Art Museums

Looky Loo

Art Museums

Talking and looking at pictures of art is always helpful when learning about art, but I feel that to really get a new view and a full grasp of art you need to see it in person. You don't need to go to some fancy pants art museum either, though if possible seeing really famous artwork is always a treat. I've been to a few art museums and have enjoyed them all. Yes you need some patience to go around a building looking at walls but if you find the beauty that is there beyond the 'oh that's pretty' then you might be amazed. 

I've been to a lot of little museums that just show local art (which is good so don't be put off) so I can't name them all. I've also been to a few major and not so major museums such as the Denver Art Museum in Denver, CO, McNay Art Museum in San Antonio, TX, Wichita Art Museum in Wichita, KS. All of them I recommend to go to. The McNay was probably the most memorable for me. I went there in the summer of 2010 with my parents. The McNay is a private collection of Marion Koogler McNay, a female artist who starting collecting artwork in 1927. This collection grew to more than 700 pieces which she left after her death in 1950 to become the first art museum in Texas. Now the museum has over 20,000 pieces of artwork. Many pieces are very well know, including the original Water Lilies by Monet. This piece I never really liked or even understood why it was considered beautiful until I saw it in person. The painting was simply amazing to me. Now I want every chance to go an art museum.

Here are the locations of the three art museums.


McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, TX

Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO


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Wichita Art Museum, Wichita, KS


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Shading 1: Hatching and Cross Hatching

Shading 1:

Hatching and Cross hatching

Shading is a way to add depth to a drawing. Showing the shadows and lighting gives 3-dimensional elements to the 2-dimensional paper. There are many types of shading  and one of the basic ones is hatching. Hatching can also be used as just a way that the drawing is made up. For example in the slideshow below there's Van Gogh's Starry Night.

Basic Terms

Hatching is just using lines at different lightness/darkness and different spaced intervals to show the transition from light to dark on an object.

Cross Hatching is using these same lines as in hatching but using criss-crossing  them.

Contour lines are the lines that follow along the shape of the object, this is another step to adding depth and with hatching contour lines are used to apply the shading to fit the object.

Here I'll show various hatching and cross hatching examples.

Perspective: One and Two Point

Perspective

One of the basics in art that many people have a hard time with is perspective. Mostly from what I know and see people over-think it.

In art, perspective is

a technique of depicting volumes and spatial relationships on a flat surface,

according to dictionary.reference.com.

Basically, put what you see on the piece of paper.

Many get all worked up about that they can't get it to look right, even I'm guilty of this, but relax. You're taking a 3 dimensional world and putting it in a 2 dimensional world, some things are going to get a little wonky. Though perspective is a giant subject so don't expect to just get it overnight either, unless you're some artistic genius. I'll come back to perspective several times in later posts but for now I'll just take a little dip into this giant pool.

I'll start with the basic one point and two point perspectives. These show how the objects will relate to each other based on lines in certain directions to the horizon.

Basic Terms

Horizon: the line across dividing the paper into 2 sections. Think of like the horizon between the sky and the ground.

Center of vision: the imaginary line where the center of your vision (view) is, the center of the drawing.

Vanishing Point: the point at which lines converge or where all the  lines go.

Eye level: the horizontal line where your vision, this is kind of like the horizon line but this doesn't have to be the horizon line

Here are some perspective drawings I've done of two different hallways:

Introduction

Art is something very precious, at least to me. The impact they have on society and how society impacts art in return is profound. While I'm no art historian or even a professional artist, I want to find out the significance of these famous artworks and give my own try at the techniques used in them.

I give no promise that I won't rant about how beautiful the stroke of paint is on a particular painting or how stupid it is that people actually like an art piece. I'll try at objectivity, though just in case of a derailing I'll give some background where I'm coming from.

I'm from a small town in the Midwest and have a happy family with two loving parents and a younger brother. This is my first in college as a Mass Media major emphasis in advertising. I love to draw, paint, finger-paint, anything artsy that I can create. I've taken a few basic art classes but mostly I just figure it out on my own. Being quite artsy goes right in hand with being quirky, and quirky I am. The world around me fascinates me, as well as other people's views and ideologies. It's most likely why I'm so interested in history, foreign and native culture, and art in the first place.