Assignment 2

Reference

Claude Monet Landscape near Montecarlo 1883

Setup

What my printer printed. Had to go on an ink run.

Grid format and yes that is how my printer printed the image. I have a very bad printer. 

Final Image

This was a very very hard project to do. The original artist is very talented. I ended up near the end trying to just focus on getting the right colors in the areas since I was having a lot of trouble with this.

Copy of Reflection Paper

Arianna Phalen

2D Design

Reflection Paper

Liu Bolin

Liu Bolin is a Chinese artist and photographer who uses his art to bring awareness to different issues. He uses his background and inspiration from the military to make himself blend in with the background. He uses the colors observed from the background he is going to be covering with his body and graphs it out and paint over his whole body. He has a very good sense of color mixing because he is practically invisible in his works. 

Based on what I learned about color it takes an artistic eye and a lot of experimentation, using different color schemes to portray feelings, and create optical illusions. Such as Liu Bolin who creates the illusion of invisibility by mirroring the background onto himself. He brings attention to everyday items or tragic stories by making you look twice. We live in the digital age where we are constantly bombarded with news of tragedies, nonsense, political agendas, fads, fashion, etc. So, for most of us we don’t take a second glance when we are trying to sort through all the posts which means a lot of things disappear under our nose. But with him making himself invisible it causes you to take a second glance because you notice that something is off then you notice the man. 

Bolin is making his work to bring awareness to different issues. Each image has a meaning behind it whether you get the meaning from looking at the picture or asking the artist. For example, him standing in front of different food. You might think that the meaning is there is so much packaging or it looks too neat. The meaning behind those photos is to bring awareness to other people that there were chemicals put into those food products that cause cancer. Most consumers do not know what they are putting into their bodies even if it is seen as healthy food and he was trying to bring awareness. 

Another example of his work is when he took a group of people who lost their job blend into the abandoned warehouse that they use to work. Included in the photo is propaganda for a communist nation. The meaning behind this is to show that people are invisible when it comes to the discord between civilization and the development. So, for this photo the warehouse was shut down in what presumably was a choice by the government resulting in people losing their jobs, their livelihood, their means of providing. It creates the question of is it worth it? Or why did we build a society that harms the society.

I find his work very interesting now that I did more research behind his work. I have seen his work before but it was portrayed as a fun game of spot the person. Now that I know there is meaning behind it and the process it creates a better understanding of his art. His art is purely mapping out the colors he needs and where it needs to be placed then painstakingly painted by hand for hours on end. It is not photoshopped. It gives me ideas that I know that I cannot obtain yet for my art skills but I would eventually like to achieve. Such as learning how to make a piece more in depth. Most of my art is taken at face value and I want to provide a deeper meaning going forward. I hope that my political poster will make people question and color itself is a very difficult and time-consuming process.