My Illustration Final Project: another one for the 'girl with the orange hair' pile.

This is the image that I made for my final project for Drawing Media 1 this semester.  I am really super happy with it!!  It is another image that I am putting into my "Girl with the Orange Hair" pile.  This is when she gets her magical blue powers.  

For more info, the original sketch, and process images, check out my Facebook Page Here: Kelly Latham Illustration and Design

Or my personal Art Blog: Kelly Latham Wordpress Blog

Or my deviantArt Page: sleepyheadkl on DA

Thanks :))

Walt Disney Essay

Kelly Latham

BDS 102

Walt Disney Essay

April 25, 2012

Walter Elias Disney was born on December 5, 1901 in Chicago to Elias and Flora Disney.  Walt had three older brothers, Herbert, Raymond, and Roy, and a younger sister, Ruth.  In 1906, the Disneys moved to Marceline, Missouri and then to Kansas City in 1910.  Walt enrolled in art classes at the Kansas City Art Institute.  In 1917, the family back to Chicago where Walt started attending McKinley High School, and began to put drawings in the school paper.  After high school, Walt forged his age on an ambulance driver form for WWI and was stationed in France.  

In 1919, Walt returned from the war and moved to Kansas City to pursue  a career as a commercial artist.  He worked for ‘Kansas City Film Ad’, a company creating  animations for movie theater commercials.  After learning about animation, Walt made enough money to start his own animation studio, “Laugh-O-Grams”.  When this animation studio went bankrupt, he left for Hollywood.  Walt and his brother Roy started the Disney Brother’s Studio.  Using what Walt had left from a Kansas City project, the Disney brothers found a distributer in New York that wanted shorts based upon Alice’s Wonderland.  The Alice shorts were a success, but focus shifted from live-action to animation.  The distributor then ordered an animated series from Disney called Oswald the Lucky Rabbit.  When Walt asked the distributor for higher pay per short, he ended up loosing most of his staff due to a disagreement and Disney not owning the right to Oswald.  

Walt, needing a new character, created Mickey Mouse.  The Mickey cartoons started to be distributed, and then had soundtracks added.  They were the first animations with sound and took over the animation world.  Following the Mickey Mouse series were less successful musical shorts.  Walt was then offered the option of reshooting an unsuccessful black and white strip in three-strip Technicolor, making it a huge success.  

In 1934, Walt began planning the full-length feature of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.  The project was seen as a downfall for the Disney Studio, but Walt pursued it.  The film went into full production from 1934 to 1937.  Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the first animated feature in America made in Technicolor, received a standing ovation at its premier.  Thanks to the success of Snow White, Walt was able to rebuild Disney Studios and create Pinocchio and Fantasia and a series of shorts of Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy, and Pluto.  During World War II, the Disney Studio was contracted to create videos for the government, and it also released Bambi.  After the war, Peter Pan and Alice in Wonderland and collections of cartoon shorts for before movies were released, but Mickey’s popularity faded.  

In the late 1940s, Disney began sketches of theme parks, and Disneyland officially opened on July 18, 1955.  After Disneyland opened, the studio began working on live-action films such as Treasure Island and The Parent Trap, and Mickey Mouse Club debuted in 1955.   Disney led the way in animation development with Lady and the Tramp, the first animated film in CinemaScope, Sleeping Beauty, the first animated film in Super Technirama 70mm, and One Hundred and One Dalmatians, the first animated features film to use Xerox cels.  In 1964, plans for Disney World developed.  

On December 15, 1966, through a combination of medical problems, Walt Disney collapsed in his home and died at St. Joseph’s Hospital.  After his death, his brother, Roy Disney, continued the plans for Disney World, but renamed it Walt Disney World in honor of his brother.  The final animated film Walt played an active roll in was The Jungle Book, released in 1967.

