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Thesis Blog 1

Hola! My name is Yamila, which is pronounced as Juh-Me-La. Please do not mess it up..

Anyways I am a 17 year old, small, latina, girl who is the year of the dragon and I obviously enjoy creating art! When painting I mainly use oil because I love how well it blends and that it dries slowly. When it comes to digital media, I work well with Photoshop due to the fact that it has so many options such as creating gifs, detailed illustrations, and manipulated photographs.

I have an interest in oriental things, so when I can, I’d sometimes incorporate Asian elements into my artwork or make it a main focus such as red pandas or koi fish. I focus more on Japanese and Chinese culture because of their similarity in style when it comes to art. For my thesis project, I have decided to make my concept surround around the a Japanese art style, Kintsugi. This technique incorporates the use of gold paint to fill in cracks of damaged pottery or objects. The main idea of this type of mending is to give new life and use of object while also making it look beautiful. I first found out about Kintsugi through a video I saw on Facebook and the guy talking in the video was explaining the process while also relating it to humans. What I mean by this is that throughout life we all end up, one way or another, developing cracks whether it be mentally or physically. One thing both of those have in common though is that it could be fixed. Yes, maybe sometimes it could be a permanent damage that cannot necessarily be recoverable, but pushing through or coping with those damages is similar to making oneself stronger and/or filling in your cracks.

My thumbnail sketches have a good starting point, but it is still missing elements to what would make an artwork complete composition wise. I had originally planned to have more thumbnails via Photoshop however my personal device has not been liking me lately so those will have to wait till the next blog post. Basing off of what I have so far and what I have discussed with my art teacher is that instead of using porcelain (my original idea) is to instead use crackling paste (gives effect I want and is cheaper yay). At first I wanted to use porcelain because I wanted it to resemble that no matter how tough we act we are all fragile beings. The crackling paste will still give me the cracks I want, but for me to showcase the fragile being idea i thought it could be fun to paint the faces and skin similar to how a porcelain doll’s face and fine china would look like.

Thumbnails - Bottom two is scrap. I'd only being doing one portrait.

Two artist that inspired me for this project is Ivan Alifan and Guglielmo Alberto Nacci. I mainly like Nacci’s use of soft colors and surrealism which always draws me in. However, with Alifan, not only does he have nice soft colors as well but in some of his artworks he used cake frosting pipes to create layered semi-3D oil paintings. I was so amazed when seeing the videos of him creating artwork with this style that I just knew that I would have to try it one day. I decided this project will be the one to try out that technique. It would be for composition and texture of the artwork rather than concept.

(WARNING: His artwork could be inappropriate at times. Look with caution)

http://www.ivanalifan.com/index.html

One thing I am struggling on is what the background should be for my project. Any ideas?

For now, Adios!