Speak for Me

For my final Visual Concepts project I am going to do a black and white painting with a hint of red to portray the animals that can not speak for themselves that are being tortured and killed in China. With the Olympics coming up the Chinese are trying to "clean up" the cities and are herding thousands of animals, dogs and cats alike into unsanitary conditions and keeping them in the smallest cages before beating them to death or killing them some other cruel way. Not only is this going on but they are keeping bears, especially the Chinese Moon Bear, in really small cages to milk their bile from unsanitary open wounds in their abdomens for medicinal purposes. These animals have become skeletons of their former selves: rotting flesh, shattered teeth, and out of their minds. Left to suffer and die these animals deserve something more. I want to give them a voice with my painting, speak for them through the cages that keep them from their freedom.

Colors For Boys and Girls, and How They Affect Gender

In our culture there are basic colors for boys and girls. Pink is the classic color for a baby girl and blue, the classic color for a baby boy. Why is this? Is there some scientific meaning why? Or do we just assume that all girls have to like pink and all boys have to like blue, and that this is it. Many researchers have found that there are differences between genders in preferences for colors. In 1934 Guilford did an investigation on the harmony of color combination and how a person reacts to the colors and the colors balanced with their opposites. He found out that a person is more likely to see balance in colors that are closely related to their opposite. Guilford also found out that more pleasing results were obtained from either very small or very large differences in hue rather than medium differences, with this tendency more frequent in women than men. In 1926 a study showed that yellow had a higher affect on men than on women. A 1938 study found that blue stands out more for men that for women. Jastrow who also showed that men prefer blue and woman red also found this out in 1897. In 1959 Guilford and Smith’s study found that men were more tolerant towards achromatic colors than women do. They then proposed that therefore woman might be more color conscious and that their color tastes can be more flexible. Blue-green was favored more by woman as well as tints of colors instead of shades.
So why are baby colors so definite? Well apparently pastel blue for boys and pastel pink for girls is a more “new” thing, since the 40’s. Before the 40’s pink was considered appropriate and more masculine and “decided” for boys, while blue was dainty and delicate and therefore appropriate for girls. But now pink has become a woman’s color, perhaps because of the shades of red being more pleasing to woman, and vive-versa for men with blue.

Roses are Red, Violets are Blue

There are many different colors of roses. For centuries people have been giving meaning to the different colors of roses. Here are what the different colors of roses mean. Red: Love, Beauty, Courage and Respect, Romantic Love, Congratulations, "I Love You", "Job Well Done", Sincere Love, Respect, Courage & Passion. Red (Dark): Unconscious beauty. Red (Single): "I Love You". Deep Burgundy: Unconscious Beauty. White: Purity, Innocence, Silence, Secrecy, Reverence, Humility, Youthfulness, "I am worthy of you", Heavenly. Pink: Appreciation, "Thank you", Grace, Perfect Happiness, Admiration, Gentleness, "Please Believe Me". Dark Pink: Appreciation, Gratitude, and "Thank You". Light Pink: Admiration, Sympathy, Gentleness, Grace, Gladness, Joy, and Sweetness. Yellow: Joy, Gladness, Friendship, Delight, Promise of a new beginning, Welcome Back, Remember Me, Jealousy, and "I care". Yellow with Red Tip: Friendship, Falling in Love. Orange: Desire, Enthusiasm. Red and White: Given together, these signify unity. Red and Yellow: Jovial and Happy Feelings.
Peach: Appreciation, Closing the deal, Let's get together, Sincerity, and Gratitude. Pale Peach: Modesty. Coral: Desire. Lavender: Love at first sight, Enchantment. Orange: Enthusiasm, Desire, and Fascination
Black * Death, Farewell
Blue * the unattainable, the impossible
Single in any color Simplicity, Gratitude
Red Rosebud: Symbolic of purity and loveliness
White Rosebud: Symbolic of girlhood
Thornless Rose: "Love at first sight". Wow who knew a single rose could mean so much??

The Colors of Our Flag

The flag of the United States of America is red, white, and blue. But why were these particular colors chosen for our flag?? Why not some other colors?? In the book “Our Flag” by the House of Representatives the colors for the flag when it was first created in 1777 were not thought about. But is says then in 1782 the colors of the Great Seal of the United States, were the same colors as our flag and that the colors for the Great Seal stood for, white: purity and innocence; red: hardiness and valor; and blue: vigilance, perseverance, and justice. As we know the 50 white stars represent the 50 states, the 13 stripes represent the original 13 colonies that rebelled against England. The Starred blue canton is considered the “Union”. George Washington stated, "We take the stars from Heaven, the red from our mother country, separating it by white stripes, thus showing that we have separated from her, and the white stripes shall go down to posterity representing Liberty.”

