Studio Journal #6: The Journey and Infinite Lines

Doorway. Christine Huang. Finished 2011.

I finally finished this painting, which was frustrating since it wasn't what I originally thought it would turn out. My sketch had much fewer mid tones. But because the lack of mid tones didn't seem complete in this painting, which can be seen in earlier photos, I decided to fill in as many shapes as I could while making the painting look balance. In my critique last Wednesday, I was told to mix a much wider range of mid tones. After the critique, I mixed more mid tones and began to apply them to the painting. I think the results look more finished; although, I feel that it was not entirely successful.

Dresser. Christine Huang. Finished 2011.

This painting is also finished and submitted into the BFA Annual. Because I was unsure how thickness of the lines should play in my Infinite Lines Series and the shapes that are created, I decided for this painting, to make the lines more pronounced than the almost-non-existent-lines in "Doorway." To make the lines straighter, I used the edge of a palette knife to help with that problem. I also didn't care to clean up the places where more blotches of paint accidentally touched the canvas when creating the lines. I feel that they go with the idea of "chance."

Dresser #2. Christine Huang. Finished 2011.

Dresser #2 was interesting because during the critique, the idea of illusions was mentioned. The "illusion" of circles that are located in the intersections of the thick lines begin to appear when your eyes look around the lines. I thought that was an interesting idea; playing around with illusions. I suppose my original idea was sort of an illusion in that the lines depict an actual representation; however, the blocks of colors flatten out the surface plane and only in some areas where the lines of the representational object are traced out can the three dimensional space pop out. I think one can see more of the tension in this painting. When only looking at the lines, the diagonal lines seem to draw out two planes that seem to intersect with each other. However, when only looking at the mid tones, the whole canvas surface seems to be flattened out.

Rectangle. Christine Huang. Finished 2011.

I felt that this painting is really successful. My initial motivation to this piece was that I wanted to just paint a canvas black. At first, I thought that painting the surface of a canvas the same way as one would paint a wall, but then realized how boring that would be. Then, as I added globs of black paint onto the canvas, I began to move the paint around and try to depict a waterfall scene. But, it wasn't going to well in the sense of space and texture of the water plus rocks. Taking the idea of texture and representation, I decided to depict water waves in the ocean. I was able to apply even more globs of paint while using the surfaces and points of the palette knife to create various textures. My thoughts after painting this were: what if I were to paint a series of mid toned canvases with various textures. Although, I'm not quite sure what that would mean except that it would look "cool" and be fun to do. My other thought was what if I had various sized one mid tone for each squares and rectangles, and put them together and created a representational infinite lines collaboration artwork out of these shapes. Rather than drawing the lines, the lines would be defined by the edges of the canvases and rather than creating the shapes, the shapes would be already created. So I suppose this process/idea would be considered as an opposite of what I am doing now.

Studio Journal #5: The Journey and Infinite Lines

Friday, October 14, 2011

On Friday, my thesis critique group B had another critique session. I showed all the sketches and paintings, except "Bag", that are in my last blog entry. I explained that I came up with this idea of extending corners and lines infinitely. There are some sketches that include circles. I was trying to see if there was any way to make circles infinite; it seems impossible since they're closed shapes. While sketching, I could see some kind of relation with Piet Mondrian's Neo-classicism paintings with the lines and shapes. However, rather than simplifying the canvas down into the basics of just lines and the primary colors, I'm more interested in the infinite lines coming together to make new shapes and the balance of the mid tones. Although the addition of lines and blocks of mid tones may flatten out the image perhaps to the point of abstraction, but I see them as representational artworks.

Sunday's Work

I went to the studio on Sunday to transfer my sketches onto canvas. Perhaps because the canvas sizes are different than the size of the frames I drew in my sketchbook that made the paintings look unbalanced. While I was painting, I had some issues of whether to make the lines thin or thick.

Doorway. Christine Huang. October 2011.

If the lines are too thin, like in this one, I feel that the blocks of grays seem lost in this painting. Unlike the sketch, this painting so far seems far from finished and lacks filled in shapes.

Dresser #2. Christine Huang. October 2011.

I painted these lines quickly without bothering if they were straight or not. Then I painted in the mid tones. You can see that two triangles were painted in. I was trying to also show repetition among similar shapes created by the lines and more defined by the mid tones.

Dresser. Christine Huang. October 2011.

In this painting, I tried a little bit of using thin black lines. I'm not quite sure if I want to leave the pencil markings or continue the darker lines.

Untitled. Christine Huang. October 2011.

