Title: Fallen Size: 11 x 14 inches Medium: Acrylic on canvas Completion date: November 2023 Exhibition Text: This work shows what it's like when one can fall back into a depression after building their way back up. It's very common for people who are learning to grow and improve when struggling mentally to go through another event that send them back into a spiral. When this happens, it can feel like you're starting all over again, but you still feel like you're trapped in an empty dark room with no way to get back out. Some of the inspiration for this work was Degas and his simple but elegant style. In addition to this, I also got inspiration from an experience my friend went through. This is showing how she described herself feeling. |
Inspiration
Dancers Practicing at the Barre by Edgar Degas
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There were various reasons as to why I had chosen Edgar Degas as my inspiration for this piece, one of the primary reasons being that he is an artist who understands a struggle with mental health. Degas was always someone who was more introverted, oftentimes staying inside and avoiding contact with others. This always gave him more time to work on his latest piece and improve his style. He began to avoid others even more when he started going through bouts of depression and art block. He cared very deeply for his art, and when unable to make it, this would lead to Degas becoming even more reclused, depriving him of support, increasing his struggle. It's because of this deep connection with art that when he began to lose his sight, he went back into this depression. This is so closely related to my them that I was determined to use his art and his style as my inspiration. |
In addition to these heavy or overwhelming emotions, his style was also elegant and always able to tell a story. Oftentimes, he uses positioning to show a sense of grief or pain, or at the very least allude to it, as can be seen in the piece, Male Nude. While not specifically showing any signs of pain, the pose is similar to that of someone who's been wounded, giving the sense of pain. It is from this specific piece that I decided to take inspiration, because it so closely resembled something I wanted to portray. I decided that, much like Degas, I would chose to portray someone in such a vulnerable state laying in pain or having fallen, I wanted to show a similar pain. On top of this, Degas used lighting inn the piece to pull the attention to the bust first by making it brighter, then moving along the rest of the subjects body, following the flow of the light. Once again, I decided that I appreciated the lighting and how it was used to draw attention, and decided to include that in my piece as well, just on a wider scale.
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Male Nude by Edgar Degas
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The final, and likely most noticeable to the naked eye, part of Degas's works is how he used his brush strokes. In the piece, the body is smooth, and most of the brush strokes are blended out, giving a stronger sense of the body, in the background, however, the brush strokes quickly become more clear and defined. This, once again, draws more attention to the subject, however, it still keeps the background interesting and prevents the eye from getting bored if it wanders.
Planning & Experimentation
I started this piece thinking I knew exactly what I wanted, and how I wanted to do it. The only thing I didn't know was what artist I wanted to use as inspiration. As always, It took me a little while to start the project, but once I started, I had decided to do with Edgar Degas as my inspiration. Initially, I had wanted the piece to show a girl that was falling into the dark, but that idea didn't last long after I decided to go with Degas. There were a few times where I tried to sketch out a plan where there was a girl falling, but in the end, I couldn't even make a full sketch that I was happy with so I decided to move on to other ideas.
As previously stated, I originally had planned to have a girl falling as part of my piece, however,, I never liked the sketches, even from the start. It's because of this that there isn't really any evidence showing my original idea, especially since I moved on from it so quick. Not long after I chose to use Degas as my inspiration, I made a couple of small sketches of more proper poses that remind you of ballet. I, once again, decided against it, this time because it was straying too far away from relating to my friend and her experiences. Luckily, I realized this pretty early on into my plans, and was able to quickly move back to something much more similar to the original idea of her falling. Instead of an action shot, though, I decided to show that she already had fallen and was laying on the ground.
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This is where you can really start to see the plan coming together. There are many drawings and sketches shown, with the ones that are colored being the ones I liked and was considering using as the pose in the final piece. Most of the poses and positions shown were found in a book for figure drawing. I wanted a good but painful pose, and this was the best way to find it. On top of that, I didn't want my subject to be wearing any clothes, and I use my school Chromebook for schoolwork, so I would be kind of hard to find any pictures of people laying down, nude, for me to sketch. Even if I could find these poses, I'm not sure if I could find them without getting into trouble with the school.
I had a lot of trouble deciding what pose I wanted to go with for this piece, there were a few that I liked where the subject was sitting up, but I also didn't want to show a face, as I still wanted the subject to remain more anonymous. I didn't really want to include any kind of side profile, not only because my friend deserves her privacy, but because experiences and emotions like this happen to anyone and everyone. Giving the subject a face makes it a little bit harder to connect.
My plan for the background basically remained the same the entire process, no matter what, I wanted the background to be dark with a light shining down. The only real difference would've been that instead of a ladder, there would be a bar for ballet or something similar. In my sketches, I tried to show what the different sketches would look like with a dark background, trying to make the color ass similar to what I had imagined as possible. In the end, I decided to go with a pose that I don't think I ever even sketched out, funnily enough.
