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.