Project 2:
Surrealism Watercolor
Title: Satellite Family
Size: 38.1 cm x 27.94 cm (15 in x 11 in) Medium: Watercolor on watercolor paper Completion: September 2018 Satellite Family is a surrealist watercolor painting inspired by the paintings of Jacek Yerka and the concept of surrealism and personification. It illustrates a rooftop with multiple satellites all pointed in the direction of the multiple chimneys to personify a family sitting together watching something. I attempted to manipulate the watercolors to paint very smooth textures and crisp unity. The theme is of having human qualities without any people in the art piece.
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Critical Investigation Research:
Attack at Dawn
City is Landing, Acrylic on canvas, 2002 |
My inspiration for this project was Jacek Yerka. Jacek Yerka is a Polish artist who primarily creates surrealist worlds of art in paintings. I've seen his paintings in calendars and was captivated by the fantasy world he imagined and created within them. His paintings usually consist of pale, saturated colors and very smooth and blended paint strokes. The objects in his paintings look very realistic but are positioned in places that are unrealistic and fantasy-like suggesting surrealism. Most of his work consists of bodies of water, creatures, and buildings lodged in impossible landscapes. His theme revolves around a dream world rather than reality. He details in his biography how all of his life, he'd rather be inside drawing imaginary worlds and landscapes.
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Yerka, Jacek. "YERKALAND BLOG." Yerkaland, Jacek Yerka http://www.yerkaland.com/language/en/
"Surrealist Art: Jacek Yerka." eclecticlivinghome.wordpress, Wordpress, April 17th, 2012, https://eclecticlivinghome.wordpress.com/2012/04/17/surrealist-art-jacek-yerka/
Yerka, Jacek. "Attack at Dawn." Yerka. https://yerka.org.ru/ajy/attack_at_dawn.html
"Surrealist Art: Jacek Yerka." eclecticlivinghome.wordpress, Wordpress, April 17th, 2012, https://eclecticlivinghome.wordpress.com/2012/04/17/surrealist-art-jacek-yerka/
Yerka, Jacek. "Attack at Dawn." Yerka. https://yerka.org.ru/ajy/attack_at_dawn.html
Inspiration:
Sleep, Paint on Canvas, 1937 by Salvador Dali
Golden Anniversary by Vladimir Kush Dali, Salvador. "Le Sommeil (Sleep)." Dalipaintings, DaliPaintings, 2018, https://www.dalipaintings.com/sleep.jsp. Kush, Vladimir. "Golden Anniversary." ArtStack, ArtStack. https://theartstack.com/artist/vladimir-kush/golden-anniversary The ArtStory. "Surrealism Movement Overview and Analysis." TheArtStory.org, The ArtStory Contributors, 2018, https://www.theartstory.org/movement-surrealism.htm. |
Surrealism was the inspired style of this project. This was an art movement that started in the 1920's and the idea of was to take real objects and manipulate them in a world that looks realistic, but could not physically or logically happen. This movement encouraged painting from the 'unconscious mind' and creating images with objects and places that do not correlate to each other but blend in unity in the art work. It may have an object with the same shape or form as another and replaces it in the painting making it look very unique and unsettling. Other objects, like in Salvador Dali's paintings: clocks and faces are portrayed melting as if it's made of another texture.
In my watercolor painting, I wanted to use the same technique of smooth blending and smooth transitions of values to make realistic-looking painting with unrealistic qualities. At first, I wanted to use the theme of juxtaposition; having two uncommon objects unified together for contrast but the objects I chose, satellite dishes and chimneys, are common objects that are usually seen together but are not thought of as significant or something to really look at and go unnoticed usually. The objects in my painting aren't actually different textures than they should be, but it's not normal but weird due to the amount of satellites and chimneys on the single roof. |
Planning:
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Before I started the project, I practiced using water colors with the elements and principles of design. I practiced blending two colors together like a value scale, going from very light to dark. Then, I practiced the different ways I could use watercolors;
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- Made one continuous stroke to see how long the color would run until it stopped.
- Tried different ways of using the paintbrushes, flicking paint off it, dabbing the paper with the tip and with the flat side, circling it.
- Created different opacities by adding more water to a color to make it lighter and more color to make it darker.
- Also practiced value and form of an object by painting a sphere and experimenting with how I should move my paintbrush to distribute colors and make the illusion of shading on the sphere.
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I had the initial idea of having two watercolor images, one a surrealist painting of personification of an object and the other was a realist landscape painting without people in the image. The purpose of these watercolor paintings was to show human impact without humans showing up in the artwork.
For the first painting, I got inspiration from a picture I took for the Summer Project of the moon looking as if it had come out of a chimney. I liked the way the satellite dish looked as if it was watching this occur, and I decided to use that for my personification idea. I made three planning sketches. First, I practiced drawing roofs of houses including the one I would use in my final draft. Then, I drew a rough sketch of what I wanted the end result to look like. There'd be two satellites dishes leaning against one another watching the moon rise out of the chimney. |
In my last sketch, I drew the same image, but with more chimneys to fill up space and for more of a surrealist-like feel. I then painted it to see what colors looked unified and appealing for the roof and the sky.
Process:
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To start, I had an 11 in x 15 in piece of watercolor paper.
