Week Nine: Preplanning

Preplanning for Week Nine can be found at flickr:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kateswoboda/2295183958/

Week Nine: Themes

Energy, unseen forces, spirit.

Week Eight: Life. Photo.

This is a plant that I had killed and then one day noticed a little bud was coming up again--the root had not been destroyed. It was getting a second chance at life.

Week Eight: Life. Visual.

I didn't mean to make her hair so Medusa-like, but she will do. Also--if I had the lotus to redo again I would have opted for more of a light pink with hints of purple than going for such deep tones of green and purple.

Week Eight: Life. Writing.

I could turn off the television and never turn it on again.
It seems to me that what we're told is living should be easy.
The self-help market has a corner on it
and everyone else is in to make their buck.
But I wonder about those people
whose livelihood is peddling 1-2-3, Look at Me,
I Did It
So Can You
Now Everything is Perfect.
I know they do not go home at night
with a deep feeling of inner calm.
So how do they sleep?
"Very well, thank you,"
I can imagine them saying
their clean-lipped smiles.
So I keep my distance
not really willing any longer
to feed myself their lies
I could grow fat on them
when the truth--the messy soil of life, the stuff that roots push down into
and leaves push up out of
is so much more nutritious
even if it will leave
its mark on me.

Week Eight: Preplanning

Week Eight Preplanning can be found here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kateswoboda/2295183780/

Week Eight: Themes

Life. Metaphors for life, beginnings, literal interpretations--but the theme is life and living.

Week Seven: Famous Artists. Visual.

On the left, a printout of a portion of Gino Severini's, "Still Life (Centrifugal Explosion of Colors, 1916"). On the left, my attempt to recreate it. Whomever says this kind of art is "simple" needs to sit down and try it sometime! The piece is astonishingly complex.

Week Seven: Famous Artists: Photo

I technically want to use original works with Across Mediums, and this photograph was taken this summer at the Chicago Art Institute (the painting is by pointillist Georges Seurat). I decided to use it anyway because I like its focus and because I wanted to do something more original with the photography aspect of this than simply finding a photograph of a famous painter or taking pictures of modern renditions of famous paintings.

Week Seven: Famous Artists: Writing

Perhaps if I'd been at the Salon d' Automne,
in 1905
my first questions would have been:
"What color was her dress?"
As I am in the new milennium
I just wonder how you did it
how you knew to make her nose the color of seafoam
her beaked arm and fan
like a sunset reflected in a puddle.
I would wonder how you dared
to make the background
as vibrant as the foreground
when that is not what we are taught
in art classes.
I wonder how it is that
she could sit there for so long
and at the last moment I think of her eyes.
Brown, like the eyes of a young doe,
a slight sheen reflected by yet another color.
Looking off into the distance.
Looking at your children.
Two artists in the room
one making art
one breathing it and being it
and one hundred years later
or more
I wish I'd been there to see it happen.

Week Seven: Famous Artists: Preplanning

Preplanning can be found here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kateswoboda/2274995481/

Make note of the comments!

Week Seven: Themes. Famous Artists.

Imitations of famous artists, portraits of famous artists, combining the works of famous artists...

Week Six: Landscapes. Visual.

When I conceived of doing this--finishing the other half of Ms. Cecil Wade with a landscape--I was inspired by something I'd seen at an open Friday event in Alameda in which the landscape was very Van Gogh's "Starry Night" like. I don't believe that this came off the way I wanted it to, and at the same time I'm just happy that I was able to finish and catch up and not fall behind after spending a week away from home!

Week Six: Landscapes. Photo.

Also see a comparison photo:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kateswoboda/2262493935/

Week Six: Landscapes. Writing.

Exploring the landscapes of my mind, the thoughts that roll in thick like fog and then dissipate as the sun warms, the ever-changing moods...sometimes the fog is like those days in San Francisco, the thickness that sticks. I realized how I am tired of wading through something so heavy, yet its heaviness cannot be seen. I'm tired of the fog, the stickiness of it, the way I breathe in and can feel it ling to the oxygen on the way down. I want only to be clear, clear in my love for God and myself and the world, clear like the unending ocean's horizon.

Week 6: Preplanning, Landscapes.

Preplanning for week 6, landscapes, can be found here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kateswoboda/2262494251/

Week Six Note:

I'll be out of town Feb 5th-10th, AND in a seminar with no internet access and due to the rigorous schedule, very little time for art-making. But I'm still committed, boy oh boy. I started my pre-planning for this week last night, I stopped on my way home from the city to snap photographs of the Bay in Alameda, and I'm slating time tomorrow for getting some painting done before I leave. That leaves the writing component, which I may not have a lot of time for while at my seminar, but at the very least I'll be able to attempt getting something done (and won't have to haul art supplies with me).

Onward!

Week Six Theme: Landscapes.

Landscapes, wide vistas, strong views. I'm already thinking of ways to make this more abstract--taking a Van Gogh's "Starry Night" approach to a landscape, moving away from something super literal.

Week Five: Profiles. Preplanning.

Preplanning can be found here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kateswoboda/2240369365/

and here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kateswoboda/2241163428/

What's up with me drawing such big noses??

Week Five: Profiles. Visual.

Ms. Cecil Wade by John Singer Sargent is by far and away one of my most favorite paintings. It is housed at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri. As a child we took field trips there and I stared up at it, a rather large painting, and was completely lost in the folds of her dress, the way her neck slants so delicately to the side. While doing the pre-planning for this week, it hit me that when I thought of profiles, hers was the one. As it happens, I have a book of selected acquisitions from the museum (fished out of a recycling bin while volunteering, if you must know) and I thumbed through to that page and began trying out different options for drawing Ms. Cecil Wade. It was tough, but again--I had fun doing it! I also felt like I had just a tiny bit more facility while using acrylics. Perhaps I'm wrong, but it's what I went with.

Week 5: Profiles. Photo.

What is one to do when they don't have time to stage a real photoshoot with various people in order to capture profiles? Why, use your boyfriend for the shot while he watches television! And then, just to up it a bit and make it a wee more interesting, play around with curves, bright/contast, and other assorted textures and features in Photoshop.

Week Five: Profiles. Writing.

This much he knew from her profile--she was haughty, given to excesses, a woman of secrets both complex and simple. She would tell no one that she really hovered on the fringes of crowds, and only appeared to be in them. From her sideways glance she evaluated the people in them. Her pride, evident in her upturned nose, would not allow anyone's pity--the kind that might come about if just anyone could tell of her seclusion. Now her chin lilted down, her sea-gray eyes far away, her cheekbone one graceful arc into her temple. She discreetly stuck one finger into the small honey dish that accompanied her tea. There was a flash of pink--her tongue--as she sucked her finger. No one noticed but him.