So I then was wondering what some of the other flags that are the same colors as our flag, what those colors stand for, for those countries. In France the flag is a tricolor flag, with one panel blue, then white and then red. The blue and red seem to signify the city of Paris, and the white represented the colors of the King. This was created during the time of the French Revolution. During the revolution the militaries distinct sign was the ancient colors of Paris- blue and red. Louis XVI came to Paris on July 17, 1789 to honor the National Guard and he wore the colors blue and red in a cockade, the Commander of the Guard then added white for royalty. So that is how the colors of France began.

How about the English flag. The flag of England is referred to as the Union flag or Union Jack. It’s colors are also red, white, and blue. The current flag, which came about on January 1st, 1801, merges the kingdoms of Ireland and Great Britain together. The red saltire cross is the cross of St. Patrick for Ireland. The saltire cross in white is St. Andrew’s cross for Scotland. And then the thicker red cross that goes over the white and thin red cross (that look more like X) is St. George’s cross, which represents England. The Blue background is blue for royalty.

Van Gogh's Colors

Vincent Van Gogh is my all time favorite artist. Van Gogh’s use of color in his later paintings is very expressive. Van Gogh set out to use is bright colors to capture mood and emotion, rather than to capture it realistically. During Van Gogh’s time this was unheard of. Van Gogh first started his paintings using dark and gloomy earth colors such as raw umber, raw sienna, and olive green to capture the lives of the peasants, miners, and weavers whom he was living with. Later he moved to Paris and was introduced to the Impressionists. Van Gogh’s palette became vibrant with reds, yellows, blues, oranges, and greens. Typical colors in Van Gogh's palette included yellow ocher, chrome yellow and cadmium yellow, chrome orange, vermilion, Prussian blue, ultramarine, lead white and zinc white, emerald green, red lake, red ocher, raw sienna, and black. His style became very rapid with a sense of urgency in it. He used paint right from the tube in thick, graphic brush strokes. Van Gogh was influence with Japanese prints and he would paint dark outlines around objects and then fill them in with his thick colors. Van Gogh would use complementary colors because he knew that the complementary colors make each seem brighter. His choice of colors varied with his moods and occasionally he deliberately restricted his palette, such as with the sunflowers, which are almost entirely yellows.



“Indigo with terra sienna, Prussian blue with burnt sienna, really give much deeper tones than pure black itself. When I hear people say ‘there is no black in nature’, I sometimes think, ‘There is no real black in colors either’. However, you must beware of falling into the error of thinking that the colorists do not use black, for of course as soon as an element of blue, red, or yellow is mixed with black, it becomes a gray, namely, a dark, reddish, yellowish, or bluish gray.”
(Letter to Theo van Gogh, June 1884)

Color Use in Merchandising and Advertising

Some Thoughts on Color
by JJ Goodell

It’s quite well known that the color red inspires impulsive buying. Our eyes are drawn to the color like ducks to water. Just walk into any supermarket and look at the color most often used on products. It’s red. The next one is yellow. Both colors tend to raise your blood pressure just a tad and dilate your pupils. They cause excitement, which goes to prove one thing: color affects us.

The Science of Color
For a long time, color has been used by both advertiser and merchandiser to encourage us (the consumer) to take action (purchase the product or service). In fact, the use of color in advertising and merchandising has become somewhat of a science unto itself.

Sometimes a color is selected for the sole purpose of drawing attention to the product or ad. This is when red or yellow may be used. But you can also attract attention by using a combination of colors. For instance, Stagg® Chili uses a black background with gold letters. The cereal product, Total®, creates eye-catching appeal with a blue package and a red logo.

Color can also be used to relate to a particular product or service. Consider the Green Giant® products. Their packages are set in a white background with the famous green logo. Healthy Choice® is another example of using green. Both products are trying to emulate freshness or healthfulness. Green does the job. Root beer is sold, using packages created in brown shades. A&W® is a perfect example, which uses brown and orange.

Designers & Color
Designers often select colors to bring life to an otherwise dull advertisement. Sometimes those colors selected by a designer aren’t necessary based on any real scientific choice, just as a judgment call. But when push comes to shove, the designer can usually give you a reason why he or she selected one color over another.

