Prompt: Movie's visual qualities

I'm actually a huge fan of visually based and animated movies, so I'm going with Spirited Away for this one.

The movie is about a human who gets trapped, perhaps temporarily, in a fantastical fairy-tale world. A bath-house for the spirits. In particular, there's a set of scenes at the beginning where Chihiro (the main character)'s family discovers what they think is an abandoned amusement park, and explore it. In the evening, the park reveals its true nature: the spirit's bath house.

The above are from BEFORE the bath-house is revealed. It's a small difference, but the images are slightly paler and more pastel. This may also be a result of the bath-house's nature being revealed at night.

Haku's arrival signals the start of the bath-house becoming a supernatural place, and the colors darken and the image becomes more serious in response.

 

Images from when Chihiro has found out the truth of the bath house. The colors are more serious, more ominous. though also warmer.

Partially because the main character of the movie is a child, and partially because she is a human in the land of spirits, chihiro is outsized. Everything is larger in scale, more panoramic, when she is in the picture. She's usually placed so as to be small, to seem smaller, especially in the beginning of the movie. This is NOT true of all media by this author, all media involving child protagonists (who sometimes seem larger then they should be because they are  a large part of the story and the focus), or even all miyazaki films involving children. Haku's human self also resembles a child, and his presence in the film is larger/any scene he occupies.

The bath-house's colors are more serious and somber. Everything in the movie is high-color (though not nessicairly high key color all the time), which is a feature of Miyazaki's often fairy-tale-like narratives. This one is particularly colorful. None of the color is nonsensical, but more opportunities have been found in this story to express color-- because this narrative is a highly fantastical narrative, possibly the most fantastical narrative in the [my list of] Big Three Miyazaki films (Princess Mononoke (which is way more adult-oriented and somber), spirited away, and Howl's moving castle (which straddles the line between fantasy genres and intended audience.)) The bath house's color tends to have deeper shadows in places, and the colors are often more intense there then they are in other settings, where they become almost pastel.

Most of the settings are extremely linear, and project upwards. This helps the scale, because chihiro (constructed primarily of softer, round shapes) is more of a contrast. The sharp upward direction also makes her seem smaller, and makes this fantastical setting seem larger, with more space for there to be story. This is not a cramped setting, and its colorful cast of spirit-creatures fit within it's confines.

The texture of this movie is fairly smooth-- significant because i think most of the backgrounds are paintiend; but they have appropriate textures where it is relevant, and it's not the artificial smoothness of some animated movies where the visual shorthand/language aspect of the drawings is what's important to convey clearly where they are and what's happening, but otherwise richness of imagery is not important. Miyazaki films are smooth enough to be clear but also created with concerned with the aesthetics of the scenes. They are bot very painterly, with brush strokes visible, which is what I usually equate with texture, but nevertheless background textures are employed nicely.
Textures are not really employed in the figures, but that is fairly typical for this style of animation.

Prompt: Quote, 1

CORY ARCANGEL

“Keep doing what you like to do. That’s all it is.”

My relationship with art over the years has been extremely complicated, which is part of why i will have done college for so long; I resisted the things I do well hard and tried to do other things instead. Art and Writing were too personal, being my few skills (my prowess at which I actually doubted), and I didn't want people to take those things away from me by trying to do them seriously. There was this perception on the inside that if people told me how shit I actually was at them, that then I wouldn't enjoy them anymore and there'd be no point in the pursuit. I had few enough skills, and I didn't want to sacrifice the ones closest to myself.

So after about 3 years of chasing the wrong major I gave up and threw myself wildly in the direction that everything kept pushing me towards-- painting-- and I also found out how wrong i was.

There's a lot of discipline in art creating; a lot of making myself work when I'd otherwise rather be languishing. There's a lot of frustration and tears and I'm still floating uncertainly in terms of what my stuff is worth, intellectually and otherwise, but I think that's endemic to the process, or, at least, my process. But I do actually enjoy it. And following it seriously has not, and hopefully will not, remove the enjoyment factor from the thing. I have also since learned that people cannot take this from me-- I might leave certain circles which are unwelcoming, but the artmaking is a product of myself. I must make myself continue it, but as long as I do, it won't be removed from me. 

