Hello again guys! Recently I have finished all of my artwork for my series KINSHIP! I'm very excited to be able to say this, but it's not the end yet! Before I get to that, however, I'll go ahead and show you the results-
(For those who are new, each piece represents a different family structure! Check out my second blog post for the list!)
Now, I am very satisfied with the pace at which I've been working on this project. I've definitely managed to meet the deadline, and due to this it has even given me more time to expand upon it with the remaining time in the semester! By working on this piece, I became more adept with Photoshop (especially with creating patterns), just another thing that makes me happy about working on these pieces.
But like I mentioned before, this is not quite the end yet! Due to having this time left after finishing the bulk of the project, I have decided to make this a full on children's book! I will be formatting these to pages and turning it into a book that showcases family structures besides just the nuclear family structure. I am very excited to do this, especially because my point was to shine a light on this subject, and having it in a book and presented like this really hits the nail right on the head in my opinion.
It won't necessarily have a narrative to it; however, I do think that it will still be valuable and a piece that I appreciate for a long time after this. To accomplish this I need to write up the actual WORDS in the book and format everything in InDesign. I'm entirely confident that I can finish this all by the end of the semester so that I can send them off to be printed and bound in a book. I will also probably be creating a front cover for this as well, possibly incorporating animals from each page! All in all, I'm just happy to finally be satisfied with and have a plan on how I'm going to present this.
My initial vision of this project hasn't really altered too much honestly! The biggest different would definitely be the fact that I'm making this into a literal book with, like, words in it. Much different than just plastering them up on a wall next to each other in a line. I think that any differences in my original vision have only been improvements upon the piece, but I'm not too upset that my execution wasn't too much different than my plan though. Working on this has really helped me practice creating a solid plan for what I'm working on, and executing it to its fullest potential.
After our first round of critiques, feedback on my piece has been fairly repetitive and scarce. I do appreciate what I have been told, and it really helped to ask for a wide variety of opinions to decide on how I was going to format this for presentation! But, I believe the primary reason that I haven't received a whole lot of diverse information has been because I essentially had everything planned out from the beginning and stuck to it fairly thoroughly! Thorough planning isn't a bad thing by any means, but I'll just have to hope that a lack of variety in feedback means that I've been doing well!
While this piece may not present hyper realistic detail or anything, I still highly value this piece. It was the first time I created a series of this size successfully and cohesively, and I think that the theme + execution of this piece are both touching and impactful. I find that I was able to incorporate my style and themes that I particularly enjoy exploring into this project successfully, and it's inspired me to work on more types of projects from here on out!
My goal was to create a piece that manifested positivity and a spotlight towards many different family structures. Work like this is something I see as a necessity in today's society as we become more diverse as a people and ideals change. What will change that is goodness, knowledge, and acceptance of different kinds of people, including what their families may look like. So I think I'd say I've done a pretty darn good job of achieving that goal with this series. :D
! Artist Highlight !
Nickolai Walko
This time presenting a local artist,Nickolai Walko! I recently discovered his works through MOCAs instagram page and I instantly fell in love with his anatomy pieces.
Walko's works that are anatomy based reductive art done with masking tape and X-Acto knives are especially enamoring to me. I absolutely adore composition, concepts, and figures in these works. His work will be on display at the MOCA Boardwalk Art Show Midwinter Preview today at Smartmouth Brewing Co. at the Oceanfront tonight at 6PM, free of charge!
I really love how your pieces turned out!! I like how you added shapes in to the shading so it wouldn't just be a plain color. It helps add depth to the animals. All the colors you chose are all very well executed along with the space. For the installation will you just have the book, or also showcase the works on the wall maybe having the book aside? Overall, I love the concept and design of your piece. Good job!!
The pieces look great! I was curious what you would come with to really, solidly finish this project and I would say this exceeded my expectations. For the picture book plan, I think captions would take away from the pages, however, maybe add a page at the end (or beginning?) of the book with either a description of each piece or your artist statement. It might help add depth when people turn to that page. Though I’m not entirely sure what you want to do writing-wise.
Not gonna lie, being able to see all of the pieces together and fully rendered put a smile on my face. The light-hearted theme shines through with the soft color palettes and simple backgrounds. The series is cute and appropriate for a younger audience, but designed well enough to be interesting to a more mature audience also. I can even see you selling future copies of the book once it's all put together. By the way, you go for conquering the task of understanding photoshop.
I really love how your pieces came out!I know you were struggling with how you wanted the shading to be done and i think you thought up of a great solution. The patterns and colors give off a friendly tone that would be aimed for children which works well since you plan to make a children's book. Very well done!!