Red=Buy It

Just like the color red is used in signs to grab your attention, red is also used in merchandising for the same reason. Although for signs the attention is mainly danger or stop, the color red in the market is used to captivate or attention and draw us to that product. Red is the most popular color used in merchandising because of its bright captivating power. The brand Coca Cola is a good example of a company that snatched the color red and uses its power to reel in the buyers. Coca Cola also uses another popular color in its add. They use a small yellow line to accent the white curve that goes across the ads. The white lettering placed upon the all-bright red background with a thin yellow accent causes the product logo to stand out against other ads that are duller. This marketing strategy is important for all companies if they want their product to sell.

Red=Stop

Colors are used all around us in many different ways and for many different reasons. They are used to draw our attention to the product or the situation. There are many uses of different colors that merchandisers use to encourage people to react and buy the products. Colors are also used in everyday signs for different purposes. Bold bright colors like red are used in the sign world to portray stop. The Stop sign itself went through many changes until it gained its red with white letters to signify STOP universally. At first the stop sign was white with black, yellow with black, and then finally it was agreed that since red is the universal “stop” color used on all traffic signals that the stop sign itself should be red.

Conceptual Art-In Class Project-Sol LeWitt

Today in class we learned about Conceptual Art pieces. We looked at a Sol LeWitt example and carried it out in class. The project is simmilar to the one above but a little different. We made a grid of 7x4 pannals. Each person draws out of a hat a piece of paper that has a line on it. You draw the line and then hang the pannel up onto the wall. Everyone goes around the room taking cards and drawing them onto the larger pannel and hanging it onto the wall. At first this project was a little confusing and complicated as everyone tried to figure out where the pannels go. In the end we had a grid with different lines that connect with eachother to make a pattern. I found it interesting to see the end results and then to research online different examples from the actual artist himself.

Conceptual Art

Conceptual art is art in which the concept(s) or idea(s) involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic and material concerns. Many of the works of the artist Sol LeWitt may be constructed by anyone simply by following a set of written instructions.[1] This method was fundamental to LeWitt's definition of Conceptual art, one of the first to appear in print:
“ In conceptual art the idea or concept is the most important aspect of the work. When an artist uses a conceptual form of art, it means that all of the planning and decisions are made beforehand and the execution is a perfunctory affair. The idea becomes a machine that makes the art. – Sol LeWitt, "Paragraphs on Conceptual Art", Artforum, June 1967. ” For the layman, this quotation highlights a key difference between a conceptualist installation and a traditional work of art - that the conceptualist's work may require little or no physical craftsmanship in its execution, whereas traditional art is distinguished by requiring physical skill and the making of aesthetic choices. As Tony Godfrey has put it, after Joseph Kosuth's definition of art, conceptual art is an art which questions the very nature of what is understood as art.

Yoko Ono- YouTube Performance Art- CUT PIECE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqXSjFB08C8



This is a YouTube video you can watch of a performance art by Yoko Ono. To me it is somewhat silly and I do not know what she is trying to get across to the public, but it is still interesting to watch. Check it out!!

Mirrored Mimes and In Class Performance Activity

My Performance Art Piece: Mirrored Mimes
Two people sit face to face with arms up and palms barely touching. One person starts to make gestures and the other person has to follow at the same time. Then the other person starts to make the gestures a little faster and the other participant has to keep up. If the activity is done well and practiced the effect would be very much like gestures in a mirror.

I felt that mine went pretty well considering that I thought it would not and that it would be a little ridiculous. It was a little difficult I thought for them to keep up with each other but it went really well and was fun. I participated in another students activity outside. Me and another student, Jordan, stood a few feet away from each other. Jordan threw a ball to me and then I caught it. Then I had to decide where we should move 5 paces (e.g. 5 paces to the left) the I threw him the ball and then he would decide where to move. We were both a little confused at first but then got the hang of it and it became a fun game. One of my favorite activity was that of Casey's who had two participants draw some Jewish stars on a piece of paper. At the end of 2 minutes she asked them what they were thinking about. One answer was very interesting. She stated that she was thinking how symbols can be broken down into simpler shapes. I found this response interesting since generly a responce would be simpler. I think all the activities were interesting and it was neat to see what others came up with for their activity.

