Ancient Art

I selected the video on the Luttrell Psalter in part because the video on the Illuminated Manuscript wasn't working.  I love books; this is something that everyone in my life comments on.  I own a lot of books, I read a lot, and I'm compared often to fictional characters with the same traits.  This video seemed close to the one on the Illuminated Manuscript - it was about the illustrations in medieval books and I had never heard of the Luttrell Psalter before.  I really enjoyed this video - the artwork was fascinating and I enjoyed the descriptions behind each one.

Key concept from More Human Than Human: Humans don't really like realism in their artwork; they want exaggerated perfection.  What constitutes this has changed throughout time/history, but trend continues into modern media today.

Key concept from Art & Life in the Middle Ages: the Luttrell Psalter.  The whole video shows the illustrations in the Psalter.  Shows not only illustrations of the Biblical stories contained within, but also has strange depictions of everyday life and some depictions of saintly stories.  

The first video related to the readings in the text by delving into a specific feature of ancient art - while the book covered more general themes.  The video specifically looked at how the human form was depicted in different cultures throughout ancient times, and explored the reason behind the specific exaggerations that were often depicted.  The second video really delved into what the drawings in an illuminated manuscript represented - what stories they told, what symbols they contained, etc.  The book makes only a passing mention on illuminated manuscripts in its section on the Early Middle Ages, but that's maybe one of the most fascinating things from the Middle Ages.  I have a fondness for the beauty of illuminated manuscripts.

I pretty much explained how the videos added depth to the text I was already reading - that's how it relates, is to add depth in the first place.  But I really liked these videos.  They were less dry and had more interesting subject matter than many of the others I've been made to watch.  The narration for the first video was interesting and engaging and I enjoyed the exploration of the development of the human figure in ancient art.  While the narrator for the second video was a little dry, I was absolutely fascinated by the art that was shown - I loved getting to see it close up - and I learned a lot about the culture of the Middle Ages and how it related to the art in these kinds of books.  I almost want to watch that video again.

Peer Reviews

The first blog I was supposed to review did not have a post for either project 1 or 2.

The second blog had a posting for project 1, but not project 2.  So I did leave a comment on project 1 - the elements & principles slideshow.

The blog is Sharntell Moran's: https://sharntell-tnfa.blogspot.com/

Her Elements & Principle's Slideshow was amazing.  I felt like for most of her pictures, I understood exactly what image she was trying to convey, and I agreed wholeheartedly with those images.  They were perfect.  For the images I was less sure of - mostly because they were unlabeled, but not all - I could see a couple of different principles/elements.  There's one unlabeled one that looks like it could be either line or contrast, depending on what you're looking at.

The other blog I reviewed for project 1 was Megan Newton's: https://artinquiryreflections.blogspot.com/

Her Elements & Principles slideshow was good, though maybe not quite as impressive as Sharntell's.  For some of her pictures, I wholeheartedly agree with what she was going with.  They're fantastic pictures for illustrating particular elements/principles.  For other pictures, I could see where she was going with the idea but I didn't necessarily think her picture depicted that well.  I'm not sure I saw a different element/principle in the work, just that I might have picked something different to what she was trying to show.

The first blog I could review for project 2 - the art gallery visit - was Haley Laskowski's: http://haleysartforthemind.blogspot.com/

She picked some nice works, though none of them were the same as my own.  She seemed drawn to more modern/recent works - everything she picked was created in the 20th or 21st centuries, while I like older works of art.

Megan also did project 2 so I reviewed her blog too.

She and I did have one piece of work in common - we both felt drawn to that Niagara painting, and we generally had the same reason: we live in the Buffalo-Niagara region and care about what happens here.

I have to say that Haley picked a piece of artwork I sort of missed somehow in my visit.  Nancy Dwyer's Kill Yourself piece is quite interesting and I agree that I want to know way more about it.  Especially since it was done in 1989 so it would make it difficult (but no less relevant) to say that it "came out of" internet culture because the internet was not such a big thing in 1989.

To be honest, I feel like my peers need to learn to talk about their processes a little more.  They're reflections are very short and reserved and don't really give me much to go on in terms of analyzing an opinion and forming a response.  As you can see, I do not lack for words, or the courage to use them.  I wish they would speak up more.

Also evidenced by the fact that I have no comments on my own blog, so I can neither agree or disagree with what they have to say about my processes/reflections.

MY Logo

These are the images of my logo:

My very first idea when thinking about a personal logo was something to do with butterflies.  I've had a thing for butterflies/fairies since I was in grade school.  So I started with a butterfly and thought maybe about doing my name in the design of the butterfly's wings.  I dismissed that idea pretty quickly; I thought it was too detailed, I don't have that kind of artistic skill, and it just didn't feel right.  

So instead, I went with the online moniker I've been using for a while now: crabbybun.  I created this as a combination of my Western & Chinese zodiacs - I am a Cancer (the crab) in the West, and I was born in the Year of the Rabbit for the Chinese.  I briefly thought about somehow combining the crab and the rabbit but that looked scary in my mind so I decided against it.  I began working with somehow putting the "c" and "b" from the two parts of my name into an animal.  I'm not fond of the crab, but I do like bunnies an awful lot.  So I have a good many sketches trying that out. 

As you can tell, I couldn't quite get it right. I just couldn't make the letters look good in the bunny.  Then I thought about something I've been trying to do for a while.  See, I have the symbol for my zodiac (essentially a sideways 69) tattooed on my right wrist.  I've been toying with the idea for a couple of years now of embellishing this tattoo, since it's pretty simple and done just in black.  I've been thinking about getting little bunny details tattooed in black around my zodiac, to represent the crabbybun idea.  I've been waiting to see how a tattoo artist would do it, because I'm not talented enough to really do what I want.  But I decided to try my own version of it as my logo.

Took me a couple tries, but I figured out how I wanted it to look as a logo.  It's simple, and easy enough to shrink down.  It could certainly just be black & white, with stark outlines, but color was asked for.  So I did the zodiac sign part of it with a gradient of water colors - aqua green into blue - because Cancer the Crab is a water sign.  I outlined it with a sparkly gel pen, doing a circular pattern partly because it looked like ripples and partly because the pen worked better that way.  I picked a sparkly gel pen because the glitter looks like light glistening on water.   For the bunny part, I picked my favorite color - pink - and did those parts in shades of pink.  I picked a pale pink for the body, and a darker pink for the ear/nose.  I outlined this in pink glitter gel pen as well, because pink is pretty and glitter makes everything better.  

I guess the most important thing I realized while making this logo is that letters are not really necessary for a logo.  I automatically wanted to put lettering into the logo, thinking that it was important but the more I thought about it, I realized that a lot of really famous logos don't have letters at all - like Nike, that swoosh alone tells you what the product is.  You don't need the name at all.  

The videos were good.  I think the Marmite one might be better than the other one.  That one was actually interesting, because I've tried Marmite and I really don't know why the English eat that stuff.  I knew that it was popular, but I never thought of it needing to change or "rebrand."  The idea of a squeezable bottle was good - not original, but necessary - but I understood afterward how necessary a brand update can be for a product.