Relief in progress

I used clay and cutting tools and carving tools and stuff for my medium.  Clay seemed like a better option for my project than the bookstuff, and so I chose that.  What amazing intelligence.  So, my subject was a bunny in a box.  I thought a bunny would be better to carve and/or easier, but the popping out of the box was a little harder.  With straight edges the box was a little tough to cut but it was done.  I don't know if you expect me to put more than this with four short questions. 

Van Gogh Painting

Sarah Jakubowski
9/21/13
Sudkamp Kimberly, Period 4 Sculpture and Ceramics
Discovered Van Gogh Painting Hiding in Norweigan Attic for a Long Time
    The painting is of some bunch of trees and a river.  Is it popular because it was drawn by Van Gogh?  I don't know yet.  How did they know it was Van Gogh's painting?  Maybe I'll find out as I read.  They call it "absolutely sensational" or a "once in a lifetime experience".  I'm not really one for paintings.  It just looks like a forest that was smeared in some places to me.  This painting had been twice rejected as a Van Gogh painting, once by the Van Gogh museum itself.  This humors me.  The evidence of this being Van Gogh's painting was a letter to his brother, in which he gets all lengthy with his words.  He talked of the amazing sunshine - "absolutely a shower of gold" - and some other stuff that doesn't seem related to this picture.  "The field seems purple, the distances blue" ninety percent of this picture is green.  Was Van Gogh really off his rocker?  "You wouldn't have been at all surprised to see knights and ladies suddenly appear, returning from hunting with hawks, or to hear the voice of an old provençal troubadour."  I have no idea what the last two words mean.  But this seems unlikely, due to the fact that this is a forest, and there is no civilization in sight.  Why would knights be returning to a forest with a hawk?  Not to hunt.  Maybe to store their hawk in some cage which it will probably be found by a bear and devoured.  This will be displayed from September 24th and onwards.  I see what you did, Ms.  Sudkamp.  I see very well now.  Well, not very well.  My sight isn't 6/6.  I think.   Been a while since my last eye checkup thing.  Anyways, I'm very skeptical of this Van Gogh painting.  Not that I'm into what Van Gogh does.  Did he not sign any of his paintings?  How odd.    Resources:  http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2013/sep/09/van-gogh-painting-discovered

What's the Point

Most of my solutions to "What's the Point?" were hands, since that's what I naturally think of.  I don't really understand what you mean by solution, though.  It's an abstract question based around drawing, and having a solution for it just confuses me.  This solution is what I chose.  It consists of birds migrating and hands pointing them to where they are going.  The contrast was showed in the feathers, and the hands in the shading.  On the background there is also contrast due to the sudden dark and light colors.  I chose pencil, not pen.  Pencil is much easier to use because you can actually erase it when you make mistakes, as I often do.  Pen was out of the question.  I didn't want to crosshatch or shade in pen, either.  Shading with pencil is simpler and to me, better.  The shade scale is somewhat easier to make in it.  I used tracing, of sorts.  I was looking at my hand when I transferred it from sight to paper.  Contrast is another technique I used, as well as lining.  Outlining.  Whatever that's called.  I didn't take many risks on this, besides actually drawing the feathers on the bird completely.  The body especially looks bad to me, and drawing the feathers on a bird is a foreign thought as I never see a bird with outlined feathers on it's body.  Nor do I do that outline and shading stuff on the wings.  There isn't really some deep meaning to this.  It's literally just birds and hands.  The birds are migrating and the hands are pointing to where they are heading.  The hands are also a pit stop for the birds.  There was supposed to be a meaning?  I didn't really know that.  This just complicates it more.

  I conveyed the migrating thing a little with the birds going in the same direction, and the hands pointing that way.  It isn't really that recognizable, though.  Don't think anyone would know what I meant for it to be if they just looked at it.  Maybe some kind of messed up drawing with hands for trees and birds sitting on the hand-trees and/or flying.

Botched Restoration

Sarah Jakubowski
9/3/13
Period 4 Sculpture and Ceramics
    This piece of art used to be Ecce Homo, "Behold the Man".  At least it was, until 81 year old widow Cecilia Giménez painted over it.  Now it is known by Ecce Mono, "Behold the Monkey".  There are a few nicknames for this select piece of art.  I'm not going to list them, though.  The authorities of Borja had claimed to believe it was vandalism at first, even though Cecilia claims she worked on it during the day, in broad daylight, with approval from the local clergy.  The church claims she did not have permission.  I'm not too sure what she thought she could do to it, since she was obviously not too good at art stuff.  Now that it's famous, the people who once thought about inforcing legal charges on her might be thankful instead.  Because of her odd recreation on the painting.  Personally I think it's a funny image.  I also think that this topic is really abstract.  Write what we feel about this piece of art?  A while from now it might be worth some money, but I'd think not.  The church announced that they would hire a professional or pay them to come and fix it up.  Following the press coverage, Cecilia had been reported to be suffering of terrible anxiety attacks and being reluctant to eat and/or leave her house.  A year after, the Misericordia hypothesized that about 57,000 guests and tourists from all over Europe, Latin America, Japan, and China went to see the fresco and among all those dropped somewhere around €50,000 in the collection box.  Just to see this "failed" recreation.  It's getting more profit than it probably would have had it stayed the same as the original.  All in all, wouldn't you say this was a success and not a failure?  Cecilia has not seen penny nor dime of the donations her creation has wrought.  She is working towards a copyright deal over her painting.  Through this(or maybe after), Cecilia said, "I couldn't understand why everyone was talking about me.  I only tried to stop the fresco succumbing to damp, as it so often had."  She wanted 49 percent of the money at the sanctuary to go towards people suffering due to the same degenerative sickness as her biological offspring. 



Citations:  http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/news/so-bad-it-was-brilliant-botched-fresco-restoration-answers-spanish-towns-prayers-with-tourism-boom-8762069.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/24/world/europe/botched-restoration-of-ecce-homo-fresco-shocks-spain.html?_r=0
http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/botched-ecce-homo-painting