, but I found an artist that is actually manipulating photos from actual film.

Thomas Barbey is using actual film to cut and put pieces of art together.  So this means he has to take the photos first and then has to develop the negatives and then has to put those images together by cutting them up, and then he retakes pictures of them.  So think of it as a really, really early version of Photoshop.  However, it is going to take you hours longer than a simple click and drag.

Let's take a look at a few.

So what do you think?  Do you love them or hate them?  Do you have a favorite?  What two or three photos would you put together?  Do you think his way is easier or would you prefer to use the computer?

But why real eyes?

So I came across this art print called "tilted crowned cat."  At first I was drawn to the bright colors and the silly crown on this cat.  But after I looked at it for awhile I noticed that while the majority of it was a very posterized image of a cat, the eyes are almost realistic.  Now that I have noticed that I can't seem to look away from the eyes.

What do you think?  Do you agree or disagree with me?  Once you see the eyes do you see the letters in the lower corner?  Do you find the random shapes that cut throughout the picture?  If you could make this would you do a cat or would you have picked another subject?