Anyway, here is one of my senior project pieces (my concentration pieces). I decided to start early on my senior project so that I could focus more on getting into the college I want (that is, when I decide where I want to go...), than trying to finish up what I need to graduate.
My senior project is a little hard to explain... Basically, it's the freedom of interpretation through concepts that are present in my life (such as my own characteristics and emotions). I had tossed around a few ideas for my senior project the past few years, but they all seemed to restrain me to a certain topic. I wanted the freedom to do whatever I want (after all, it is my project, and what better way to express myself).
My inspiration was when I was with one of my good friends. He asked me to draw him, and for the life in me, I could not get his head right. So, he told me to "replace it with something." I was really confused at first, until he started spouting out random things such as "goldfish bowl," "flower pot," "octopus," etc. Eventually, I chose a goldfish bowl for his head. And that is how my idea was born. Each piece of my project will contain (for all intents and purposes, I call it a character) a "character" that has no gender, ethnicity, or name, and "its" head is always replaced with something. The purpose of that is so anyone can project themselves into the picture and interpret whatever they want out of the piece. I give my viewers a witty name, and they determine what they see. I have my own interpretation of the piece, but I don't present it to the viewer. It gives not only me freedom, but freedom to the viewer as well.
Confused yet? Maybe you should just see a piece.
This one is called "Knowledge Vacuum." I interpreted it as my love of learning (sucking everything like a vacuum), but a friend of mine presented a different idea: a vacuum can be described as an absence of matter, so it can possibly be seen as the absence of knowledge. I wanted to focus on the elements and principles of design (what I have the most trouble with when creating a piece), with a clearly defined background, middle ground, and foreground. I used cardboard to create the different layers and to mount the piece on. In the foreground, I used pen and ink, focusing on the people in the picture (I took the picture in a classroom at my school). In the middle ground, I used conte for the next closest thing: the teacher. Lastly, in the background, I used pencil and ebony and focused even less on detail to give the illusion that you're actually looking at the scene. The vacuum is in color (my vacuum at home, that I had to draw from memory because I lost the first attempt), to bring attention to that area. As you can see, one of the students has the vacuum for a head, pertaining to my theme.
This was the first piece of my senior project, and I'm quite happy with the results. One of the parts of our project is to talk about an artist(s) that inspired us. The first thing I thought was, "Well how the heck am I going to do that? I pulled this idea out of my butt!" Well, another friend of mine happens to have a vast collection of art magazines (I'm so jealous of her). While skimming through them, I stumbled upon a wonderful artist by the name of Tom Haubrick. He works in mainly sepia or black and white, with some splashes of color in his pieces. Also, he has a reoccuring "character" throughout his pieces whose head is often replaced with a common item. I was thrilled when I looked at his work, and I now have an artist for inspiration. Huzzah!