Even within the art practice, development has mostly been a case of tearing down artificial walls I created between teh concepts of what I was allowed to do and what I wanted to do. I created these ridiculously complex hierarchies of hobby art I do in my spare time, and "Real art" i did for school (and I still address those, even though I have realized that if I draw that distinction, when I actually have time to CHOOSE what I'm doing I won't work on the "Real art" unless the real art IS the art I want to make.). I never thought I'd ever be allowed to paint on bits of cloth or spend so much time and effort on materials experiments, which do fail. Quite a lot, actually. And they might yet fail-- it's very possible that every painting I'm currently making in cloth will literally disintegrate over the next five years-- but as of right now, people respond enthusiastically to the paintings on cloth. I also never thought that it would ever be appropriate to paint AON and my cast of other extremely fantastical, symbol-laded, colorful animals. Their symbol-laden nature allows them to function effectively as allegories for what happens in my daily life, though, to make points in my paintings or other things. I'm still pretty sure it'll hard to get people to take them seriously, but that doesn't rally matter anymore; I'm taking them seriously, and enjoying it, no matter how delightfully childish it is, and I'm pretty sure that's the only thing that matters.

This whole learning process has mostly been a set of euphoric discoveries that yes, I am  really allowed to do that. That there is nobody telling me I'm not allowed to do that. If I can justify something, I can do it. It may not work, it may not net me any success, but that only matters if those are the end goals. If my goal instead is to have a dialogue with a piece of cloth and some colored dirt suspended in plant goo, have a good time with it, and paint something I want to paint, then i've achieved my goals, and all other goals are secondary.

FOR MY OWN NOTES, the quotes to choose from were;

CORY ARCANGEL

“Keep doing what you like to do. That’s all it is.”

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT

“I start a picture and I finish it. I don’t think about art while I work. I try to think about life.”

LYNDA BENGLIS

“I totally believe that art is an open dialogue and that it is not logical. It does not always make sense.”

EDWARD HOPPER

“So many people say painting is fun. I don’t find it fun at all. It’s hard work for me.”

YAYOI KUSAMA

“I fight pain, anxiety, and fear every day, and the only method I have found that relieves my illness is to keep creating art. I followed the thread of art and somehow discovered a path that would allow me to live.”

GLENN LIGON

“My job is not to produce answers. My job is to produce good questions.”

AGNES MARTIN

“That which takes us by surprise—moments of happiness—that is inspiration.”

ANA MENDIETA

“My art is the way I reestablish the bonds that tie me to the universe.”

ELIZABETH MURRAY

“I want to make a beautiful, beautiful thing, something that gives you ideas about how life can be.”

BRUCE NAUMAN

“What is it that an artist does when he is left alone in his studio? My conclusion was that if I was an artist and I was in the studio, then everything I was doing in the studio should be art . . . . From that point on, art became more of an activity and less of a product.”

LOUISE NEVELSON

“I always wanted to show the world that art is everywhere, except it has to pass through a creative mind.”

GEORGIA O’KEEFFE

“I found that I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn’t say in any other way—things that I had no words for.”

SUSAN ROTHENBERG

“I think artists almost always end up turning to what’s around them, what’s in their environment or outside their window.”

CINDY SHERMAN

“I wanted to create something that people could relate to without having read a book about it beforehand.”

 

KIKI SMITH

“I think making things beautiful is important. But often what’s first considered ugly is beautiful, too.”

CHUCK CLOSE

“Inspiration is for amateurs.”

SAMUEL BECKETT

"Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better."

LARRY RIVERS TO DAVID HOCKNEY

"Do you want your work to be beautiful or interesting?"

Prompt: Useful Critiques

Useful critiques have information I can use. Redundant, I know. The best critiques are halfway through the working process or 3/4's of the way. Finished piece critiques are okay, but only help in the moving forward stage. They tell me what's working, and what's not. If there's anything glaringly distracting in the work that takes away from my meaning or my imagery. They MAY address how readable my imagery is (but this is a secondary concern, since I suspect that most of my imagery is not readable without some kind of guide.) They tell me if any references I'm making come across clearly. They are reasonably polite/not excessively harsh/cruel-- I am not one of those people who get off to being nasty for the sake of being nasty. Constructive is the opportune word-- they give information that is useful to me going forward.

The best advice I've ever got about critique is something I wish was also put forward in terms of writing critiques; that all advice should be filtered by you-the-artist because some of it may not be relevant to you and some of it may not be relevant to you right now, and other aspects of critique ARE directly relevant to your practice NOW.

