Art Board Progress #1 - Theme

For Art this year, we have to create enough work to take up two 62x82 cm panels. The main part of the panels (which is also one of the hardest parts for me) is that every picture has to have a theme whether it's political, tells a story, or they all just have some sort of common theme, there has to be a theme. This post is gonna focus on the first part of putting together my board: getting a theme. 




My first idea for a theme was gonna be something environmental. It wasn't necessarily going to be political at this point as I don't really enjoy painting political things. I don't know why but I just don't like painting them. I like looking at political art but I don't like painting it. Anyway, I started doing some sketches of possible paintings I could do. 

Testing color combination for the tree

 After doing some sketches I liked, I began planning what my board could look like. I originally did the planning on my wall at my Dad's house (don't tell him (I'm not joking like, seriously, don't tell him) but I did take pictures before I erased it which took forever. Anyway, once I got back to my Mum's we looked through our piles of paper until we could find one that fit the measurements of the board. Now with an imitation of the board, I started to plan out where I could possibly put things and took measurements and started painting.  I started by painting the picture of the electrical tower with
a tree growing inside. You may notice that the painting is unfinished. This is because, although it looks pretty decent, I had a realization that it doesn't fit with my plan for the other paintings. Every other painting was somewhere in Christchurch you could easily name so it didn't make sense to then have a random field with a random electrical tower.

After ditching the electrical tower and planning on redoing it with the tower placed somewhere else, I got started on my favorite idea: the cathedral. I first started by creating a mini watercolor to see how it could look. Once cutting down some paper to the right size I got painting. My chosen painter to be inspired by was Franz Marc as I liked the way he painted using weird colors, in particular his green horses (or blue, I don't remember). I started painting the trees similar to how I painted the electrical tower tree, then painted over it as I didn't like it and did it again. I wasn't sure how I was going to paint the cathedral and decided to wing it and it went badly. I didn't mind the colors except I did. I hated them.

During quarantine, I decided that I wasn't vibing with the theme. I didn't like it and I wasn't confident with it and I wanted a theme I was sure about. Now, the environment there wasn't my only theme idea and wasn't actually my first idea. It was my first official idea but I also had an idea that included painting stories from the Torah cause I'm Jewish. That wasn't the reason but it was where the idea came from. I did a bunch of planning and writing and I had, like, 3-4 painting ideas with, like, 3 different versions. I wrote what everything meant what it was all about and just had done a crap ton of planning. Well, I can't show that planning cause I threw it all out cause the idea was going nowhere. This was at the beginning of the year so it's long gone. Anyway, I decided to circle back to that idea and paint Jewish people doing Jewish themes I guess.

Then I decided I didn't want to do that idea cause it wasn't clicking with me. I was getting overwhelmed and worrying too much about it so I went back to square 1 and brainstorm theme ideas and weigh the pros and cons. I also looked at the artists I liked, what I enjoy painting, and what I like about each theme. This brought me to a theme along the lines of romanticizing everyday things. I enjoy artists such as Monet, Rinko Kawauchi, Studio Ghibli, and others because I like how they make simple, everyday things look a bit nicer and aesthetically pleasing to look at. At this point, it's more subject matter instead of a theme I believe but it is a starting point. I've started painting the first picture but I'll probably wait until I have some more paintings that I can also blog about.