Tag: art

romeo lost

mariethearistocat1 Comment

poets only write about love and love lost,

but what about the time afterward?

what about the times when i see you my heart breaks,

not because i miss you,

but i miss the feeling of you.

the feeling of you on my neck,

the feeling of you in my arms,

the feeling of you on the other end of the line.

you weren’t a classic romeo.

you were one with trails of cigarette smoke and a bright red motorcycle,

instead of shiny, chain-link armor and a glistening white horse.

Photo Credit: buzzfeed.com

your eyes hold the past.

the past hour-long laughing fits,

the past midnight ice cream runs,

the past nights we slept under the stars.

i wish i could kiss you one more time,

not because i like you,

but because i liked the void you filled.

what about when i see her for the first time, this new me.

Photo Credit: buzzfeed.com

she’s beautiful, blonde, bubbly.

everything that i wasn’t, she is.

she’s willing to go all in. i guess i wasn’t.

i guess i couldn’t stand up when you walked away.

i guess i couldn’t hold you the right way,

because now i’m holding empty space.

my bed is empty to my left because i can’t bear to roll over in case you’ll come back.

because sometimes i open old, dusty copy of shakespeare’s sonnets,

and imagine you in every one.

i wish he wrote about how to pick up the pieces when you’re broken,

because i keep cutting myself on broken glass.

October Brings All Good Things

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It is common knowledge that the point of October is Halloween, what with dress up and ghosts; pumpkins, with carving and all the pumpkin-y food; and boots, scarves, and sweaters.

But that being said, I recently found something that outranks basically all but Halloween in my list of reasons to love October.

Photo Credit: Ashleigh Izienicki (@missupacey) via insharee.com

Inktober.

31 inked art pieces in 31 days.

Started in 2009 by artist Jake Parker, it has since grown into a worldwide event.

At this point, many popular artists have created their own iterations of the basic prompt. Like @missupacey ‘s Witchtacular or @lyfeillustration ‘s Goddess Lyfeink16.

Photo Credit: Lydia Fenwick (@lyfeillustration) via http://www.tumblr.com

This year I have been following many of these artists working through Instagram. I also happen to just browse the art the rest of the world is doing.

It has, thus far, been a really really cool experience because no matter the level of art experience, people who like art are united for a whole month.

The best part is that since it is a self challenge, there aren’t really any hard and fast rules. The art is really up to the artist, they can choose to follow a prompt for all 31 days, parts of a prompt, no prompt, or only certain days.

While I don’t consider myself an artist per say, I do really enjoy art, so I decided to take part in the challenge.

It has been an amazingly eye-opening experience so far.

My Day 6: @missupacey’s Witchtacular prompt

While I hold no candle to the likes of @missupacey or @lyfeillustration, I have found that I have grown so much in technical ability and ability to translate my creative vision into an actual tangible image.

But most importantly, since starting (a day late albeit) I am finding that I feel happier.

My Day 4: no prompt

My Thoughts on Music…

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Music is the most powerful of weapons. It is a loaded gun to your mind and you pull the trigger when you press play. The beat is the rounds going BANG, BANG, BANG. The feeling you get, the euphoric experience you get whilst listening to that song is the bullet piercing the depths of your mind, the target.

Music is a drug. Once you listen to a really good song, you’re hooked. You need it. You can’t focus without it. When a song is stuck in your head, it’s like the peak of addiction. It is the moment you can’t go back because the song has ensnared you so deeply in its rhythm, that your mind can’t think of anything else. The only remedy is listening to it again and again and again.

Music is like a flower. Some songs are like deep maroon roses. They’re beautiful to look at, but they’re infested with thorns. The words will sink into your brain like a prick to the finger. Some songs are like smiley daisies. The message sent is that of the bright yellow center and the delicate, white petals.

The thing that is so desirable about music is the other-worldly experience you get. Even if it’s for a split second, one envisions another world while listening to a song or lyric. Each song delivers a message. Peppy songs can lift your attitude. Love songs give you a warm feeling. Sad songs can give you reassurance in a blue stage of your life. The list goes on.

Music is universal. Try listening to a song in a language you don’t know at all. Even if you don’t know what it’s about, you know how the artist feels in a particular moment. You get the feeling. Music is one rare thing that almost everyone can enjoy. Whether it be a beat, a lyric, a voice, or the inter-workings of a piece of music.

Music is like a good book (or a good movie).

