The best art supply store doesn't sell art supplies

Sometimes the most creative and coolest pieces of art, are made of stuff other then paint and other conventional art materials.  Don't get me wrong I love using paint as much as the next art student, but sometimes it's fun to break out of the normal art supplies and create art with other items that other people haven't experimented with yet.  Yes using unconventional art materials can be risky and could result in disaster, but why be safe with charcoal or paint, when you can have way more fun outside the art supplies box.

For example 2 of my projects in art 2 didn't use art supplies.  The first one was a portrait of Sands made entirely out of red solo cups.  The other one was a zonkey made with concrete, sticks, and cardboard.

 Why have a boring dinosaur when you can make one out of balloons?












Or Mona Lisa out of peanut butter and jelly?








Maybe Ice Cube made out of Ice Cubes?

All in all I think its better to take risks and be creative with unconventional art supplies rather than being a boring art student stuck using paint and other fine art supplies.

Olivia Gude

Olivia Gude's article on post modern principles explains that people in art need to be taught the different elements and principles to be an artist.  In my opinion I don't think art teachers should teach anything really in art except the materials you can use, and how they are used.  I do like the postmodern techniques such as juxtaposition and layering, and I think they should be taught in school, but more shown examples of what they are and how to do them, then forcing the class to make a piece of art incorporating it.  The whole idea of art, is to make something that means something to you and something you enjoy doing to relax or for pure enjoyment.

No ears were cut off in the making of this project

So originally my question was what is plagiarism, and I decided to copy the style of Van Gogh, specifically his style in starry night.  I decided to go further in the idea of plagiarism and trace the outline of downtown Apex, and paint that in the style of starry night.  I did not plan however, that it would take as long as it has been taking.  Painting with small strokes is very time consuming especially with lots of different colors.  I really like the way it looks though and it so happens to be the next project is artist steal so my project conveniently transfers over to the next one, and if I have time I will do another piece for the new project.

Is Art Without Meaning Decoration?

I don't think that art without meaning is decoration, nobody makes art that doesn't have a meaning, it always has a purpose of why it's made or an idea that created it.  By having an idea or an inspiration for a piece of work than it has a meaning.  Look at work by Picasso, his geometric designs look like they have no meaning but does that mean his work is just decoration like wall art? Or graffiti, it might look like it doesn't have meaning but usually the artist has a hidden message that means something to him/her.  One can physically not make a piece of art without having inspiration behind it that creates a meaning to art.

Senior Year Project 1

The element I used for this project was a mix of value and color, I used different colors but also used to different shades/values of blue to make this painting.  We were told to use a median we were comfortable/used to using so I originally started by using oil pastel.  And Mr. Sands being Mr. Sands threw me a canvas one day and said I should try oil pastel on a canvas, but the problem was the canvas isn't a smooth surface so the oil pastel didn't nicely get into all the crevices and dents of the canvas.  So I tried using baby oil on top of the pastels which helped not only blend the oil pastels really well but also let it get into all the cracks.  My next problem I faced was the baby oil never dried on the canvas because it couldn't soak in so I used baby powder to soak up the oil.  Finally I wanted clean edges on the side of the painting so I used acrylic paint for the sides.  So overall my median was oil pastels, baby oil, baby powder, and paint.  I choose the subject because I have always loved the Appalachian Mountains in Asheville and Boone and always thought it was so cool that the mountains appear blue in photographs, so I wanted to recreate one of my favorite scenes so no matter where I go to college I can always be reminded of something I love.

Zonkey

What was questionable about my project? How we did it was definitely questionable, we had the hardest time trying to figure out how to hang the zonkey. We at first tried to hang it off coat hangers but it definitely didn't work. so we decided lets put it in cement. So we continued to fill cups with cement and created our 3d  zonkey. We used porportion because when you look at the zonkey from the side it looks like just sticks, but when you look head on it looks like a zonkey!

When You Make a Mr. Sands Out of Cups....

For this project we decided that we should do a portrait of M Sands because he came up with this project, and at first I hated this project so I was like well if I have to do this project it's so going to be Mr. Sands. We decided to do cups because we were like throwback to freshman year when M Sands made us use cups for a project and we all refused to do it. So we were like "We should finally get a cup portrait OF SANDS FOR SANDS!" So we did. Risks we took... well M Sands said it was OK for us to hop the fence to paint the cups so we did. Well I guess Sands was wrong and that's "Breaking the Rules" and you know who got yelled at by Phillips... us. NOW we have to hide from him for the rest of our high school career so you know that's chill. How did our choices impact our project... well because of the lies fed to us from Sands we are now permanently scared of good old Phillips, I got spray paint all over my hands (which doesn't come off with soap if you are curious), we have been framed for "breaking the fence" (which is false) and we have a great story of what happens when you make a Sands out of cups.