Digital Art

              After taking a digital tools course and learning about many different computer programs to use while making different artworks, it has given me a greater outlook on people who make digital art. I had never used many of the programs we used such as illustrator or dreamweaver. I had used photoshop before, but not very extensively and didn't know how to do much with it before. By taking this class I was able to learn these different programs which was very interesting.
              It's a lot harder than I thought to use some of these digital programs and admire the people who are really good at digital art. My favorite program that we used was Illustrator because I was able to make a digital artwork that I am very proud of. It's amazing what you can do with Illustrator and other programs. Most of the pieces weren't my best work, but I'm still just learning to use them.
             In the future, I will most likely make more digital art with these programs if I have access to them. I really enjoyed making some of the projects that I did on the computer. Photoshop is also installed on my computer, so i will be able to use that for future projects. Using digital programs is just another outlet for people to make beautiful and original artworks.

The Day in the Life!

My Artwork

          My artwork as a whole is personal and about things that I like or think look amazing. I think the main themes would be bright colors and incorporating nature or animals. The main type of artwork that I make are collages and taking photographs. My collages are personal and if I am mad, upset, extremely happy, or any strong emotion I make a collage to reflect that emotion. I also use strong and bright colors in my collages mostly with each collage having a background that is one color.

         I love many different types of animals also that I like to add into my different pieces of artwork. Many of the photographs that I take are of my pets or other animals. Mainly though I take photographs of nature, from trees to flowers to animals in nature to the sky. My favorite and what most of my photographs are about are the sky and clouds. Almost every time that I go outside and see a beautiful sunset or amazing sky, I take a picture.

       Even when I make paintings, drawing, sculpture, or other types of art, these themes are still very prevalent in them. The paintings I had to do my my painting class, the ones that I was most excited to paint were about nature and very brightly colored with reds and oranges for the flower painting I did, and lots of green for the tree one I did. I made a mobile also that is very connected to nature. I made it out of sea glass and it looks like a jellyfish. As you can see, both the themes of bright color and nature or animals is what my artwork consists of.

         

An Amazing Artist

One of the artists that I love and admire is Ansel Adams. He was an American photographer that took black-and-white photographs of the American West. Most of the photographs are landscapes and beautifully made.
                                                    
Moon and Half Dome, Yosemite National Park, 1960

         This photograph taken in 1960 is one example of Adam's amazing landscape photographs. It is perfectly asymmetrical with the rock cliff on the right side and only a hint of one on the left side with the shadow. The details that he was able to capture in the cliff-side is amazing and was a great feat. There is a great amount of black, white and everything in between.
         Even though there isn't any color in this photograph, you can imagine all the colors that it would be in person. It is simplified in it's design, but still very eye catching. The moon in the top left hand corner is a perfect addition to the sky and is clearly defined. The photograph is very beautiful and eye catching. This is just one example of the scenery he was able to capture in his photographs.

                              
Roots, Foster Gardens, Honolulu- 1948

           This photograph by Ansel Adams was different than most of this photographs because it is a close up of the roots of this beautiful tree instead of a landscape. I love his photographs of details of nature because he was able to capture so much detail in them. In this one you can see every aspect of the roots and the greenery around the roots. Adams used photography techniques like dodging to get the amount of details and lights and darks in his photographs. He used some of these techniques to accomplish this photograph.
           This photograph you can only see the roots and not even the any of the trunk of the tree so all the emphasis is on the roots. The twining and swirling roots takes your eyes all the way around the photograph and not stay in one place. The composition was very well thought out so that it was interesting to look at for a long period of time. You can even see the water that is dripping off of the top of each root. The amount of variety of lights and darks and everything in between is truly amazing.

                       
      This photograph is from Yosemite National Park just like the first photograph that I have shown. It is a beautiful and a very well known photograph taken by Ansel Adams. The tree's trunk is at the left hand side, but has wind blown branches that extend all the way to the right side of the photograph pulling your eye in that direction. It is such an interesting subject to look at because of the odd shape of the tree.
      The details are greatly defined in this photograph as well, just like all the other ones that he has taken. You can see the pine needles in the tree and the texture of the bark and rocks. Their is also a large variety of lights and darks that are clearly defined as well. The mountains in the background is also outlined perfectly by the lower branch of the tree. It draws your eye down from the tree to the mountains in the background to the rocks in the foreground. This is one of my favorite photographs that Ansel Adams took and I aspire to take photographs like him.

Awesome Art Performance

Kathryn Cornelius, Save the Date

         Save the Date was a performance piece by Kathryn Cornelius that was performed over the course of 7 hours. It took place at The Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC on Saturday August 11th. According to BMore Art, she "explores the life cycle of marriage and divorce and the wedding ceremony's complex mix of private emotion, public spectacle, social expectation, and state power." Over the course of the 7 hours, she exchanged vows with 7 different suitors with a ceremony, then a champagne toast, cupcakes, a first dance, and then the signing of divorce papers.

         The ceremonies started on the hour, every hour from 10 am to 5 pm. Six of the suitors were chosen by Cornelius, which included artists and writers and the seventh suitor was picked by a vote on Facebook. The suitors were both male and female and challenged people's viewpoints on marriage and divorce. The ceremonies and divorces were overseen and performed by a legal wedding officiant and a divorce attorney. I really wish I was able to witness at least one of these performances and known about it earlier!  

Arttttttttt

This is the finished product of decorating my collage book. I make collages out of cut up magazines all the time and put them in this book. This is my third collage book that I have had since I started making collages and I will display some later. For this I hot glued many different items on the front of the book then used modge podge, which is like a glue that drys clear, to set the items more securely where their supposed to go. All the items that I used for this project were around my house or in my room and some mean more significance than others.

This is one of the zoomed in shots of the piece and you can see some of the items that I used. One of my favorites in the button from the Met in New York because I love going to museums. I also have a little figurine of Hello Kitty because I've had an obsession with her since I was little. Their is also a VW bug, which is my favorite car. The painted rock was something I made when I was a little.

In this picture you can see the butterfly patch that my mom gave to me when I was about 6 or 7 and once had on a pair of jeans. Their are also a variety of buttons that I have picked up and found over the years and always wanted to put in some kind of artwork.

This final picture you can see the butterfly that came off a necklace that I used to wear all the time. Their is also an S that was on a necklace and the first letter of my name so I thought it would be a good edition. Finally their is the penny, which has a lot of significance for me now because I have done a couple projects with pennies.

This is another piece of art that I have made. It's a sea glass mobile that I made for one of my classes at Towson University. I collected many pieces of sea glass from the Loch Raven Reservoir for the project and some of them turned out to be green, with only a few brown or blue. I used a large piece of glass at the top and a neck of a bottle right under the circular piece. All the rest of the pieces are connected by wire on the bottom of it. It was supposed to be a "broken-up bottle" to represent time and space, but many people think it looks like a jelly fish. I like the jelly fish idea better.

This is yet another one of my pieces of artwork. This is an oil painting of a still life that I did in my painting 101 class last semester at Towson. It was my first painting class and I was just trying to understand how to make a good painting and the different techniques that you can use. This painting had thicker paint than the ones I did before it and was one of my favorite ones that I did that semester because of the colors and design.

This is my blog!

My name is Sarah Greeley and this blog is about my artwork. I use many different mediums for my art such as photography, collages, and some sculptures. I also do some painting, and drawing.  Most of my art is very colorful and creative.

In this blog, you will see the variety of art that I create, if they are in my free time or for classes that I have taken. I believe I'm more crafty than a fine artist and create a lot of things that I find around the house and different places. I'm also an art history major so I'm interested in a lot of artists and always want to find out more about art and artists.