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Works Cited

Burnes, Brian, Robert W. Butler, and Dan Viets. Walt Disney's Missouri, The Roots of a Creative Genius. Ed. Donna Martin. Kansas City, MO: Kansas City Star, 2002. Walt Disney's Missouri: The Roots of a Creative Genius: Brian Burnes, Dan Viets, Robert W. Butler: 9780971708068: Amazon.com: Books. Web. 05 May 2012. <http://www.amazon.com/Walt-Disneys-Missouri-Creative-Genius/dp/0971708061>.

Finch, Christopher. The Art of Walt Disney: From Mickey Mouse to the Magic Kingdoms. New York: H.N. Abrams, 1975. Print.

"Topic Page:." Disney, Walt (1901-1966). Web. 05 May 2012. <http://www.credoreference.com/topic/disney_walt_er_1901_1966>.

"Walt Disney." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 05 May 2012. Web. 05 May 2012. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walt_Disney>.

To the Moon Project

 
 



 

Here are some images of the project I have been working on.  I started with a lino block cut I did of the moon, and printed it about 30 times.  Now, I am going back with watercolor, pen, and other materials, and finishing each one.  I think that its really interesting how different each one can become even though they all started the same. :)

Here is a link to my full gallery on my other art blog: link here  And on my Facebook page, which has titles, and other details about each pieces: link here

Lemme know what you think :)

All Afternoon

I have spent all afternoon working on photos :)  here are a couple of them:

 

Here are the links to the rest on Facebook and on my website :)  I am super happy with them.

Facebook:  http://www.facebook.com/pages/Kelly-Latham-Photography/193246680739772

Kelly Latham Photography:  http://kellylathamphotography.wordpress.com/

New Claw Mermaid Drawing :)

 

This is a drawing of a mermaid with a claw. I don't normally work with graphite, but I was looking online and saw these really cool images where they drew creatures in really detailed graphite, and then they scanned them in and colored them in photoshop.

I am currently working on the coloring part, which is a lot more difficult that I had originally expected. haha. Oh well...

Graphite on Moleskine Journal Paper, 8"x5"

Here is my Facebook Page:  

http://www.facebook.com/KellyLathamIllustrationAndDesign


Here is my Other Art Blog:  http://kellylatham.wordpress.com/

Final Box Photos

  
 
    

Process Photos of My Box! :)) I really like these for some reason.

 

 

 

 

 

Assignment 3: Summary of the Project

For the project, I built a vessel out of walnut wood to hold my collection of Japanese and English handheld Pokemon video game cartridges.  First, I made lots of sketches trying to decide the best way to represent the video games through shape and texture of the box, as well as represent the over all concept of childhood.  After choosing walnut as my wood, I glued and clamped it into a solid block in the wood shop.  Then, I glued my patterns to the top and side and cut it into the pieces of my box.  I went home and sanded the inside parts of the box and glued it together.  After it was dry, I used wood filler to make sure there were no gaps where the wood had been glued together.  Once that dried, I used a power sander to sand with 60 grit sandpaper.  I had to use a power sander because when I was cutting my block, I used a larger bandsaw because it was so tall and heavy, which caused really noticeable saw marks.  After sanding with the 60 grit, I worked down to 100, 150 and eventually 220.  Then I cleaned all the sawdust off and put a clean satin polyurethane finish on it, which really helped the color.  I am very pleased with how my box turned out. 

During the project I learned many things.  I learned about the different types of wood the wood shop at KU has, and about their grains, hardnesses, and colors.  I learned how to glue and clamp wood together, as well as how to use a band saw and power sander, which I had never used before.  I also learned how to apply finish to wood.  Then, after I had my box complete, I learned countless tips and tricks about In-Design, but it is still difficult to use.  

Different things I would have done during the project would be to use the band saw more carefully.  I rushed cutting a lot of my pieces, and there were really noticeable saw marks that I had to sand out later.  It was a lot more work that I could have avoided, but no one told me about that in the beginning.  

Otherwise, I really enjoyed the project.  It made me go down to the wood shop and use tools that I would have otherwise probably never used because I had never been taught.  The project also made me use In-Design which, up until now, I had tried to avoid.  I learned a lot and hope to use it in future projects and assignments I have.  