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Process
Honestly, it's getting to the point where there isn't really much to talk about with the process, I've already explained how I make each painted in the past various time in different styles. This project was no different. I started by planning everything out with my sketches. I went back and forth with what I wanted a lot, and even got to a point where I figured I could just try to sketch onto my canvas and do all of my planning sketches later. Keep in mind that that was when I was very tired and had apparently forgotten that I had no clue what I wanted to paint. After going through my small bout of insanity, I went back to sketching out a plan and coming up with a few ideas on what I want to do and how I was going to do it. It didn't take long for me to decide to go with girl on the ground, but from there, I was going back and fourth with was pose I wanted her in, and whether or not I wanted her sitting up. In the end, I decided that all of the poses were good, but I still wanted something I hadn't done yet, and went with a pose I had never even sketched for practice.
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Once I finally finished with creating a plan, it was time for me to get a sketch down onto a canvas. To do this, I did something that I rarely ever do, I chose to project. The biggest issue, is that since I never project, I forgot to take any pictures of what the setup looked like, so I just have to be a bit more descriptive when saying how I did it.
To project, I first had to take a picture of what I wanted to sketch onto my canvas and upload that picture to google drive. This would allow me to show the picture on a computer that I could the plug into a projector to show the image on other surfaces. By doing this, I was able to adjust how big I wanted my sketch to be, where I wanted it on the canvas, and well as how focused I wanted the picture to be. I then set my canvas up on an easel and made the adjustments to move the sketch to my liking. From there, I just traced the image onto my canvas by outlining the different colors and shading. |
After getting my sketch done, I immediately jumped into painting later that day. It is a little funny looking at the canvas before I started painting, though, because you can see where I sketched some ideas before really knowing what I wanted to do. I may regret it a little, but it isn't noticeable in the final product, so I'm not really concerned. I started with the body, as I always prefer to do the most intricate parts part first, while I'm still motivated. This is when I do my best work, so I always try to tackle the hardest parts first. This, for me, was the feet. I chose to paint the fell body, then pain the feet. This took me so extremely long because they're honestly just something I don't really like. Painting them wasn't really fun at first, but the more I did it, the more I enjoyed it, since I started breaking down the shaping and just seeing them as different sections with more or less width. In the end, I was really happy with them and ended up getting a lot of complements on them.
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After making the feet, I was finally done with the body. From there, all I had to do was the ladder, the light, and the background, all of which kind of lump together when mixing colors to use, since they're so similar. I quickly sketched out the lines for the walls, light and ladder, as I had forgotten when projecting, then realized that I had forgotten to give my subject hair. When I was mixing color, I quickly mixed the colors for her hair and got the general idea down, then went on the do the background, deciding that I would come back to the hair later. |
Then, I painted the background, starting with the dark sections, then going to the beam of light, making the latter overtime, making it a little better with each section. From there, all I had to do was the floor, and once I finished that, I did the shadows and then I was done! I really like the piece, but can still see a lot of room for improvement, so I'll probably end up coming back to it inn the future to make some touch ups. They'll probably end up being for the background environment to add more ambiance and whatnot, but for now, I'm happy with how I did.
Critique
Original Work
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This piece turned out relatively well, especially when I decided to compare it to my inspiration and think about how I did it as a student. There were many different techniques and elements that I tried to emulate through my work. Some came through, others did not, but overall, I think I did a good job with the time that I gave myself, and left plenty of room from improvement in the future. To start, there are a few similarities that I went out of my way to try to include with my work. The usage of light within the work to add movement throughout the piece. In my work, I use light to draw the eye to the entire body, which takes up much less space on the canvas in comparison to my inspiration by Degas, and Degas uses light to draw the eye to the face and bust of the subject, then moves the eye along the contours of the body. In addition to that, I used space to emphasize the subject as the central focus, making it seem like the most important part of the piece.
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Male Nude by Edgar Degas
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Similarly, Degas uses space to emphasize the subject and to make the subject feel smaller and less significant. In contrast to Degas's works, I used acrylic paint, whereas Degas prefers to use oil paint. Along with the difference in paint, there is a difference in the usage and technique with the paint. With my work, I blended my colors more, which was unintentional for the most part, but it's also related to the medium I chose. Acrylic can make it harder to remix old colors, making it harder to recreate a style the has very prominent brushstrokes. overall, however, the body being more blended than the background is still similar to Degas's work, it's just to a slightly more extreme extent.
