Blog Entry #3: Final Project Bid Idea Artists

While completing my midterm project, a different big idea began to develop in my mind as I was trying to show our fantasy/reality idea. I realized that I like to examine how different artists create people in their works of art. I found an artist that takes a very dark look in how they create their characters. This artist is Alexander Casteels and the image to the right is one of his and it can be found here. I really like the darkness of this artist. He takes things such as fairytale characters and uses literal darkness as well as dark ideals to show a kind of irony of how real life isn't like fairytales. Another one of his works is shown below and can be found here.

His big ideas have to do with emotional darkness such as sorrow, pain, & evil and dreamlike images. I think it's inspiring in how this artist takes fantastic things like the fairytales I mentioned earlier and brings them down to earth. It makes me want to know more about this artists life. His artwork would make me think initially that he's had a hard life and has been surrounded by a lot of optimistic people that he's wanted to share his life with through his artwork. I will use aspects of my life to inspire my final project similar to how this artist has had his life affect his artwork. I will also try to add some darkness to my images. I don't want to add nearly as much as this artist did, but I think darkness helps to bring deep thoughts out of the image.

The second artist is Carlos Ortega Elizalde and his images are more three dimensional. The image to the right specifically drew my attention since it goes along with our midterm bid idea of real/fantasy very well and can be found here. I really like how these images are three dimensional since it gives them more of a real aspect. This artist seems to have big ideas of fantasy and a simple kind of happiness. Many of his images are of strange creatures or robots that are happily smiling. Another image that I liked of his is shown below and can be found here.

I think this artwork is inspiring due to its bright colors and textures. It must take the artist a long time to create the surfaces required to make this art three dimensional. Although many of this artist's images have a simple happiness to them, some of them seem very extraterrestrial and real. There is a serious aspect to these alien creatures that diverges from the fantasy of his other images. I wonder how this artist is able to put himself in these two different mindsets so he can create both types of images. I will use this inspiration to try to make my images more three dimensional both literally and give them more dimensional meaning by trying to put myself in multiple mindsets. I used some techniques in my midterm project to make my artwork three dimensional, but if I can I'd like to use even more in my final project so that my artwork looks similar to this artist's.