Performance Art and Dadaisim

Personally I do not understand Performance art so well. Performance Art though has been around for quite some time, involving the Dadas, Nouveau Realists, Gutai, Fluxus, and even the Bauhaus in Germany. Performance Art is live and has no rules or guidelines, a way for artists to break away from society even more and express themselves. But what is it they are exactly expressing and trying to let us know is hard for me to understand through the Performance Art. What was Alan Kaprow trying to get through to his audience with his performance with the mirrors? Performance Art is called art because the artist says it is art. For that matter anyone can do anything and call it art, this perhaps is what the pioneers of Performance Art were trying to do. For example, the Dada movement began at the onset of WWI as a negative response to society and the conventional ideas of art. Dadaists went against the contemporary academic and cultural values of art. They wanted to bring art to the next level, to go against the traditional values and bring their art out onto the streets and have participation of an audiance. Dadaisim was not just confined to the visual and literary arts, it involved sound and music. A Dadaist know as Kurt Shwitters developed a Performance Art known as sound poems. Musicians collaborated and made Dada music and the members of the Dada movement performed their works at Dada gatherings. Many of the performance art that I have looked up and watched, and have know about I still don't quite get. Like Yoko Ono sitting on stage and random people come up and can cut of parts of her shirt as she just sits there and stares into space. How is this art? What is it we are supposed to get? Why is this called art? Perhaps with further knowledge on this subject I can fully understand the age old excitement and meaning of Performance Art.

Playing with Behaviors of Everyday Life: Mirror Activity

We did a performance activity today that the artist Allan Kaprow came up with. Two people stand back to back and hold mirrors so that they can see one another. You start walking away from each other but continue to hold the mirror so you can see your partner. In the mirror you make faces at each other and are supposed to mimic the other's facial expression. Allan Kaprow writes in his untitled essay "It cannot fail to delight him to stand at his mirror making faces, scowling, grinning, shedding tears, and making queer noises in quick succession." This statement and the activity we did today in class remind me of a behavior that my autistic girl I work with does to amuse herself. She can spend hours in front of a mirror making faces at herself, getting tears in her eyes and pretending to cry, smiling, frowning, and making silly noises, all for pleasure and a way to amuse herself. It is interesting to relate this piece from my everyday life to what we read and did in the activity, and to even consider that how we can apply silly behaviors in front of the mirror as an art.

Patterns

This project was difficult for me in the beginning. I did not quite understand how to do it, instructions at the beginning were vague. But with better understanding it became quite easy and not so nerve racking.

Patterns In Our World

Patterns can be found everywhere in our lives. There are patterns on the architecture of religious sites like mosques churches, and temples. Patterns can also be found in homes on floors and walls. They also adorn our clothing and jewelry. For hundreds of year humans have been using patterns for adorning, communicating, and expressing themselves. Patterns can be as simple as a repeated clover design or as complicated as an Islamic floral wall tile. The Islamic patterns are very unique as art forms. They are considered to represent the unchanging laws of God. In this way the patterns are a construction of geometric patterns that provide a visual analogy to religious rules of behavior. Muslims believe that the contemplation of creating the patterns 9the creative skills) lead to an understanding of the perfections of a Universal Nature. The Islamic patterns begin with a circle, which is the symbol of one God, and the center of Islam. The circle also has always been considered to represent a symbol of eternity - without a begging and without an end.

Gestalt

The Gestalt theorists were the first group of psychologists to systematically study perceptual organisation around the 1920’s, in Germany. Gestalt is a theory of mind and brain that proposes that the operational principle of the brain with self-organizing tendencies. The Gestalt effect refers to the form-forming capability of our senses, particularly with respect to the visual recognition of figures and whole forms instead of just a collection of simple lines and curves.

Value

We created a value scale in class using pencil. It is very important to have a value scale so you can see the different gradation of your colors. Then we drew a design and used our value scale to help us create contrasting shades in our design. I enjoyed this project a lot. I found it very helpful too because it is important to understand the different shades and value of colors. I am able to use my value scale when I am drawing at home and in other drawing classes.

Value Drawing

Line, Shape, and the String Thing

I enjoyed making the line and shape project. It was interesting to do and fun to have them all end up connected in a mass design. I first made one line and shape project and then decided to do it all over again and make it better and neater. So now there are two.
The string project was fun. I wanted to create an actual spider web design, but it did not work so well. We were not allowed to cut the string so I could not cut off pieces and tie them together, which was a little frustrating. I had a good time though, but in the end when we had to take it all apart and everything got all knotted, that was not fun. I got very frustrated and hated the string then. In all, the activities were fun and I especially liked the line and shape project and how it turned out.