Experimenting: From experimenting with my watercolors when I was planning, I found out that having a very light and wet wash and putting light color over that resulted in very soft and almost a feathery texture. I wanted to try that for the sky. I first used just water on my paint brush and spread it around the area of the sky. Then, I added very light shades of purple and blue to the paintbrush and spread the color on top of the already wet surface to see the effect. As a result, the color turned out to spread evenly but it was very light. And hard to see. The sky differed from the way I originally planned to have it in my inspiration: smooth without any sign of brush strokes, but I thought this way was more interesting. Experimenting: I also experimented using a tissue to form a cloud and give it texture. It was very easy to wipe the wet watercolor off and reveal the paper underneath, but shaping the cloud and giving it value was difficult. |
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After that, I decided to make my colors a bit darker, and finished the rest of the sky. Next was the roof.
In my planning sketch of the roof, I used a red-brown combination for the color of the shingles. I recreated that by first putting a layer of light brown over most of the roof. I barely painted this wash around the satellites in fear of spillage over the lines that I drew. Although now that I look back on that it probably wouldn't have made a difference. |
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At this part of the process, I moved onto the roof gutters. I planned on them being white, but I realized this would take emphasis off the moon which was bright, glowing white, so, I decided I would make it grey. I made one line across the gutters as straight as I could, but it looked very sloppy.
Technique: I washed the brush I was using and dipped it in water. I used the end of the brush with the water and sort of rubbed the end of the bristles on top and below the line and the water pushed the color into a straighter and cleaner line. It also gave the line more value as it trailed away from the center. |
Now, it was time to start on the shingles. I wanted the colors to be in a sequence of mismatched shingles of dark brown, dark red and pale brown. I painted the shingles on a slight slant, but as I progressed to the right, they began to stand straight up right. I continued column by column to fix the rectangles to slant again and to fill the entire roof with slanted rectangle swatches. Each time I went to wet my brush, I always mixed dark red and brown in different amounts to make the different colors for the shingles.
Technique: To give the shingles value and form rather than just shape and slanted rectangles, I took a wet brush, and from the bottom of a singular shingle, I made small up and down movements until the color began to wash away and pale and then dragged the color upwards to the top of the shingle for a shadow.
Experimenting: I started to experiment with the way the shingles looked. Instead of a more, realistic, clean lining, rectangular shingles, I experimented with adding a lot of water and making a dab of color. The color spread a bit and it started to look like an implied style, but I wanted the shingles to look more realistic Jacek Yerka's paintings so I scraped the idea.
Technique: In hindsight, I realized how it would've been easier to have just painted all of the shingles and then paint the satellite dishes over them. I struggled painting the shingles under and around the satellites with my brushes since they are shaped more for filling up big spaces.When I was done filling up the roof with shingles, I started to finish up the look of the chimneys and satellite dishes. At first, I was trying not to use the color black because it's not a color that is found in nature, but the objects I was painting were man-made materials, so I decided to use black to solidify and emphasize the dishes and the chimneys and make them pop. |
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Skill: I attempted to make the moon look as though it is right above the chimneys rather than very, very far away. I did this by shading the chimneys in black and white in the appropriate places: a line of black right down the middle on the main chimney the moon was coming out of and white strips on either side. The other chimneys I put white highlights on the side of the chimney the moon was facing and also included shadows. For referencing the shadows, I used a flashlight and shined it above a few objects to see their shadow's shape, length and width compared to the object. From this reference, I created shapes of the chimneys' and satellite dish's shadows using a darker shade of red-brown.
I also began to use white on the shingles for the reflection of the moon. I took a little bit of white on the same brush I used to shape the shingles, so it would be the same size, and made a streak from the top of the shingle and halfway down. When the white dried, however, it solidified and covered up the true color of the shingle which just became white, so I wet my brush and went over all of the shingles and made the white less intense but still present.
I also began to use white on the shingles for the reflection of the moon. I took a little bit of white on the same brush I used to shape the shingles, so it would be the same size, and made a streak from the top of the shingle and halfway down. When the white dried, however, it solidified and covered up the true color of the shingle which just became white, so I wet my brush and went over all of the shingles and made the white less intense but still present.
Reflection:
This painting was surprisingly easier to create than I thought. Watercolors are very manipulative even after they've dried. All in all, I thought the painting was:
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ACT Questions:
1. Clearly explain how you are able to identify the cause-effect relationships between your inspiration and its effect upon your artwork.
The white highlights of my painting and the hyper-realistic values of Yerka's artwork.
2. What is the overall approach the author has regarding the topic of your inspiration?
The author of my inspiration was Jacek Yerka himself; he presented his artwork in categories and explained the events leading up to his career.
3. What kind of generalizations and conclusions have you discovered about people, ideas, cultures, etc. while you researched your inspiration?
I've generalized how different countries' environments and different exposures from around the world affect one's artwork.
4. What was the central idea or theme around your inspirational research?
Imagination and Juxtaposition: taking real-life objects that don't belong together and making them fit.
5. What kind of inferences did you make while reading your research?
I inferred artists pull inspiration from their surroundings but also their dreams.
The white highlights of my painting and the hyper-realistic values of Yerka's artwork.
2. What is the overall approach the author has regarding the topic of your inspiration?
The author of my inspiration was Jacek Yerka himself; he presented his artwork in categories and explained the events leading up to his career.
3. What kind of generalizations and conclusions have you discovered about people, ideas, cultures, etc. while you researched your inspiration?
I've generalized how different countries' environments and different exposures from around the world affect one's artwork.
4. What was the central idea or theme around your inspirational research?
Imagination and Juxtaposition: taking real-life objects that don't belong together and making them fit.
5. What kind of inferences did you make while reading your research?
I inferred artists pull inspiration from their surroundings but also their dreams.