The specific questions and advice that is best to answer/receive varies from painting to painting/work to work. Though suggestions on how to display the things are almost always useful to me, who does a lot of experimental work. (Specifically, the large painting currently stapled to the wall of my studio which i don't want to stretch over stretcher bars but which can't easily be displayed in another fashion.

EDIT: After more thought;

Nitpicking is fine, particularly from individuals i respect who I KNOW actually do have a knowledge of composition and anatomy (a stranger critiquing anatomy i am less likely to believe because they may not have stared at naked persons and/or musculature charts with the same level of depth or memorization that I KNOW a professor or one of my peers has.) Mentioning its nitpicking is good though

DO NOT neglect strnegths because if you do i might consider them a neutral and obfuscate them in the future. I DO need to know what's working and not for the sake of asspats.

Do not be cruel but do be honest.

More information is better. Some may ultimately be discarded but I cannot assess the worth of a critique until I have heard it. Scholars do no t improve their knowledge by not gaining new knowledge, and I will not improve by not hearing more critique. We do not improve in a vacuum.My own view of my work is both extremely harsh and baised; i need to know the external because I am not the external.

Prompt: skills i'd take of artists.

Laurie Hogin: Colors, variable fur/scale/feather texture, underpainting?

Mark Tansey: clevery wry witticism

Kristin Kest: Clarity of storytelling and technical skill. frankness of discussion about gender.

Paul Jeans: Knowledge of color and pigments. and color. did i mention color?

Peter Doig: impressionistic brushwork and color variation even in a very slim range (how colorful white paintings are), also sense of space/organization of visual space/not getting bogged down in the chaotic details.

Ai Wei Wei: Strength of conviction

Trenton Doyle Hancock: Horror vacui, codified mythos, strength of character development, fearlessness to show presumably very private mythos/characters.

Julie Heffernen: the fact that her paintings contain deep personal symbolism and narrative that are important to her but that she doesn't nessicarily feel she has to share with others.

Ellie Dent: willingness to frankly discuss personal issues that drive her work. Also color and texture to make a cohesive picture and get her point across. Also color in general but that's probably starting to sound old.

Lisa Yuskavage: color, willingness to "break the conventional rules."

Chuck Close: dedication.

Matisse: Dedication, also. When he could no longer paint he made paintings out of torn paper.

Van Gogh: dedication in the face of failure; use of color and line (and only color and line, basically) to build texture, guide the eye(direction) and build up composition. Favorite artist here.

All Dadaists: Irreverence.

Lious Wain: willingness to do things outside of convention even though people regarded it very strangely. ability to make an image that is recognizable with pattern.

Exekias: filling in parts of a well-known cultural story with off-screen time for the characters, composition along strange shapes.

Ralph Steadman: Everything.

Stephanie Pui-Mun Law: Detail and absorbant ground washes for atmospheric color

Prompt: Works i find impressive

I saw this work at an exhibit of Van Gogh's works in Philadelphia. The theme of the show was Van Gogh Up Close-- much of what was shown were studies or close-ups, and many were works I hadn't yet seen before.

This was one of my favorites of the exhibit, though it was a rather small painting. All of the works shown were very impressive and had a presence that came from layers of thick paint built up. Van Gogh paintings look like frosted cakes, the painting gets so thick, but it isn't traditional Impasto either; the works are built up with individual strokes. Literally thick lines of color, which in their layering make the image as it is finally seen. That's one of the things about Van Gogh's work which I have tried to absorb in my own practice.

This small painting was impressive for that physical presence from layered paint, and also because it's treated seriously despite being a small study. Attention was paid to this little painting, despite the fact that it was little. I also enjoy the composition, with the leaves forming so many directions, and the light outlining visible in most of the shapes. Van Gogh was not holding to any extant rules for How A Painting Is Done or How We Draw. Also, I think the moth is beautifully rendered and attracts a lot of attention.

Art can be impressive in many ways, but the unifying feature of all works I find to be impressive is the attention paid by the person who made it, how seriously it's taken. This work, Emperor Moth, is just a study, but Van Gogh treated it as seriously as he did his large paintings, and thus it's impressive despite it's smaller size. I also tend to find works that have a lot of color or intelligent use of color to be especially impressive.

Citations:
Vincent Van Gogh, Great Peacock Moth, 1889. Oil. 33.5cm x 24.5cm. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam. Accessed 9/6/2014; http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WLANL_-_artanonymous_-_Nachtpauwoog.jpg