Reflection on Davie Pye Readings

“The Nature and Design of Aesthetics” reading focused on materials in which people use, discussing technique, properties, beauty, and many other aspects. 

One point that I found interesting was that we do not have control over the properties of materials.  So, sometimes we pick a material based on only one property and then others that we do not necessarily want come with it.  An example that the reading used was steel and wood.  Steel was described as “...a material hich is hard, tough, and stiff...also heavy, cold, opaque, and liable to rust…”.  Wood was described as “...a material which is immune to rust, and is light and warm, and which is fairly hard, tough, and stiff but only if it is unstable…”.  This example explained the differences in the materials and their qualities.  In doing so, it showed that even if you want only one of the qualities, for example, being immune to rust, you get all the others of the wood.  This discussion lead to more points about how the materials also sometimes do not go well with the technique one is trying to use on it, and other related subjects.

I thought that article gave me good information to think about when working with wood for the project.  Even if I really want to make my vessel into a certain shape for it to have a certain characteristic, if it won’t work it wood, a band saw, and carving tools, it isn’t going to happen.  

Assignment 3: Statement About Vessel

My vessel contains hand held video game cartridges the my boyfriend and I collect.  The games range from the original Japanese formats from 1996 to the newest English formats from 2011.  The are from the Pokemon series on Nintendo handheld systems.  These are important to me because I have played the games my whole life and something I can always find fun through.  It also symbolizes a sort of childhood for me because playing them was what my brother and I did when we were little (and still do).  

The contents influence the structure off my vessel through the story line of the games and a timeline of childhood.  The story line influences the vessel shape in a timeline way.  The story would begin where the lid is lowest on the box and more right.  As the shape goes from left to right, the height becomes greater, and box becomes wider, and the bottom touches back down to the ground.  The height rising symbolizes the challenges the player faces through the game.  The higher the box gets, the tougher the challenges become.  The main point of the game is to interact with all the Pokemon (small monster like creatures) throughout the game.  The width represents this because is starts narrow, showing that the player has not met many Pokemon, and then at the end of the game, the player has met all the Pokemon, represented by the widening of the right end.  The bottom edge represents the game on a personal level; it shows my understanding of the games through the storyline.  The left base is to the ground, showing that I know what I am doing because each game starts pretty much the same.  Then, the base leaves the ground, showing that I have no idea what I am doing in the game.  Then, as I continue to play, the game flow becomes readable and I understand what to do, which is symbolized by the base touching down to the ground again.  

The concept of childhood also influences the structure of my vessel.  For the childhood timeline, the box is meant to be read right to left.  During childhood, the imagination is endless and playing is all the time, but as a person grows older, an imagination starts to be limited and playing declines.  The right section of the box is childhood, large and full of imagination and play, and the left section is adulthood, small without as much imagination or play.  But, the box touches down again at the end, showing that as one grows older, they sometimes go back to playing again.  For example, I played the games and other things all the time when I was a child, and then I started to grow up and out of them.  Then, I realized how much I loved the games and other childish things, and have brought them back into my life. 

My vessel symbolizes both concepts of the storyline of the games, and the overall concept of my childhood. 

Assignment 3: Written Description of the Project

The project was to create a vessel to hold something that has a special meaning to me.  The something special had to be small and have a connection or symbolism to something personally meaningful.  The vessel, or box, would be created out of wood.  To create the box, we were to glue and clamp pieces of wood together to create a solid block.  Then, we were to take the block, attached patterns we made to it, and cut it into pieces of a vessel.  Next, we were to sand the pieces and glue them together (without the center) to make a box shape.  After lots of sanding, we were to use a clean finish on our final vessel.  Then, create a process notebook in In-Design to display the process in which we went about creating out vessel.  

