Throughout the year, I will be doing a few artworks that can help and go into my mood board. I will be doing various techniques and doing different versions of art to help expand on my ideas for my kaupapa.
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WATERCOLOUR/CHARCOAL:
The previous art classes I had, I spent them doing a certain art technique that I wasn't familiar with, and it was painting with watercolours and then going over with charcoal. Although it is very messy I wouldn't mind using them in the future.
The first painting below I did with my teacher, and I saw this as a practice or preview of what I am going to be doing next. This artwork was used as a way for me to get used to shading and also get used to dealing with this certain art since I have never dealt with nor seen artwork like this before.
The second painting I have done, I would say was my first attempt with trying to put together what I wanted and using the colours of my choice. I chose the colour yellow, orange or tan to give my artwork an earthy vibe, but also because it represents my other culture - Niue. The girl in this picture I see her as being, me. She's wearing a traditional Niuean costume that men and women wear when performing. Her face is scratched out for two reasons, one being because I don't see myself in her. Furthermore, I have two cultures - Niuean and Tongan, but I spent my life more on my Tongan side than my Niuean side. I have always wanted to express my Niuean culture yet, I can't see myself doing that or don't have enough knowledge about that culture to understand it. So I scratched her face out to show it as being "unknown". The second reason is that Niue is known as the 'savage island' and I wanted to express that in my painting.
The last painting I did was the complete opposite the second one. It was the painting to represent my Tongan side. This painting compared to my second painting, I was trying to make her look calmer because I see my Tongan side as 'perfection'. Growing up, I had to deal with a lot of Tongan traditions, and every tradition is always beautiful, for example, the Tau'o'lunga - and Tongan dance. Tau'o'lunga has a special meaning to it that many Tongans know and understand but I find it very hard to follow and strange. Whereas compared to the Niuean dance it's brutal and rough which is something I enjoy watching. I chose the colour purple to represent 'royalty' and red to represent Tonga. Royalty is something that runs in my family since my Nana shares a special relation to the first king of tonga.
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Second Drawing:
For the previous week, I spent focusing on my subject matters for my kaupapa. My kaupapa is based on aaround spiritual and cultural because these are two factors that are very important to myself, so due to this, I based my subject matter on something that can connect both of these characters.
The first drawing I did was just me playing around with patterns that can symbolise my culture. I did it in red colour as it reflects Tonga. The things that are seen to be dripping out are made to be like blood. The reason I did this was to show that it connects with my first drawing and the reason it's black is because of the charcoal and also because as I informed before, my life has been based around Tongan traditions and so I chose black to represent it as being old blood.
The second drawing is also similar to the first but is unfinished. So my aim for this one was to keep going with the patterns but instead do Niuean patterns and symbols. Something I was hoping to do for this part was also the blood drips but instead of it being black, i wanted it red. I think red is a good colour for this as it connects with the other drawings and it also means that I am interested or as if my blood is fresh to this culture.
What is working:
One thing that is working for me, is being able to connect everything together and also with myself. I believe that I am able to express myself into these paintings and so I find joy when doing it, but it also expands my ideas on things I am wanting to next>
What isn't working:
I think that I need more subject matters and a lot of better ones. I think that blood throughout my kaupapa may be too much. Another thing I think isn't working is the colours, I am looking forward to using the opposite colours throughout my artwork and I also need to tone down about on the background for each watercolour painting I do.
What is my next step:
My next step is to finding more subject matters and also trying to work with black and white or monochrome paintings. I am aiming to add in a few artworks that are inspired by Sofia Minson and im able to work well with what needs to be shaded grey and what needs colour.
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SEQUENCE:
For today's task, we were giving a mood board and told to put it in a sequence. As you can see with our sequence, it contains a lot of different art techniques but you can tell that its all put together to tell a bigger story or picture, the last picture shows it all being combined.
At the beginning of our sequence, we put the artworks that looked familiar. So we managed to put the three first artworks together because they both shared a technique which was drawing. We placed the two next pictures together because we felt that was the best place for it to be stored and it looked like it made more sense if it was placed there and nowhere else. The next photo is monochrome photography. The reason we put that next to the piece of artwork on the right is that that artwork contains a bit of the previous artwork - black and white. The rest is pretty self-explanatory because they are all contain something from the previous artwork next to it.
