Blooming
Dry Point
25 cm x 20.5 cm
October 2019
"Blooming" is a dry-point print showcasing a woman with flowers sprouting from her hair in a cubist style. Inspiration for this piece came from Picasso’s “Weeping Woman” and Kali Uchis’ music video for “After the Storm”. This piece is about overcoming heartbreak and growing from it, despite feeling lost.
Planning
Inspiration
For "The Weeping Woman" I was very inspired by the color palette, all the dark hues and the contrast that is used in the face alone makes it look so intricate. I also wanted to try to imitate the hair that weeping woman has.
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Pablo Picasso's "The Weeping Woman" was the inspiration for the woman figure in my dry-point. Picasso was a part of the cubist movement and Weeping Woman was a continuation of tragedy and despair that he wished to capture in his Guernica pieces. He mirrored this piece after the mater Dolorosa (The weeping virgin), who is depicted with glass tears flowing towards her right ear. I also used Kali Uchis and both her "Isolation" album and "After the Storm" music video for inspiration. The Isolation album is all about overcoming heartbreak and self dependence which I wanted to take a part of that and make it my inspiration. After the Storm in particular is about seeing yourself as a hero and realizing that good will eventually come out of bad situations. Which I also wanted to take some of the meaning behind the lyrics in the song and put them onto my theme.
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As well as wanting to use "After the Storm" and "Isolation" as a source of inspiration for my theme I wanted to use the music video and it's aesthetic for the drawing. The music video itself is very colorful and had a lot of intricate camera work with very beautiful shots. So I used three of the shots from the music videos for my planning sketches.
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Planning Sketches
This planning sketch and shot from the music video was the one I ended up modeling my final sketch after. I loved how the flowers where blooming from the hair and voluptuous it all looks. I was also able to tie this back to my theme very easily.
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This planning sketch was the first one I had done and had turned the sweat drop n her face into a tear drop to better capture inspiration from "Weeping Woman". But ultimately it did not tie back into my theme so decided not to use it.
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This was my last planning sketch and could not get the hand right. I love the way that the bird are positioned and the way her hair appears. I was going to change the birds into flowers but ended up leaving them as birds.
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This was my final planning sketch, I had made it after I decided which of my original three I liked best. For the flowers in the hair I had decided to imitate the flower on the headpiece of the woman in "The Weeping Woman". For the face I also tried to divide it in a way that appeared similar to that of "The Weeping Woman" and tried to make the eyes as similar by adding individual eye lashes to only about half of each eye. Additionally for the face I had taken aspects from the other planning sketches for the face like the makeup and the facial expression.
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Process
1.) My first step was to start off by tracing my final sketch onto my plate with a carving tool.
2.) Once I was done carving I was ready to start printing so I started by letting the water color paper I was going to print onto soak in water for a few minutes. Later removing it and letting it dry on a towel until I needed it. 3.) After I went on to lay a thin layer of oil based ink onto my plate and using a pallet knife and a scrapper I dragged ink all through my plate. 4.) When my plate was sufficiently covered with ink I used newsprint and in a downward motion I removed the access ink. 5.) Subsequently once I felt like I had removes enough ink I set my plate under the slab of EZcut, set my watercolor paper on top and folded all the layers of material over my print and ran the roller over it once. 6.) Thereafter I placed my print in the drying rack and left it to dry. 7.) Lastly once my print was done drying I started to paint it with watercolor paints. |
Experimentation
For experimentation I played around with how much ink I had removed from the plate and what kind of motions I had used to remove the ink. For my first few prints I had removed too much ink leaving me with a very light print. So for my next few prints i didn't remove as much ink leaving me with lots of smudges and blobs of ink. This then prompted to me to start both start scrapping my print in one direction as well as remove ink with the newspaper print in one direction. This left me with a much cleaner and nicer print after a few tries.
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Reflection
Critique
Overall, I feel as of my dry point is not the best and could have turned out better. The hands on my print were way to small and compared to the rest of the female figure they are very disproportional. Also I do not like how the mouth on my came out, it gives the female figure a very worried look that goes well with the "Weeping Woman" inspiration but I feel as if it does not go well with my theme of overcoming heartbreak. I am content with the way that I decided to paint and add color to my print because it gives it a deeper connection to "Weeping Woman" as they share color palettes. One last thing that I was disappointed with was that I was not able to get a perfect print. I did the process at least 10 times and was never able to get a very good print. Even the one I decided was my best still had many imperfections and the faces a bit too light so I just went over it with the water color paints. Through out this project I was able to explore a new a new medium and got to use tools that I had never used before, through trial and error I was able to get better at using the tools and eventually got an outcome that I was content with.
Compare and Contrast
Compare
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ACT Responses
Clearly explain how you are able to identify the cause-effect relationships between your inspiration and its effect upon your artwork:
Kali Uchis’ Isolation album is all about becoming self sufficient and growing from heartbreak causing that to be the central theme and inspiration behind my dry point. Picasso uses a palette of dark hues and a cubist style causing my piece to mimic that style and palate.
What is the overall approach (pov) the author (from research) has regarding the topic of your inspiration?
Picasso tried to convey a sense of dread and agony in Weeping woman, while Uchis tried to convey a sense of independence and self reliance in her album “Isolation and in “after the storm”.
What kind of generalizations and conclusions have you discovered about people, ideas, cultures, etc. while you researched your inspiration?
I have discovered that in Weeping Woman many regard it as a continuation of Picasso’s “Guernica” but rather he is just trying to convey suffering.
What was the central idea or theme around your inspirational research?
The central theme around my piece was growth and learning to be self sufficient as well as overcoming heartbreak.
What kind of inferences did you make while reading your research?
While researching I inferred that Picasso while trying to convey suffering and agony in “Weeping Woman” he decided to use a palette with mostly darkened hues.
Kali Uchis’ Isolation album is all about becoming self sufficient and growing from heartbreak causing that to be the central theme and inspiration behind my dry point. Picasso uses a palette of dark hues and a cubist style causing my piece to mimic that style and palate.
What is the overall approach (pov) the author (from research) has regarding the topic of your inspiration?
Picasso tried to convey a sense of dread and agony in Weeping woman, while Uchis tried to convey a sense of independence and self reliance in her album “Isolation and in “after the storm”.
What kind of generalizations and conclusions have you discovered about people, ideas, cultures, etc. while you researched your inspiration?
I have discovered that in Weeping Woman many regard it as a continuation of Picasso’s “Guernica” but rather he is just trying to convey suffering.
What was the central idea or theme around your inspirational research?
The central theme around my piece was growth and learning to be self sufficient as well as overcoming heartbreak.
What kind of inferences did you make while reading your research?
While researching I inferred that Picasso while trying to convey suffering and agony in “Weeping Woman” he decided to use a palette with mostly darkened hues.
Bibliography
Garcia-Navarro, Lulu, and Sophia Boyd. “Kali Uchis Finds Her Peace In 'Isolation'.” NPR, NPR, 8 Apr. 2018, https://www.npr.org/2018/04/08/600141366/kali-uchis-finds-her-peace-in-isolation.
“The Weeping Woman, 1937 by Pablo Picasso.” Henri Matisse, https://www.pablopicasso.org/the-weeping-woman.jsp.
“The Weeping Woman, 1937 by Pablo Picasso.” Henri Matisse, https://www.pablopicasso.org/the-weeping-woman.jsp.