This week post will be my first in a series of posts. This category is where I talk about all my random art projects and experiments that I do that do not end up in my portfolio. The past few months in school have been super fun and I have done a lot of exciting projects. Without further ado lets get into them!

A project that took up a big portion of one class was my Bauhaus project. The purpose of this project was to research the Bauhaus school of design that was located in Germany. The Bauhaus changed how the world does design even though the school was not in operation for very long. After looking through books about the various things the school did, I decided to focus on photomontages. Bauhaus’s photomontages are not your typical photo collages. Theirs focus on abstract arrangement of ideas that do not have a clear meaning or purpose. The arrangement of Bauhaus collages feel random but look intentional.

After looking at a few examples and researched specific techniques, I set out to create my own montages. I sketched out ideas beforehand, but they evolved as I searched for photographs to use. While looking at images my teacher gave me the idea to use paintings as well as photos to create montages. Therefore, I thought it would be fun to create a montage purely using paintings. I used the Library of Congress’s free bank of images for my montages as well as Rijks Museum’s website. Rijks is located in the Netherlands, but their website provides hundreds of free downlands of paintings.

After I printed the images, it was time to began the scary part, cutting them. If I messed up while cutting them, then there was no going back. Thankfully I had already sketched out an idea for each of the three arrangements. However, something I realized while doing this project is that sometimes you have to take risks and experiment. That may seem like the cheesiest overused idea, but it’s true! Experimenting forces people to take risks and sometimes that best ideas happen while taking risks. When I experimented during this project, I got some really cool results!

Honestly, I feel like forcing students to experiment was part of the reason that Bauhaus had their students do photomontages. Photomontages are not strictly tied down to the usual rules of art like painting or sketching seem to be. Unlike painting and sketching, there is no easy way to reverse a mistake while creating a montage. The artist simply has to adapt and make the most of their circumstances. Overall, I really enjoyed making this project and I learned a new art medium.

Another exciting project I did this quarter also forced me to try something new. In this project I made paper and my own stamp. If you ever get the chance to make your own paper and stamp, do it! It is so fun and is hands on!

Making paper from scratch seems like it would be difficult, but in reality, it was pretty straight forward. First, I got bin and filled it with water, and grabbed various tools such as filters, cuch sheets, rollers, and a few other things. Once I gathered my materials, I blended it up some paper and cotton material in water. This blended material is what the paper you create is made out of. Then I put the blended material in my bin of water and swirled the particles around. Next, I used my filters to pick up the paper fragments swirling around. When I had a thick enough coating of fragments on the catch filter, I used cuch sheets and rollers to dry the paper out. Finally, I used a heat press to dry out the paper some more and then put it out to air dry.

To make my sheets of paper look a little more unique I added pink dye to the water. Then to add some texture blended up dried flowers and also added them to the water. I was super happy with how the paper turned out, I think everyone should try it out at least once!

The final part of the project was creating a stamp. Before this project I had made a stamp once when I was a lot younger.  As you can imaging though it did not turn out very well, so I was excited to try again. To create a stamp first I sketched out a few different ideas, until I found something I was happy with. Since it is finally feeling warm like spring, I decided to do a spring inspired stamp. In the end I decided on a sketch with a cat and some flowers. After transferring my sketch to the stamp, I began carving it out. This took a lot longer than I anticipated, but I took my time. Similarly to the photomontages, if I messed up there was no going back. Overall, I was happy with how it turned out, but I loved it even more when I stamped it on my paper. When I added ink to the stamp it ended up with a totally different look then I was expecting. However, I loved it and it looked so cool even though it was not what I was expecting.

In conclusion what I have learned from these projects is that experimentation is key. It is good to take risks and try new things, in the end it will help us grow. It is ok to make mistakes and not like now be happy with your finished product. I know I have learned from my mistakes and found ways to adapt to my situations. That’s the exciting thing about art it is always changing and there is no correct way to do it.

 That concludes my yapping for this post, I hope at least someone enjoys it!