The Silent Cry
Aztec Eye
After I finished my first piece I wanted to use a different medium and a different aspect. For my first piece I was connecting it to an artist, I didn't really connect my piece to a culture so I wanted to focus on a culture for my next piece. I was doing some research and I had come across many different things that made up the Aztec culture. Such things included a double headed serpent or a tradition headpiece, and an Aztec warrior. What really appealed to me was the double headed serpent, I decided to draw it and add color to it. I tried to use the same color scheme as the actual sculpture. The image to the left is how my sketch turned out.
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I looked at many different ideas and I sketched different aspects that make up the Aztec Culture. While I was dong some research I kept coming across a headpiece. This headpiece was of a bird, this seemed to be a very common headpiece among the Aztec culture. I decided to sketch this piece and add different aspects to it, while keeping it with an Aztec feel. This was also one of my ideas that i would eventually pick from to create my piece.
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This is my final idea, I decided to go with the double headed serpent. I placed this serpent in the middle of an eye. I wanted to be able to make the eye look as realistic as possible. In doing that I added different aspects to the eye such as veins and eyelashes. In the actual piece I added the veins to the eye, the challenging part was being able to create the eyelashes. I ended up not doing the eyelashes because I didn't have a way to include them into the piece. It was tricky to include the eyelash aspect so I dint add them in, although I didn't include the eyelashes the eye seemed to still turn out.
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The Mask
With this piece I wanted to be able to keep the same theme of religion. My work does not seem to have very many connections to any type of culture, I saw this as an opportunity to keep that theme going. With this piece I sketched out a couple of different masks. I was inspired by African masks and Africa's culture, so I did some research and looked a various masks. Many masks seem to have animal like qualities, hence the fact that I included horns in the sketch. Many of the masks also had very distinct eyes, these eyes seemed to be something common among all the masks. I also added different little details to enhance the mask and give it its own touch, I wanted each of the masks to be unique.
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In my sketches I also included a sketch of someone wearing a mask. Keeping the same idea that the masks have animal like characteristics, this mask also has them. I wanted to be able to include a painting among the three that resembled the importance of wearing these masks. These masks have become something sacred for the people of Africa. It also goes along with identity, by wearing one of these masks one can hide who they truly are. Besides identity, these masks each hold a purpose and a meaning, each mask resembles something that is significant in ones life. I chose to sketch someone wearing a mask because that mask becomes the person, the person becomes the mask and they become one.
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In these last pages I was experimenting with the different colors and the different types of lips and faces. I wanted to explore my options and see what I could do, the possibilities were endless. In my sketches I include different lips and different points of view. Being able to know what I could do was helpful because I had more than one idea. Getting it all on paper was good for me to do, it was a good way to see what else I could do to make my piece better.
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Insecurities
Before I started to actually create the piece, I was sketching different ideas and different poses. Going along with the idea of creating a cubist background, I made the different shapes in the background and colored them in. The sketches were all based on the human body, more specifically I was focused on the body of a woman. Creating these sketches was able to give me a solid ground to come up with more ideas and put them all together.
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These are the various colors that I used to make the piece. I wanted to use cold and warm colors, so I made different combination and used solid colors as well. I also used different flesh tones from different magazines to create one piece. When I first started to create my piece I began by sketching the body and then from that point I started to add the different tones. Once I finished adding the tones I began to work on the background. Using a ruler I made the different shapes and painted them in various colors.
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"Les Demoiselles d'Avignon", 1907 by Pablo Picasso
This is the piece where I got my inspiration from. To go along with this painting I used the body of a woman and made the background a cubist background as well. For the body of the woman I used different pieces of magazines, these were all flesh tones. Having different tones in the body of the woman also gives off the cubist look. |
Mexico
My inspiration came from Jacob A Riis. I was looking closely at his work and making connections throughout all his photographs. All of his photographs expose the reality of living life as an immigrant. Many of his pictures are very personal to himself because he also knew what it was like to live that type of life. As i was looking at his images many of the images had a very solemn feel. I took that into consideration and thought about the way I wanted my image to feel, did I want it to feel solemn? I also made all of my images in a black and white color to make my image closely related to Jacob's.
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"New York: Slum District" Jacob A. Riis 1890
I was looking at all my images that were either of one single person or a group of people. In the end I realized that I did not want my images to have such a solemn feel. I picked the images that were either a happy moment or just a neutral moment, but they were never sad images. I took a total of four images and compiled them into one image. I made all these images black and white using Photoshop. I took two images that seemed to have a lot going on in them and two pictures that seemed to have very little going on. In the end I tin I was able to connect my images to this artist very well. My images represented the daily lives of people in Mexico, much like how Jacob's images represented the slums of New York.