Image result for music
Photo Credit: http://www.jjay.cuny.edu/department-art-music

A song can go down in history for you. Sometimes I’ll hear a song that is practically a decade old and feel the same I did when I first heard it. A song can’t change, just like a book or movie. There’s something so comforting about the stability of music. If you are totally in love with one song, nothing can stop you from reliving the same experience again and again.

The thing is, I’m not the average “music person.” The person whose earbud is almost surgically attached to their ear. I don’t even own a speaker. I don’t even really listen to music all that much. But when I find a good song, album, or artist, it almost overtakes me. So try listening to a new song, nothing like you’ve ever heard before. You may just surprise yourself.

Read this article to find out how exactly our bodies react to music:  http://www.livescience.com/1139-music-chills.html

Los Angeles Art Show

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https://i0.wp.com/d2jv9003bew7ag.cloudfront.net/uploads/LA-Art-Show.jpgLast night I had the pleasure of attending the opening night of the Los Angeles Art Show to benefit St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

I have been to a few art shows before, but none compare to this one.

There was historic and contemporary art, the historic was romantic and detailed,  while the contemporary was polished and fashionable.

Although I had a rough go-of-it in new shoes that I had not worn previously to this event, I was mesmerized by the thousands of painting, sculptures, and sketches covering the walls.

The set-up was stunning. A labyrinth of walls glowing with spotlights throughout an entire floor of the LA Convention Center was filled with hundreds, if not thousands of people.

After strolling around the maze of artwork for a few hours, my friends and I went home for the night.

I cannot wait to attend next year’s show.

 

Why I Love Art

beetlejus

I love art. 

Ever since I was a small child I’ve been going to museums.  At first I hated them, I mean what kid wants to stand silently looking at art for hours, but now I really appreciate it. 

I have favorite artists now, and with research you find the things these artists have gone through. I see pieces of myself in a lot of my favorite artists.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B48aHt4CYAA9X1h.jpg
Credit to Twitter

Van Gogh has always been my favorite, his use of colors and textures are like no other and never cease to amaze me. My favorite of his paintings is his self-portrait. You can see so much of his inner turmoil in his china blue eyes.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b2/Vincent_van_Gogh_-_Self-Portrait_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg
Credit to Wikipedia

Andy Warhol is amazing.  He was so unique in his time.  He was an idol during his prime.  His art makes you think, its bright colors reel you in and you just can’t stop looking at them.

https://i0.wp.com/pursuitsinc.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/warhol-02.jpg
Credit to Pursuit Inc

“Textneck”

indigoshell

The “epidemic” of our generation. Researchers or something have come up with the term “text neck,” which is a sort of condition you can get from texting. Symptoms include bad posture, neck and/or back pains, and can lead to spine degeneration and surgery.

Ooh technology, you’ve got us now!

Or do you?

See, I get “reader’s neck.” And “writer’s neck.” And “artist’s neck.” Oh, and “carving into tracing paper with a small, sharp knife neck.”

Photo credit to http://benjaminharrismusings.blogspot.com

Oh look, no modern tech in this picture. That looks sooo comfortable, doesn’t it? I bet nobody lectures him about “scribe’s neck.”

I’m not saying that text neck doesn’t exist. I’m saying that maybe some things matter more than text neck.

How about the constantly hurting spine of the tall senior in a minuscule desk? Seriously, he looks like a titan in the desk.

Or perhaps the fact that there is almost literally no way to read a book comfortably on your bed. When I get into the story, I stop moving for hours. And then I “wake up” feeling like a ton of bricks had been stacked onto my neck.

How about I broaden this topic and say that probably everything we do is harming our body in some odd way? Yeah, let’s do that.

I Have No Idea What I’m Doing

indigoshell

This is my fourth year at Ojai Valley School, and I’ve taken an art class every year here. My freshman year I took Photography, and my sophomore and junior years I took Ceramics and Ceramics II. My senior year, this year, I recall signing up for a drawing class.

Never would I imagine that I would be put into AP Studio Art.

Yes, I may have had three years of art, but none of those three art classes involved hand-drawing anything. Now, in AP Art, we have to produce 24 art pieces to be put into our portfolio, which is a staple if you want to get into art school.

Which is not where I want to go. But I took it as a challenge and went with it anyways.

12 of the pieces are our Concentration, which is “a body of related works that demonstrate sustained and thoughtful investigation of a specific visual idea.” Basically 12 pieces of art related to one topic, such as drawing a 12-piece short comic.

12 of the pieces are our Breadth, “a variety of works demonstrating a range of conceptual and/or technical approaches.”

There’s more than just drawing with pencil and paper. There’s black charcoal, white charcoal, oil painting, oil pastels, color pencils, watercolor painting, things like that, and our Breadth section is basically us showing off what we can do in as many different ways as we can. (My favorite so far is white charcoal on black paper.)

