Digital Art
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Project 2 - Simulations in Simulacra

Project Description:
Learning art tools and technique is a very small part of creating art. The real challenge is to train oneself to "see" the world rather then assume it. For the most part, we go through daily experience without taking in all the visual details, scanning this and that in order to achieve our tasks. This is a actually to our benefit, otherwise getting from our bed to the bathroom might take all day; getting lost in the infinite cracks, textures, colors, of the home. However, for the artist, it is crucial that they sometimes get lost in our visual universe, for as the adage says, "genius is in the details". In this assignment we will learn how to use new eyes in order to communicate to another what we "see". Using only words, you will write a one or two page detailed description of a historical two-dimensional art piece of your choosing (painting, photo, print, etc.). Once that is done, you will swap essays with another person in class. You will then take the other persons essay and recreate the artwork, based solely on the description that you read. In this way you will exercise not only your capacity to see and describe your world, but also interpret the worlds of your peers.

Associated Reading:
1. "Describing Photographs" - by Terry Barret
2. "Interpreting Photographs" - by Terry Barrett.

Piece Description:
written by Jeff Meola (of the digital art class)

The painting I chose is very old probably from the early renaissance era. The picture is based inside a room of a house with orange tiled floors. Behind is a window that stretches from the tile floor all the way up out of the painting. Inside the room there are 2 ladies. The one on the left is wearing a red dress and is an angel. She has wings and a halo. She is on one knee reaching out for the other lady in front of her whom I feel is queen of some sort. Also the angel has brown hair and is holding a long flower in her left hand.

The queen across from her is wearing a red dress but with a green cloak over it. You can kind of see below her that she is coming down off of her thrown. She is also wearing a hat that’s in a disc shape sitting on the back of her head. She is reaching out with her right hand to touch the angel’s right hand. But they don’t reach each other.

Outside the window, I was talking about before; there is a cement courtyard right outside with a tree just outside the perimeter which stands really tall. The tree doesn’t have branches though till the top. Beyond that there is a river running into the horizon. On the right of the river is kind of a castle wall that then stretches over the river and ends right where the river ends. There are openings in the wall where the river is to let water through. On the left of the river is a hill where a castle sits on top. You can’t see the entire castle because it sits in the mountain a little. The sky is a light green instead of blue and a lot of the grass is dead outside. There are a couple bushes lining the mountain and some a little in front of the wall I was talking about earlier.

 

Described Piece:
The Annunciation by Sandro Botticelli (1489-1490)

My art piece:
note: all images in the picture were either photographs taken by me or created in photoshop by me. Photos were about 1/10th size of the piece.
View larger file (1000x1000 pixels, 432 kb)
(A little off -haha)