Overcoming the Wave

This is the second action project of Walls, an art and history class. for this project we were assigned groups and we had to all take elements of out sketches for the first action project and decide how we would make a collaborative art piece. The purpose of the project was to figure out what sketches/elements from unit 1 we would like to see put into a final piece that would eventually be painted in the new building. In this unit we learned a lot about different materials and also different mediums, so we each chose to do one material and use it to color in the sketch and see which medium we would use in the final mural. I am very proud of the piece we made because even though all of our sketches were different and the meanings behind them did not relate at all we still gathered elements from most of the unit 1 sketches to make a great mural with a lot of meaning behind it.

BKJ
Overcoming The Wave
12/2015
12x3 and 12x5
coarse pumice, soft gel semi-gloss, Acrylic paint, spray paint.
The sketch that my group and I decided to created is a representation of GCE and what we are as a school and a community. The wave is meant to represent other schools such as public and other private schools and basically the “traditional” way of education. The boat represents GCE, a school overcoming and fighting the traditional school system and shaping schools for the future. We also made the boat a banner so we could write “overcoming the wave” which represents that we are overcoming the idea of normal schools and creating our own method of schooling. The people in the boat represents the students and staff and how we would not be able to make the idea of GCE happen without those people. As we were drafting our image we took into consideration everyone's drawing created in the previous unit and tried to find some symbolic element in each one to incorporate into our final image. We all liked the idea of the wave as a symbol of a force to overcome so we took that image. Then we decided to write something symbolic so we took the banner from my original image and turned it into a boat to symbolize us overcoming the wave.

Overcoming the wave, NA, (2015)

The medium I chose to complete my swatches was spray paint because I have a lot of experience using spray paint and it is very easy to manipulate. When using spray paint it is very easy to get clean and crisp lines but you could also take advantage of spray paint being in mist form to do very nice shading. I thought that it would be good to use spray paint for the boat because I visualize the boat as being very clean and well structured such as GCE. After doing my swatch, I was somewhat satisfied but I am used to working large scale so if I had a bigger space to work with then the swatch would be so much better. As a group, we decided that using spray paint for the boat and the people will be effective because it is easy to manipulate

Spray paint swatches, LL, (2015)

 When we got together as a group we decided to incorporate everyone's medium because they all seemed effective to convey one at least one element of the final image. We decided to use the soft gel semi-gloss to do the bottom part of the wave because it has a very wavy texture and it just makes it look like flowing water. we used normal acrylic paint to make the sky because it is very smooth and clean. We decided to make the boat and people spray paint to make very clean and concise lines and also to get good shading in the boat. Lastly we decided to use the coarse pumice to make the foamy part of the wave because it gives it a very good texture and makes it look realistic. I feel like everything would work very well and I don’t really think I would change anything except more colors and details but that’s our part, the materials are perfect for each effect.

Overcoming the wave, LL, (2015)

Overcoming the wave, LL, (2015)