I touched up on this painting a little bit. It'll still need some more work.

Tuesday's Work

Today, I went in to work on my infinite lines series, especially since I want to submit them to the BFA Annual. I'm curious at the shapes that are being created when the lines are extended infinitely. While painting, I decided to scrap my sketches and continue painting based on the paintings themselves. In an image with so many lines, so many shapes can be created. I wanted the filled in shapes to "talk" with one another not only in tone, but also in placement and the shapes they create together. In the shapes, such as the long vertical rectangles or even the horizontal line at the bottom, I also wanted to create a sort of movement. I'm also leaving in all the error lines I've made while I was working out the lines. I feel that everything I do should stay on the canvas and leave it up to chance to make something.

Doorway. Christine Huang. October 2011.

Dresser #2. Christine Huang. 2011.

Dresser. Christine Huang. 2011.

Untitled Broken Up. Christine Huang. October 2011.

I added the darker shade of gray in the middle area, which is working with the bottom half of the painting. However, the top still needs to be resolved.

Studio Journal #4: The Journey on Its Way Part 2

Sketches. Christine Huang. 2011.10.12.

Untitled. Christine Huang. 2011

I worked more on this painting because I felt that more layers of paint was needed. Also, I had premixed the mid-tones and wanted to smooth out the edges using the mid-tones. I will continue to work on this painting.

Untitled. Christine Huang. 2011.10.12

In this painting, I continued with my study of windows in correspondence with the canvas shape. This one isn't finished yet and will need additional layers of paint. But I like the idea of a rectangle within a rectangle.

Untitled Broken Up. Christine Huang. 2011.10.12.

For this painting, I wondered what if the edges of things could go on forever. What will happen? I decided to take the doorway painting and extend all the lines. Another aspect I wanted to portray was using geometric shapes. While the window and doorway are all in the painting, they are hidden within in the lines. When color is added, the representation of both objects are lost even further. In a sense, I wanted to somehow divide the canvas into three sections and have the middle section be pushed back into space. However, this painting didn't really turn out the way I wanted, like the one in my sketches. The colors didn't seem to be in a balanced position on the canvas. I will try another painting like this one this coming week.

Bag. Christine Huang. 2011.10.12.

I feel that like with the lack of color, the lack of painting a still life, and only constantly painting architecture, will drive me a little crazy. For this unfinished painting, I decided to start off with painting a still life using the mid-tone colors I already mixed. Like the other paintings from this week, I will continue to work on this one as well.

Studio Journal #3: The Journey on Its Way

This past weekend I went to work in my studio. I realized that working with just black and white tones the second half of last Spring semester and continuing to do so now hinders my continuing experience painting with colors. So I decided that I should, on the side of my black and white paintings, continue to paint with colors.

Untitled. Christine Huang. 2011.

As can be seen in this first painting the lacking usage in the mixture and variety of colors. I noticed that there were times I had difficulties choosing the specific colors for the canvas. There are unless possibilities of mixtures that I hesitated when painting the colors, which should not be the case. I believe it is up most important to continue with other, on the side, colored paintings.

Untitled. Christine Huang. 2011.

This is just an experimental piece still in its beginnings. I wanted to see if I could use lines to make some sort of grid, but not so apparent, and have the lines be positioned in a certain way that they create a sense of balance even if they are not all symmetrical. The colors added were a way to experiment with representation without really being obvious as well. I will need to work more on this idea.

Untitled. Christine Huang. 2011.

This is my latest black and white painting concerning with windows and doorways. It is still not complete; I would like to add thicker layers of the mid-tones. I found the drastic contrast between the lightest gray and black to be very appealing. After looking at this painting, even though its still not done, I'm thinking about whether to paint with a texture-feeling or smooth out the colors. In this painting, I used both the palette knife and brush and found the juxtaposition of both tool application makes the painting interesting to look at.

Sketches. Christine Huang. 2011.

Sketches. Christine Huang. 2011.

The two pictures above are two pages from my sketchbooks. I began to look into how the geometric shapes of windows, buildings, doorways, etc. relate in comparison with the shape of the canvas itself. In the second left sketch of the first picture and the first sketch of the second picture I played around with the idea of framing the canvas with the various identities of the building, which in this case is mostly the window. The other sketches, in particular, the second sketch of the second picture, I began to think about the idea of how fast I want to reveal what I'm depicting to the viewer. While sketching, I've been thinking about using the light, dark and mid-tones to help slowly reveal what is being depicted, which sounds like an interactive puzzle needing a lot of attention in order to get the answer.