Essay on Duality: Brad Phillippe

Kelly Latham

BDS 102

February 8, 2012

Essay on Duality

            The relationship that I wish to focus on is my relationship with Brad Phillippe.  Brad is my boyfriend of two and a half years, but he is mainly my best friend.  If you would ask my other friends, we don’t usually act as a couple; just as a couple of people who like to hang out and poke fun at each other.  We met when I started attending youth group at Lawrence Heights Christian Church in December of 2008.  Although we were introduced in December, we didn’t actually become friends until summer of 2009 at Mission Lake Christian Camp.  This is the place that relates to our ‘connection.  Mission Lake Christian Camp is located in Horton, Kansas; about an hour and a half North of Lawrence.  To most people, it just looks like a run down camp that is small and doesn’t have much to do.  However, if you were to ask any kid that has attended camp there, it is the best place in the world.  All year, we always say that we miss camp and want to go back.  It is in no way because of the great facilities or games; in the showers there is hardly enough water or wash your nose, and the games can get pretty dumb, but the people are fantastic.  All my closest friends are from Mission Lake Christian Camp, and at least once a week, we all say to each other, “I miss camp”.  When I think of MLCC, I don’t think of it as the place that I met Brad, but the place that I met all the best people I know.  It is more than a place that connects me and him, but it connects me and him to all of my other friends.  Brad, unlike so many of my other friends from MLCC, lives in Lawrence.  He attends Lawrence High School, like I did last year, and will be graduating this spring.  Currently, he is taking all the art classes offered at Lawrence High, just like I did; photography, drawing, portfolio, digital imaging, and some others.  After graduation, he hopes to attend KU and be part of the Illustration program, like I am.  He has two brothers, one of which lives here and attends KU and the other who lives in Fort Worth, Texas.  His parents also live in Lawrence.  There are also many pets in his family; we often call his house “The Zoo”.  When I first met him, he had four dogs and four cats.  Now, they have four dogs and one cat; two of the dogs being the same dogs as when we first met.  In addition to art, he also likes to play video games.  He works at GameNut downtown, a used video game store.  Some significant factors in out relationship are religion, art, and friends.  We both attend Lawrence Heights Christian Church (in addition to MLCC), and religion is very important to both of us.  Both of us enjoy photography, drawing, and other types of art.  I feel that a main factor in out relationship is also our friends (mostly the ones from MLCC).  Our relationship is based on friendship, not attraction, and I feel that that is the most important aspect.

Reflection on Martin Puryear Website and Kendall Buster Website

Reflection on Martin Puryear Website

I think that the website had an interesting way of displaying the work of Martin Puryear.  I did not like it though because it was difficult to actually stop and look at the pieces; they just kept scrolling to the right.  The images were also small and difficult to take much detail from.  I would have liked to see something from the artist, or a art historian, on the pieces, explaining a thought process of concept for the pieces.  Even if it was pretty generic, it would be better than nothing.  I did like Puryear’s pieces though.  They were carefully structured, and most of them remained very simplistic.  

Reflection on Kendall Buster Website

I really like his pieces a lot!  They are so cool and different and I love the slight transparency in most of his white pieces.  And when the pieces to use color, the color is not distracting in a way that it caused the structure to be over looked.  I also really like the set up of Buster’s website; particularly the projects gallery.  I like how the viewer can click on a thumbnail and easily navigate to other images of the same project.  I would have liked to see something explaining through process of concept because I think that they would have been really interesting comments to read, but other than than I really like his work and how it is displayed online.  

Just like our photo project from a few weeks ago! :)

Follow this link for this awesome tree time project that this one guy is doing that is really simular to the projects that we dd a few weeks back for assignment one.

/http://www.petapixel.com/2012/02/22/beautiful-mosaics-of-trees-photographed-across-time/

I am really starting to dislike lectures...

I am starting to greatly dislike the lectures for design because of the vile mouths of the people lecturing.  They cuss and I really find it offensive.  I don't understand why they do.  Do they think that if they do they will connect with college students better?  I think that it is trashy and it causes me to tune out faster and pay even less attention to them that I already was.  I hope that we get some lectures who have cleaner mouths and are less annoying...

