Hi, I'm 64

Second Term Project 2015

THEME:    Portrait

MEDIUM: Acrylic (Dala), Acrylic Retarder, Paper Mache, Newspaper, Cardboard, Duct Tape

ARTIST;   Cari van Niekerk (me)

"Pictures capture the moments and the memories. Paintings capture the emotion and the soul."

     -Cari van Niekerk.

Planning:

I strived to capture the soul of this one person that I met almost a day or two after we got this project. She had an extreme impact on the way that I see and experience things in life, as well as made me thankful for everything that I have, as well as all of the privelages that I have. 

I thus thought it to be fitting if she became my model for this project. And thus my journey began...

I started off by gathering all of the charecteristics that she has, as you can see here on the picture on the left. 

They followed:

* Depressed

*Thankful

*Tough

*Lonesome
*Greedy

*Wise

*Easilly pleased

*Hard Working

As I jotted down these charecteristics, a brilliant idea for a backround popped into my head. An idea that entailed a lot of work, but would cause my work to be unique, as well as grab the attention of (hopefully) everyone that is around it and sees this piece. These two things are both classified as great priorities and thus I ended up on making this idea. 

The picture on the right, is a page that I just messed upon. I wanted to do this, as I wantedto point out how cruel life is and what disgusting beings there are on the face of the earth. That giant heart in the middle of the page on the right, signifies that the deeds that the people all around me have done, have made me extremely sad and broke my heart into a milion pieces.

Finally, I took some pictures of my model. Yes, she is only 64. I know she does not really look like it, but I saw the birth sertificate with my own eyes. 

The backround balls out from the inside out. the face is thus in the deepest part of the canvas and the sides of this art picture graduately reaches a height or almost half a metre. If I can put it in other words, imagine taking a square shaped bowl, pouring fast-drying paint in there and adding a Netball ball in there. You wait until the paint dries and then you remove the ball. That's how the canvas looks. 

You can see a rough composition sketch on the bottem of the right hand side of this page.

What everything signifies:

The roundness represents the circle of life. The face sort of fades into the backgroung, to create the illusion that the model becomes an object and just a symbol of poverty. The blue represents depression. It graduately fades into black, which symbolises the difficulties and struggles that she goes through. The ellivated edges of this painting, places focus on the hollow face in the middle of the canvas. You thus cannot help but to notice her. If you look at this art piece from any side, you feel cut off from it and this sifgnifies that no one cares for her, that she is all alone in this world and that no-one wants to admit to the struggle that exists in this world. The thus just becomes an object and signifies the poor class in this world.

The final product:

This is how the final product came out.

Observation drawings:

Like you probably have guessed by now, it does not end there. This blog goes on!

Every term we also have to hand in 5 observation drawings. here are the five that I have created last term.

Charcoal drawings

The Parallax Mistake Painting

FIRST TERM PROJECT 2015

THEME:     Water

MEDIUM:  Acrylic (Dala), Acrylic Retarder, Acrylic Gloss

ARTIST:    Cari van Niekerk (me)

All life revolves around water. Without water, there would be no life. No creation. No Nature. And, of course, we all know how beautiful nature is. Thus, we try our best to preserve it's beauty.

Planning:

I started off with an idea that revolved around the damage that water can cause. I used the fact that people inflicts damage to nature, as my inspiration for this ide. I wanted to draw a picture where a tsunami is being transformed into a monster like wave, on the peak of destroying everything in its wake. This idea is illustrated in my art journal in the following pictures

The pupicture on the left is the original idea that i had. I just wanted to Create a tsunami that took back the ground that the humans destroyed from nature.

The papage on the right explains the concept revolving around this idea. (Though it has been written in Afrikaans.)

These two pages shows the tsunami that  I would've PainPainted, as well as the tiny buildings and the face that the wave would've turned into. That creepy looking face, signifies the anger of nature and the destructive power that it has.

Water can be cruel. It can be deadly. But. It is still filled with a bunch of mysteries that would take a genius to comprehend the complexity of. This is why I based my art project on the Parallax Mistake.

A site called Chemistry Glossary states that Parallax a deceptive change of the position of an object is, which is observed while the position of the observer changes. Position of eye at all volumetric vessels must be at the same level as the meniscus. If not, the parallax will cause an error while reading the position of the meniscus of a liquid in a burette. It will be a positive mistake if the eye is lower, and negative if the eye is higher than the meniscus plane

The parallax mistake inspired me to make an art project of a Phoenix that is underneath the water, on top of a hand that it is resting upon. This is also seen as a "mistake," as, if you think about it, when fire and water gets into contact with each other, the fire either turns the water into steam, or, if its an excessive amount of water (like I used in this art piece) it would bliss the fire. It is seen as impossible, as the Phoenix keeps on burning even though it is underneath the surface of the water. This can be seen, as the bright red colour of the Phoenix's scorching feathers have been faded by a blue wash.

My planning for this idea took place on the following two pages of my journal. I ended up likig this idea more than my previous one, so i finally decided to do this one as my project instead of the previous idea. This is lpnely bcause of the fact that it was so different from any other idea that I had. It isbvery unique.

Final Draft:

The Phoenix is seen as a mythical creature and thus cannot exist. This is one of the reasons why I picked this specific creature. This Phoenix is not real and thus it cannot exist. I am exclaiming the fact that it is not real, by comparing it to a mistake that exists in in nature.

Observation Drawings:

Like every term, the art project was not the only thing that I had to do for this term. I also have 5 observation drawings that I drew. They are all different types of earphones.