Apart from “art” classes in elementary school, I’ve never taken art before, so since the beginning of the year, every time I sat down in our art studio, my first thought was always “I have no idea what I am doing.” To be honest, I still don’t know what I’m doing.

But that’s alright, I guess. Most of us don’t know what we’re doing there anyways.

Street Art

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Street art is a form of visual art created in public locations, usually with particular styles and features. Such form of art originated in early 1980s and continues to be applied in subsequent incarnations. The street art includes stencil graffiti, wheatpasted poster art orsticker art, and street installation or sculptures.


Artists who choose the streets as their gallery usually embraces their preferences to communicate directly with the public at large and the world outside. Also, street artists sometimes present socially relevant content as a form of “art provocation.”

One of the most popular forms of street arts is graffiti, which is writing or drawings that have been scribbled, scratched, or sprayed illicitly on a wall or other surface, often in a public place. It ranges from simple written words to elaborate wall paintings, and it has existed since ancient times back to Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece, and the Roman Empire.

Even though lots of street artists have risks of violating laws and destroying social orders, their passion of making art in a unique way still leads them to create a space that only belongs to them.

Trash & Fashion.

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Recently I did a story on our school’s first Trash Fashion Show and I gained some new knowledge about creating beauty.

What is the definition of beauty? In my opinion, beauty does not mean a gorgeous appearance, but it’s more about the internal significance. Just like Trash Fashion, which most people would refer to the costumes that are just simply made of trash.

However, trash fashion is much more than that.

It takes time and endeavor. Since I have the same art class with my friend Sophia, I was lucky enough to actually watch the complete process of her making the plastic wedding dress. She started from collecting and reorganizing the materials – plenty of white  plastic bags. First of all, she created the long train by sewing knots. It turned out to be a “web” eventually. Then she made the body dress, in which she built several layers to make the dress fluffy.

It took her about two months to complete the whole bridal gown. According to Sophia, the most difficult part was to glue the bags together and the materials were so soft that she had to be really careful not to tear them off.

Finally the big day came. I did not expect to be her model, but because of the absence of Ellen, who was supposed to the model, I had to wear the dress instead. I was totally astonished when I put on the huge dress.

We walked on the deck of the pool. It drove everyone’s attention and I felt extremely proud of my designer. It seemed like a real fashion show to me and people were taking pictures, asking questions. For a moment I thought i was dreaming.

Just like Sophia said, “Trash Fashion does not mean everything will look trashy, it’s more about fashion. Within such simple materials, we can still make beautiful pieces.”

Yes, I think she’s right. Trash Fashion combines two “opposite” concepts together and builds something beyond the normal beauty.

On the other hand, trash fashion also helps to increase people’s environmental awareness. Fashion may be fabulous, but the way our clothes are made is incredibly wasteful. The small things we waste from daily uses can be saved instead of being thrown away.

It was my first time seeing and wearing such gorgeous fashionable clothes made out of “trash,” and It was also the time that I realized trash fashion can be beautiful as well.

Rene Magritte.

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“Art evokes the mystery without which the world would not exist. ”
—- Rene Magritte

This summer I had a chance to see Magritte’s real work at MOMA museum in NYC. Magritte has been one of my favorite artists for a long time for his particular impressionistic style.

Rene Magritte was born in Lessines, in the province of Hainaut, in 1898. His earliest oil paintings form 1915 were Impressionistic in style. The oil paintings he produced during the years 1918-1924 were influenced by Futurism and by the offshoot of Cubism practiced by Metzinger. Most of his works of this period are female nudes.


In 1922-1923, he worked as a draughtsman in a wallpaper factory, and was a poster and advertisement designer until 1926. In 1926, Magritte produced his first surreal oil painting, “The Lost Jockey,” and held his first exhibition in Brussels in 1927, in which he got lots of critics on the exhibition.

Later during the German occupation of Belgium in World War II, Magritte remained in Brussels. He briefly adopted a colorful, painterly style in 1943-44, and was known as his “Renoir Period.”

His work was exhibited in the United States in New York in 1936 in Museum of Modern Art and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Magritte’s paintings mostly embody the combination of realism and impressionism, and he is able to present his particular idea of humanity and dream. One of his representative piece is “The Lovers I (1928),” which identifies the mystery of two lovers who are shrouded in white cloth.

Magritte inspires me a lot, not only in art area, but also life.

“Life obliges me to do something, so I paint. ”
– Rene Magritte