New Page for New Project

I have started a new section on my other art blog for the new project!  Check it out.
http://kellylatham.wordpress.com/bds-102-assignment-2/

Did you see me working in class?

If you saw me drawing owls in class, here is the finished drawing. :) Now I'm just gonna cut them out and mount them and stuff.

More information about this image and lots more images here: :)  thanks!  http://kellylatham.wordpress.com/2012/02/02/day-33-2-2-12/

Assignment Reflection Page on Personal Art Blog Link:

Here is a link to my other blog's page on the assignment I just finished for this semester; Assignment 1. :)

http://kellylatham.wordpress.com/assignment-1-photography-as-documentation-mapping-time-space/

Personal Blog Update :)

Lots of new work is now posted and will soon be posted on my personal art blog :) check it out

http://kellylatham.wordpress.com/

'Response to video 'Errol Morris on Photography'

Response to video “Errol Morris on Photography”

He addresses posing in the video, and said that people sometimes argue whether posing or not posing people makes an honest photograph.  I think that it doesn’t, but I also think that the camera in general has a hard time making an honest photograph.  One of the reasons that I think cameras have a hard time capturing an honest photograph is because the things that are not included in the frame that matter and the things that are included in the frame that should not be.  Also, people tend to act differently when they know that they are in front of a camera.  They are not going to act natural, they are going to try to be aware of everything.  Whether that be how the wind is moving their hair or how their children are standing.  

Errol Morris also addressed the debatable issue of the photographer arranging things in the image, or whether the scene should be untouched.  This issue is a lot like posing people.  I think that it would be nice if the photographer didn’t have to arrange things, but that is also in someones creative license.  If someone sees photography as an art form, then I think that they have the right to arrange the item within the frame how they want to, but they also have to be honest when talking about it and say, “yeah, I arranged those”.  Its similar to saying “yeah, I used photoshop” because most of the time everyone knows anyway, so you might as well own up to it and not look stupid. 

I also agree with Errol Morris when he says that the meanings of photographs are not obvious, and that no one talks to the photographers about it.  But I think that that is true with most art in current times.  I think that people just want the art to be pretty, and they don’t really care what it is really about.  For example, I have attended a few shows that the man who own’s the apple orchard I work at has put on.  I thought it was a very good show, and I wondered about his pieces, but he seemed busy so I didn’t ask about the thought behind them.  When I was working the next day, I asked him about the show, and he said that he was disappointed.  I was surprised because I thought that a lot of people has come to the show and they all looked fairly happy, but he said that it was because they whole 4 hours the show lasted, only one person asked about the thought behind his work.  So we spent the next hour walking around the buildings and him telling me about his work, and I thought that they were really cool!  He does sculpture and they have to do a lot with cycles, just like apples!  I thought it was so cool how his sculptures were just like apple.  And I realized that if I had not asked, I would have never learned that, and I really like knowing that because its so cool.  So I learned to always take the time to ask someone about their work, because in the current public, not many people actually care about the story; they just want it to be pretty.  

But getting back to the article, I agree that no one asks about the thought behind photographs anymore, or art in general.  I think that this is because there is so much art everywhere all the time that is ‘bad’ and doesn’t have any thought behind it at all, that people do not expect there to be a story anymore.  Maybe it is out job as artists to educate people, and show them that not all art is just on the surface.  And to educate all the people who are making ‘art’ that doesn’t have a story; to show them how to make art that actually means something.  Only then, I think, will art be asked about, because there will always be a story, and nothing would be able to be understood by just looking at it.  But unfortunately, people are lazy and greedy, and some only want to make art to sell it.  So the real question becomes, are people making art for themselves and the sake of expression through creating, or are people just making art to please others, and which one is right?

Response to ‘Was of Seeing, Episode 1: Psychological Aspects’

Response to ‘Was of Seeing, Episode 1: Psychological Aspects’

I thought that this program was for people who didn’t really know much about art, and were trying to become educated for one reason or another.  

