Eli Helman lives in Easthampton, Massachusetts and creates both small and large pen and ink drawings. Helman has been working with pen and ink and refining his style since 2008. Helman says that he enjoys working with pen and ink (especially Micron pens) because they do not clump or smudge in his work. He works with high precision to get the very clean and detailed marks in his work. Helman says that he is much influenced by the artists Miro, Kandinsky, and Klee. He says that "their ability to combine a whimsical sense of humor with a technical prowess is what makes their aesthetic so appealing." Another major influence on his work is nature. "I am humbled daily by the immensity of our world, the complexity of our being and the vastness of space beyond." Helman's art is very interesting to me since I sometimes enjoy covering whole pages with random doodles that turn out to look somewhat like some of his very intrinsic pieces. I really enjoyed how he explained his process as being not planned, but he decides on the elements as he goes on with his drawings. I also liked how he explained that "this method of drawing forces me to take my time. I believe we all need to slow down every now and then." https://www.art-is-fun.com/detailed-pen-ink-drawings
https://drawings-of-eli-helman.myshopify.com/
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Voroshilov skiing by Isaak Brodsky (1937) The first article talked about how an artist had his artwork lifted and photoshopped into ISIS propaganda. Brian McCarty was furious when he found out when they had stolen his work and broken the copyright laws. Eventually, it ended up that he would have been given money to compensate for the violation of his copyright, but he refused to be given any money that had to do with this terrorist group using his art for their own propaganda. I think this shows that some art can be manipulated into propaganda to bring about a certain message, or lead to misinterpretation in the end. For example, the "Charging Bull" on Wall street was misinterpreted by another artist who had challenged him with their own creation of the "Fearless Girl" statue.
The second article is talking about whether or not the paintings made in the Social Realism cycle is propaganda or simply a part of Russian history. Some people say that is is propaganda, ""Socialist realism is nothing but an attempt to stuff intellectual or dogmatic objectives into art,” the British critic Herbert Read famously stated. Read compared the Soviet dislike of modernism to the conservative tastes of the Third Reich." However, many people claim that although these paintings did act as propaganda by sparking peoples nationalism and inspiration for the working class, it is simply a part of history. These two articles are very different in their forms of propaganda. The first shows the implementation of technology to convey an idea and to rise up in ranks and implement fear for their enemies, the other use realistic paintings to demonstrate the common people, or idols in Russia, to make people motivated to work harder, show more support, or bring the community together. Although I view Social Realism as propaganda in that time period, I think it also is simply a part of history in itself, much like all art and propaganda alike. So far for my home project I have been filling up pages of a journal I had bought a while back. I was going to stick to bullet journaling, but now I am moving more into the direction of creating little pieces of art that I make a couple of on any given day. My goal for this project is to fill at least half of the journal, but ultimately I would like to have the whole thing completed. Another goal of mine is to do a page or two a day, but given my other classes and out of school activities, realistically I know I won't be able to do it every day. However, I am still spreading out the work opposed to doing it all te night before, which is honestly a big step for me since I tend to procrastinate a lot.
For my home project, I am still not certain as to what I want to make. I may try to redo one of my summer projects, specifically the watercolor grid and geometric diagram of a cone. However, I may work with calligraphy to see what kind of compositions I can make up with a set amount of words on a page.
Ed Ruscha is known mostly for his art and how it focuses on using words and color to portray his content in a very engaging way. I feel that I can take away from his work since I have been working on using words in combination with images and a great emphasis on color to create a piece that can portray the desired content. "Rather than simply painting a word, Ruscha considered the particular font that might add an elevated emotion to the meaning much like the way a poet considers a phrase. By painting a word as a visual, he felt he was marking it as official, glorifying it as an object rather than a mere piece of text." (The Art Story).
The first article, "Horror Is a Constant, as Artists Depict War," written by Alissa J. Rubin, talks mostly about the real-world conflict with war and how it is portrayed through different art forms. What I found very interesting was how they differentiated between art and journalism on this very pressing topic. An important question that was posed stated, "Are gore and blood the most important things to portray, or is it the moment of utter grief that follows?" I think that both can be very effective if portrayed in the proper way. There are places where gore can be very effective, but also the heavy feeling following it can make audiences react stronger to than the other, and vice versa.
The second article, "When Modern Art Met Modern Warfare," is taking the lives lost and creating a mass response and feeling from the public to capture the lives lost. They take the deaths and are able to make people connect to them in a way since a good portion of the public has their own personal connection to the war and to those who had died. The artwork in this article to me seemed different than the ones featured in Rubin's article. Rubin's article was more explicit and direct whereas I feel that this article was portrayed through a much more modern perspective. For my first home project, I wanted to use calligraphy and letters that are arranged across my surface to express confusion along with calamity. I was thinking that when I use different sizes and arrange the letters to not directly spell out the words, that it would help reinforce my content for the piece as a whole. I do not currently have a picture of the piece yet since I am currently working on making thumbnail sketches of different compositions.
Worked on a final plan and had practiced blending and forming the shine on metal pipes with acrylic paint on white paper.
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May 2018
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