Reflection
I really enjoyed this project. Before working on this, I hadn't done many nude body sketches or anything similar, so I got to go more in depth with practicing and studying the anatomy of the female body. I learned a lot about where shadows typically fall on the body, where skin folds when laying different ways, as well as different places fat is stored. I know that understanding the human body helps a lot when making art, and making this work prepared me a lot for more projects in the future. As stated previously, I chose to have Degas as my inspiration, I choose him for his elegant style, but for his mental history as well. It was his depression that was the final straw in picking him as his emotions so closely related to my theme of struggling through a journey of improving your mental health. It's a little ironic that this project was about mental health when I struggled a lot with mine while work on this project. It's because of this that I had a lot of issues with motivation, slowing my progress significantly. Overall, I think it has become increasingly clear that I enjoyed painting anatomy, but what may not have been clear is a very specific part of the anatomy that I truly did not enjoy painting. I did not enjoy painting the feet, not because of how they look or the difficulty of making them look good, but because feet make me vaguely uncomfortable, and gross me out. However, despite my disdain for feet, I really enjoyed making this painting, but still plan on making a few adjustments later.
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Original Work
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ACT Questions
Clearly explain how you are able to identify the cause effect relationship between your inspiration and its effect on your artwork?
- There tends to be a relatively clear relationship between my inspiration and the work that results from it. I make my works very obviously inspired by the works, and don't stray away from the original very much. This is what makes the relationship easy to identify. In this work, when planning it out and looking at the inspiration, I was constantly think of my friend and her struggles, which affects the theme of the piece and its overall outcome. For this work, the inspiration was clearly very emotional, and I decided to lean into that and use it for the piece.
What is the overall approach the author has regarding the topic of your inspiration?
- These are emotions that Degas had gone through himself. The theme is a topic that the artist would relate to very closely, especially because he has depicted something similar in his works in the past.
What kind of generalizations and conclusions have you discovered about people, ideas, culture, etc. while you researched your inspiration?
- While I didn't discover a whole lot about the past through research for this painting, I was able to conclude that my artist was a bit more of a shut in and wasn't very concerned with how people see him, which can be seen when taking into consideration how he would ignore others, preferring to work on his art instead. Showing future generations that even incredible artists could struggle to go outside.
What is the central idea or theme around your inspirational research?.
- I was looking for an artist who had gone through or at the very least made art about depression, and falling back into it after starting to recover. This is clearly a very narrow search, so I started with just saying depression and reading more about the artists to get a better understanding of them.
What kind of inferences did you make while reading your research?
- Because Edgar Degas is a well known and studied artist, there were not many inferences that had to be made. He was researched thoroughly and it wasn't difficult to find the information I needed to have a full understanding of how to portray a similar style to his own.
- There tends to be a relatively clear relationship between my inspiration and the work that results from it. I make my works very obviously inspired by the works, and don't stray away from the original very much. This is what makes the relationship easy to identify. In this work, when planning it out and looking at the inspiration, I was constantly think of my friend and her struggles, which affects the theme of the piece and its overall outcome. For this work, the inspiration was clearly very emotional, and I decided to lean into that and use it for the piece.
What is the overall approach the author has regarding the topic of your inspiration?
- These are emotions that Degas had gone through himself. The theme is a topic that the artist would relate to very closely, especially because he has depicted something similar in his works in the past.
What kind of generalizations and conclusions have you discovered about people, ideas, culture, etc. while you researched your inspiration?
- While I didn't discover a whole lot about the past through research for this painting, I was able to conclude that my artist was a bit more of a shut in and wasn't very concerned with how people see him, which can be seen when taking into consideration how he would ignore others, preferring to work on his art instead. Showing future generations that even incredible artists could struggle to go outside.
What is the central idea or theme around your inspirational research?.
- I was looking for an artist who had gone through or at the very least made art about depression, and falling back into it after starting to recover. This is clearly a very narrow search, so I started with just saying depression and reading more about the artists to get a better understanding of them.
What kind of inferences did you make while reading your research?
- Because Edgar Degas is a well known and studied artist, there were not many inferences that had to be made. He was researched thoroughly and it wasn't difficult to find the information I needed to have a full understanding of how to portray a similar style to his own.
Citations
- Tyson, Ann Scott. “Tracing the Passionate Struggles of Edgar Degas.” The Christian Science Monitor, The Christian Science Monitor, 16 Oct. 1996, www.csmonitor.com/1996/1016/101696.feat.arts.1.html.
- Schenkel, Ruth. “Edgar Degas (1834–1917): Painting and Drawing: Essay: The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History.” The Met’s Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, 1 Jan. 1AD, www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/dgsp/hd_dgsp.htm.
- “Art, Artists and Mental Health.” Collections Art Collections, 24 Feb. 2021, collections.reading.ac.uk/art-collections/2021/02/24/art-artists-and-mental-illness/.
- Schenkel, Ruth. “Edgar Degas (1834–1917): Painting and Drawing: Essay: The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History.” The Met’s Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, 1 Jan. 1AD, www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/dgsp/hd_dgsp.htm.
- “Art, Artists and Mental Health.” Collections Art Collections, 24 Feb. 2021, collections.reading.ac.uk/art-collections/2021/02/24/art-artists-and-mental-illness/.