The narrator used lots and lots of examples of famous pieces, talking about context and place and time.  He tried to prove that as the viewer, our observation of the piece is not the only thing that create our opinions about it.  He used music over Gouya’s “The Fifth of May” to prove this.  He used happy music, and then sad music, and then he put it in the middle of scenes.  All of the efforts didn’t really work because I knew a lot about the piece, as well as most of the other pieces he talked about.

I am pretty sure that I am not the only one that felt this way.  As design students we are all required to take Intro to Western Art History, which all of us did last semester.  So, we all knew a lot about the pieces that were shown.  So I think that even though the points that he was trying to prove were valid, the examples didn’t work on us (the student) because we have already been educated about the pieces.  

I did agree with the narrator that context is everything, even with art.  We have to know a little about the author, subject matter, and time period the piece was made in the create reasonable assumptions and observations about pieces.  I think that is why it is important to take art history classes, even as design students.  Because we are still going to (hopefully) be interacting with painters and sculptors and the rest of the art crowd, and we need to be able to properly discuss works with them.  And we also need the knowledge to help influence our own work and to help educate the rest of the world who is not so artistically inclined. 

Response to ‘Camera Lucida’ by Roland Barthes

Response to ‘Camera Lucida’ by Roland Barthes

I did not like this article, not because I disagrees with everything he said, but because all he did was complain.  It was also difficult to read because every five words there were parentheses with an unneeded snide or sarcastic comment.

However, I kind of agree with him with his statement in the beginning that color in unneeded make up on a photograph.  That might be true sometimes, but surely not all the time.  Color can be a wonderful and horrible thing, depending on the photograph, and the photographer.  If the photographer knows what they are doing, they can use color to aid them.  It can help convey an emotion or mood, or, it can create a false emotion or mood.  But I think that older people are really the ones who live and die by black and white photography, and younger people (for the most part) are the ones all about color.  Yes, color makes photography more difficult, but that doesn’t mean that all the old fartsy photographers have to hate it.  That being said, it is difficult to all of a sudden switch to color.  A lot of these photographers probably started in the darkroom with black and white film.  Today, most photography classes start with digital and start with color.  It is cheaper and more convenient, especially in school systems where money is scarce.  So thats all people my age are use to. And so they all don’t understand black and white photography.  I think that Barthes’ opinion is based on personal experience and pigheadedness.  From his writing, I do not get the sense that he really knows what he is talking about.  He just sounds old and cranky and annoying. 

I do agree with his statements that state that photographs are tied to dates and that they prove that something happened.  For example, when people are small children, we don’t usually remember every little thing that we did; just snippits.  But with photography, we can look at a photo that out parents took of us playing and say “oh yeah.  I must have played with that when I was little.”  But photographs can also create false memories that way.  If we know we did something because of proof from a photograph, we may create a false memory of it, because we have proof of it with the photograph.  

Even though I agree and disagree with Roland Barthes, I still think that he doesn’t know what he is talking about and just spouting his opinion with some good points here and there. 

Response to Susan Sontag’s ‘On Photography’

Response to Susan Sontag’s ‘On Photography’

A main point of this article is that “photographs alter and enlarge out notions of what is worth looking at and what we have the right to observe”.  I think that this is true.  As stated in the other articles that we have been instructed to read during this assignment, photography allows people to photograph anything and everything, and they do.  They photograph really pointless things, and then they seem important.  While those photographs make the objects themselves seem important, it also takes away from the importance of the photograph.  People take photographs, print them, store them, carry them around, etc, and take for granted that they are readily available.  They also use them to alter reality without really thinking about is.  People enlarge them, crop them, rotate, alter, edit, and lots of other things.  This also takes the value away from a photograph.  A long time ago, photographs use to be a big deal and really special.  Now they are used everywhere, from police to doctors to students, and they are readily available, and really have to value.  I agreed with all of this as it was stated in the article.  And while the article was pointing out all the ways they were used (and abused) I hadn’t really realized how dependent our current world is on photographs.  For example, in most things that people do, most people prefer photographs over drawings and descriptions.  Such as class power points in high school.  No one would use a drawing of grapes on a slide if they were talking about grapes, and of course they would not stand there and describe the way grapes look; they would want a photograph.  Photographs are used and devalued by everyone.  

