Title: At Peace in Morning
Size: 50.8 x 38.1 cm Medium: Colored pencil on illustration board Completion: December 2022 Exhibition TextMy piece is inspired by the abstract cubist works of painter Marlina Vera, specifically her painting Peaceful Woman at Night. With this inspiration, I apply contrasting colors and shapes the evoke a sense of peace.
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Inspiration
Planning
shapes overlap, different values are used within the shapes and they are outlined in black or a contrasting color. I decided to create my piece in a similar style as Vera's cubist style. Also, in her depictions of people, Vera mostly uses a singular color to apply on the entire body of the people in her work. I decided to have a person in my work whose body was mainly warm colors to resemble the nature of my skin while also symbolizing the feeling of comfort and warmth.
ProcessWoman at Night, due to her medium of paint, I wanted to blend some of the colors I used with my own medium of colored pencils. I also wanted to implement Vera's use of contrasting and complementary colors. To create a contrast I started to add yellow to the face, and additionally, I made the eyes and the other side of the face red to complement the green.
emphasize the face. This type of gradation in the sky could also be observed from one of Vera's paintings, where the bright yellow sky is contrasted with harsh dark spots of red color. I attempted to create a similar effect to this, where a majority of the sky was yellow, but splotches of red color surround the figure to further highlight it. I also attempted to place another set of complementary colors right next to each other with the orange in the sky and the blue in the hair. I wanted to create the most color contrast possible, resembling that of Vera's work. This is the reasoning for the sky beginning at yellow, but then fading into an eventual orange near the hair.
appearance. I filled overlapping parts of the body with colors that were similar in value. Additionally, I outlined many of the shapes in black to create a more distinct differentiation between them.
Experimentation
a balance of soft and hard applications of the colored pencil in order to create more contrast in the piece. Additionally, I experimented with using values alongside slightly darker variations of the value to produce shading. While gradations do not typically appear in the bodies of the people Vera depicts in her work, I wanted to experiment with shading parts of the figure in my work to contribute to the illusion of depth. I also applied this to emphasize the difference in the shapes constituting the body of the woman in my work.
amount of contrast. To do this, I made the surrounding clothes blue. I also experimented with the amount of contrast that could be provided by outlining shapes with black lines. This ultimately worked to create a greater sense of contrast, however not as great as the contrast given by complementary colors.
CritiqueSimilarities:
One similarity between my work and Marlina Vera's Peaceful Woman at Night is the cubist style of both. In both works, a woman is depicted using organic shapes which overlap each other. The overlap of the shapes is shown with slightly differing values than the rest of the other shapes. In addition, they are presented in an unrealistic manner while also resembling a woman. The overall application of line is also similar between my work and Vera's work. Both works consist of a mixture of organic and geometry lines. The organic lines are seen in the depictions of people while the geometric lines appear in the buildings in the background. The positions and the colors used in both works also allude to the feeling of comfort and ease. Both women in the works appear to be in a meditative state. Additionally, they are both depicted with warm colors such as yellow and orange, further highlighting the idea of calmness and ease. Differences: The balance of color is slightly different in my piece and Marlina Vera's Peaceful Woman at Night. Vera's work contains a balance of warm and cool colors where the woman is depicted in warm colors and the background is mainly cool. In my work, both the sky and the woman are depicted in yellow. In addition, my work depends more on outlining the shapes in black, whereas Vera outlines her shapes in other colors as well. My work achieve contrasts by outlining the shapes in black. Vera's work, however, implemented other colors such as lighter blue to achieve the same contrasting effect. The medium is also different between the two works. While Vera's work is an acrylic painting, my piece is done in colored pencil. ReflectionAfter beginning this colored pencil piece, I did not realize that I would find abstract art as difficult as I found it. I learned that this style of art required a lot of thinking and planning, as it is important that the image is still decipherable while having ambiguity at the same time. I enjoyed creating a piece inspired by Marlina Vera's Peaceful Woman at Night because I was able to observe the differences in this art style through different mediums. Doing the piece in colored pencil, I realized I could not blend the colors in the same way that Vera does. Due to this, I created gradation scales and applied blending techniques to blend colors in some fruit. Overall, I believe I achieved the idea of a woman sitting in a comfortable position while also achieving the mood of comfort and calmness.
ACT QuestionsClearly explain how you are able to identify the cause effect relationship between your inspiration and its effect on your artwork?
My inspiration artwork is Marlina Vera's "Vanitas" Still Life, which is an abstract piece. This inspiration has sparked my use of color contrast, complementary colors, and overlapping shapes and lines. What is the overall approach the author has regarding the topic of your inspiration? Marlina Vera is an artist which creates art from what she feels. Feelings can be expressed through art in many ways, including cubism, expressionism, and impressionism. What kind of generalizations and conclusions have you discovered about people, ideas, culture, etc. while you researched your inspiration? Our values come across in our artworks. While some work can express sad and gloomy emotions, other can produce the mood of content and warmth, symbolizing calmness. What is the central idea or theme around your inspirational research?. A central idea surrounding my inspirational research is the expression of different emotions. In Vera's work, she expresses both her values and emotions through the use of color, line, shape, and form. What kind of inferences did you make while reading your research? I inferred that art has a symbolic and meaningful aspect. This symbolic aspect appears in form of color, shapes, and positioning of figures and people. CitationsGoogle Search, Google, https://www.google.com/search?q=marlina+vera+work&tbm=isch&hl=en-US&tbs=il%3Acl&rlz=1CAWVQM_enUS1035&sa=X&ved=0CAEQpwVqFwoTCOjxlo-L6PsCFQAAAAAdAAAAABAC&biw=1300&bih=580&safe=active&ssui=on#imgrc=sEyDh2mluaXiyM.
Google Search, Google, https://www.google.com/search?q=marlina+vera+work&tbm=isch&tbs=il%3Acl&rlz=1CAWVQM_enUS1035&hl=en-US&sa=X&ved=0CAEQpwVqFwoTCJjTsrSK6PsCFQAAAAAdAAAAABAC&biw=1300&bih=580&safe=active&ssui=on#imgrc=qPABsJr7BI02NM. “Peaceful Woman at Night - Marlina Vera - Oil on Canvas.” SINGULART, https://www.singulart.com/en/artworks/marlina-vera-peaceful-woman-at-night-1520659. |