Art Material Exploration #1

I had a bit of difficulty creating the value scale with a pencil. It took several attempts to get it right. I found the color wheel interesting to make. The black in the center of my wheel did not turn out to be true black, but I think that is due to the color I choose for my yellow. It appeared to be the right shade in the store but as I was working with it , it appeared more of a yellowish-light brown. Like a lot of people I have always thought that the primary colors were Red, Blue and Green. This project was interesting and informative. I liked the video and learned a lot, but I feel it would be a lot more informative with sound and voice over. 

http://s1287.beta.photobucket.com/user/scibetn01/library/Proj1


After reading the chapter and watching the videos of this module, I have become increasingly observant about art all around me. The most difficult part of this project was determining what a specific viewpoint I was looking at should be. Most subjects I was taking a picture of could have fallen into several categories,  at least to my limited understanding of the subject matter.

Module 3    

 Color is a function of light. The less light that is available, the darker the color gets, to the point of it being black in the absence of light. light is refracted into different colors in different ways. Colors can bring out emotions in humans. Cooler colors tend to be more dark and bring about more negative emotions, while warmer colors bring positive ones.

     The aspect of color that I find most intriguing are harmonies. While I have never been an "art guy", one of my hobbies is painting miniatures. I often spend a lot of time researching what colors go with each other before I decide to paint a batch of them, mostly due to my ignorance on art as a whole. My mother always taught me that my clothes had to match colors, but that isn't really the case. Colors that contrast each other can go together just as pleasantly as complimentary colors can. This chapter has helped me understand more about this topic and thus I will put it to use.

      I found it surprising that artists would plan their paintings in advance. choosing the colors they were to use carefully and working from sketches. I've always thought of art as a creation that was made "in the moment" and not planned. The Scottish woman's story about visiting Italy to inspect the views she was going to paint was something I have never considered before.

      

     That places like restaurants seek out specifics colors in paintings to make their customers more hungry and that colors choices can have such a basic emotional response to begin with. It isn't surprising that a warm painting makes someone happier than are darker one, but I found it very surprising that a painting could control hunger.

Module 2

                In the first video I learned all about various philosophers theories of aesthetics. they varied in both opinion and time frame. In both the article and second video I learned a lot about how the brain interacts with the eyes to find aesthetics pleasing. This in turn guides that hands of artist while making works of art. It all goes hand in hand. We perceive and appreciate art because of how our neurology works and creative individuals transform that into great works of art.

                I think that Plato's philosophy on art and beauty is the most important to how we perceive and categorize art. Plato thought that the true nature of the things we see in the world is the idea of them. He believed that for us to have a perception of beauty there must be a higher form for beauty in which all beautiful objects exist which in turn make them beautiful as well. He felt that for art to exist, there needed to be an idea of what that art should be.

                Changeux's speech concentrated a lot on the size of the human skull, and therefore brain, throughout mankind's history and how that coincided with the perception of aesthetics at the points in time.  I found Ramachandran 's speech incredibly interesting, not to mention entertaining. His "Eight rules of Art" described how the brain perceives aesthetics, as a Neurologist specializing in vision his perception on this matter is both interesting and informative. I found the piece about the blotchy picture of the Dalmatian and how our brains grasps at the picture looking for answer as to what it is particularly interesting.

               

                The text was detailed information delving into the theory of aesthetics and the first video was also about aesthetics but concentrated on individual philosophy of specifics philosophers. The articles and second videos more focus on who the brain works in contrast to our perceptions and enjoyment of art and aesthetics. I found both the Ramachandran 's portion of the video and the article incredibly entertaining and informative. I never knew that so much of the art world and how we perceive both art and everyday beauty is connected to our biology and neurology. Coming into this class I felt I knew that art was this thing humans made to appreciate but after this module I understand that it goes so much deeper than that.