They are also widely used to represent things that exist, once existed, or one happened.  They are used to represent the great monuments of the world, and the family vacation people took last year.  They make up our image of the modern world.  I think that without photographs, people would be really lost, but it would make them more imaginative, and less lazy.  Instead of just snapping a picture during a family vacation, they would take time to look around and really take in the moment and environment.  Maybe even take time to remember it more accurately because they would not have a photograph to rely on. 

Update to Personal Art Blog about assignment

http://kellylatham.wordpress.com/assignment-1-photography-as-documentation-mapping-time-space/

Test Assemblage from pictures

“David Hockney on Whats Unphotographable” Response

response by kelly latham

When I first watched this in class, I thought that it was odd.  I also thought that he was just tired of photographs and wanted to do something different.  It wasn’t until after I also read the Szarkowski’s “The Photographer’s Eye” introduction that I understood what Hockney meant when he said, “you are more aware whats at the edges” and when he said that “it was unphotographable” and “photography doesn’t quite show you the way you see it with your eye”. 

When he said “you are more aware whats at the edges”, I now understand that he meant that there is no way you can get everything in the frame that needs to be there.  And when he deemed something unphotographable, I understood that a photograph would not convey it wholly, or truthfully.  And I really not understand what he meant by “photography doesn’t quite show you the way you see it with your eye”.  Because it doesn’t!  Viewer pick what the want to notice out of a photograph, and overtime that might change, but the way you originally saw something and the way it first impacted you can’t change.  You can’t change real memories.  So if one paints it instead, that you can focus on what you wanted to, and leave the rest out.  You can choose what was important to you and share that with the world instead of sharing what you think is important, along with everything you don’t think is important that can distract from what is really important. 

When Hockney was talking about his childhood, then I really understood what he meant by unphotographable.  He is combining memories with current, and that is impossible to do with photographs because you cannot photograph the past.  You can have photographs of the past, but not photograph the past.  Just the present. 

Response to the Masters of Illusion Video

by Kelly Latham

I had seen this video before (or at least a slight part of it) in an art history class last semester.  I thought that it was interesting in that they used current technology and special effects to point out the successes and flaws of the masters and their understandings of perspective. 

Before I saw this film, I just thought that it was a stylistic thing within culture to have everything seem flat and mashed together.  It didn’t dawn on me that they did not actually understand how to apply depth to scenes.  It makes me wonder if human intelligence had just not been enough to understand it, or if they just didn’t have the nerve to mess with they system.  Or maybe they didn’t have the correct tools to create works that would have accurately represented depth and perspective.  

I really liked the part of the video with the inlayed wood venire that created extraordinary amounts of depth.  It looked so cool! And then I just had to laugh when the camera moved to show that if the viewer moves to the wrong spot, the illusion no longer works.  I can imagine that it would be incredibly difficult to paint all that depth, but to use small pieces of wood to piece it together!  I could never do it.  I am not patient enough.  

Response to John Szarkowski’s “The Photographer’s Eye”

By Kelly Latham

While I was reading, a few things in particular stuck out to me; what the snapshot did to photography, what snapshot photography did to history, and how the photographer uses “The Thing Itself”, “The Frame”, “Time”, and “Vantage Point” to manipulate the truth.  

When I first took a photo class, I was always told “take photographs, not snapshots; snapshots are of things, photos are about things”.  So I just always regard anything called a snapshot as bad.  When I was reading this article, I got from it that snapshots were bad because they took away from the art of photography.  People ignored “composition, light, shade, and texture” and just took momentary pictures of what they thought was pretty and then moved on.  I think that that is why people think that photography is so easy; because they can pull of a snapshot.  But they do not know what they should be looking for in a photograph that is meant to be artistic.  

However, because there were so many snapshots being taken, everything started being recorded.  Before snapshots, only important things were painted, so only what rich people deemed important was remembered.  Now, everything was remembered, so everything became important.  I think that that could be a good thing and a bad thing.  Good in that we know a lot more about what was actually going on in history, even down to the little things.  But bad because maybe there were so many snapshots of pointless things that the important photographs were overlooked and mistaken for a snapshot.  Maybe the photograph was more important, and now it is lost, along with whatever was image was more important than the snapshot image.  But the snapshot lives on, possible causing history to remember something that it far less important than what should be remembered.  

Being an amateur photographer with my few classes and lots of personal teaching, I surprised me that the article pointed out how many ways the truth can be manipulated through photography, even thought it is an image from something that actually happened.  For example, in “The Thing Itself” paragraphs, it pointed out that the earth was the real artist and the photographer was the one that had to record it correctly.  It made me think that photographers are just stealing what the earth is doing and calling it their own.  But in recording these happenings, there were hardly recorded the way they were actually seen.  The would use unnatural clarity and made things and items seem significant when they may have been extremely insignificant.  And while the photographer did all this, it was believed that a photographer could not lie.  So, I believed that in doing so, a photograph brings unimportant things to attention while the real important things are left to be forgotten.  Kind of like with snapshots versus photographs.  

In “The Detail” part of the introduction, it talked about that photographers could not tell the whole story, just fragments of the truth.  So once again, the photographer is lying to the viewer.  So to try to get the whole story down, the narrative sequence was made, but that still didn’t cover the whole story, just a fake story that was still missing parts.  “The narratives were not used to make the story clear, they were used to make it real”.  That last sentence confuse me for a while, but then I understood it as giving the viewer enough of the components of the story to make their own conclusions with it, giving them the freedom to make it whatever story they wanted.  So, it made it real to the viewer because they would have the chance to make it whatever they wanted, but it was still not clear what the actual and original story was.  So once again, photographs just lied. 

The next section titled “The Frame” really interested me, because nothing like it had been pointed out to me before.  I did know that it was important what was in the frame, out of the frame, and then there were no distractions at the edges of the frame, but it hadn’t occurred to me that it creates relationships that don’t exist and breaks ones that do.  Because the frame cannot fit everything in the image.  That why its a frame, not the world.  It has edges.  But, without being able to fit everything in, it is not telling the whole truth, so it is lying.

The final section of the introduction to “The Photographer's Eye” is titled “Vantage Point”.  It pointed out that photographers teach us to see from unexpected vantage points.  But, is that a real depiction of the world?  So is the camera once again lying to us?  Or misleading us?  

What I mainly got from this article is with photographs, nothing can be truly and wholly conveyed.  And then I got to thinking.  Can anything truly and wholly convey anything else?  I don’t think so…  Hmm.  This article has greatly troubled my understanding of art and what it represents.  Because, anything and everything that attempts to reproduce something realistically is telling lies about it, because it is not one-hundred percent conveying it correctly, or it is leaving out parts, or can be interpreted be everyone differently.  And if everything is interpreted by everyone differently, then why to artists try to convey what they see through their art, when no one will ever see it exactly the same way?  

Update! Day 6-16 Images from my Daily Creative Challenge!

Full Site Here: http://kellylatham.wordpress.com/ and more information on each individual image as well :)


 
 
 
 

Day 6 Creative Challenge Link Here :)

http://kellylatham.wordpress.com/2012/01/07/day-6-1-6-12-2/

My 2012 Creative Challenge!

I have decided to do something creative everyday of the year for 2012! whether that be drawing, painting, photography, knitting, whatever, i am going to do it atleast once a day :)

here is what i have done so far. :) you can read about them each individually at A Creative 2012 Blog :)