Em Chang phai thuy kieuSize: 24 in x 24 in
Medium: Acrylic paint Date: Feb 2020 ¨Em Chang Phai Thuy Kieu¨ is a acrylic painting that explores the traditional Asian culture of mandating the family´s daughter to marry despite changing times that allow them to live independently. The piece was inspired by Alphonse Mucha´s glamourization of his subjects and Gustav Klimt´s usage of oriental patterns on his paintings.
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Inspiration
Mucha's art revolves around women and maximizes the natural charm that women can have, which I am deeply attracted to. Mucha is famous for his distinct and stylized posters which featured females adorned by jewelries and flowers in the background. It would not be a stretch to call him the forefront artist of the Art Nouveau. While looking for inspiration Mucha's art stood out to me the most because of how detailed and well uses repetition of patterns around the main subject of his paintings. Although his female subjects are glamourized, they are not portrayed as weak but instead very charismatic, which matches what I want my theme to be and very similar with my style.
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My next inspiration is of Gustav Klimt and especially his one painting of, ¨Lady with the Fan¨. I was drawn in with the oriental patterns that surrounded the subject of the painting. The oriental patterns in Klimt's piece will enhance Mucha's female subjects and accentuate my theme for my piece more. The intricacy and aestheticism of the exotic patterns in this piece will represent the the influence of western and eastern standards on me and how it makes me react to traditional asian values.
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Planning
Sketches
My first sketch was mostly inspired by Gustav Klimt's "Lady with a Fan" and the posture of the original painting. My goal for this sketch was to showcase the theme of how girls in Asian culture are force to follow a conservative tradition although they yearn to be something else instead. I planned to make the window be the main source of lighting and the background behind the girl dark to showcase how dark forcing conservative mindsets on newer generation can be. Meanwhile the background of the wall was planned to be the same background as Klimt's background in "Lady with a Fan" to emphasize the oriental standards put onto girls.
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The sketch that I choose is the second sketch as I think it have the most developed theme. The theme I wanted to convey through this sketch was how the Vietnamese and Western side of myself clash against each other when the idea of traditional women roles are brought up. In the picture, I depict myself in a traditional Vietnamese wedding dress, that have a western twist in it to represent myself, stuck in the middle of confession roses. The displease that can be seen on my face shows how I detest the conservative asian idea of how daughters are raised to be married off and be stuck fulfilling "womenly duties" that society force upon them. I was mainly inspired by Mucha for this piece, as the female subjects in his piece are feminine and glamorized but never depicted as weak. For the clothes I was planning to use Klimt's use of oriental print as it highlight the influx of Western and Eastern influence in me.
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For my last sketch, I still used Mucha as my inspiration with another female figure as my subject. The plan for this sketch was to show my confrontation of the two sides within me, my western and eastern influences. Although sadly it did not get chosen as it was too similar to one of my panels of my triptych and too messy for me to paint.
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Process
1.) I started off my making my canvases and putting them together. I did this by first assembling the wood, then went on to stretch the canvas and laying my wood on top, then after the canvas was cut I stapled the canvas to the wood.
2) Lastly to assemble my canvas I out gesso on it to make sure it was ready to be painted on. 3) Then I transferred my sketch on to my canvas using the box method 4) I started painting the face first and then went out to the things that are around the face 5) After finishing the foreground, I mixed the color for the background and then filled it in 6) Lastly, I cleaned up my edges to make the painting look better |
Experimentation
For this project, I experimented mostly on painting flowers especially roses, as I had never painted roses before. I needed to find a technique to paint roses that could show the highlights and the texture of the petals. Through out the project for the roses, I typically use a small flat brush in order to achieve the certain texture and blending.
My first plan was to paint all the petals on the flower to be the same color before going in again with white paint to highlight the different petals and differentiate them from each other. It worked pretty well as there was texture and highlight in the flower. I ended up using this technique for my painting.
My second attempt was starting a blob of red paint, then start shading the petals with a darker shade of red, and highlighting the petals with white afterwards. This technique didn´t work out nicely as it was too time consuming to make the highlights on the petal to stand out more.
For the last technique, I tried alternating the colors on the petals with either dark red or red. Afterwards I would go in with white to create texture in the middle of the petal and shade a darker red into the lighter red petals. I didn´t do with this one as although the petals outside looked really nice, it was hard to paint the bud on the inside.
Reflection
Critiques
I could see my painting skills improved a lot since the beginning of the year, as I was able to paint more efficiently in a shorter period of time. Theme wise, I think I had a pretty decent theme to the piece, which was to showcase how traditional beliefs of how woman must get married despite now in modern times women can live independently. I feel like I got the theme down with the use of the traditional Vietnamese wedding dress that the subject is wearing and the roses that are suffocating her. However, I do think that the theme of the piece could have been shown more if I were to dramatize how the roses are forced into the subject´s face; and emphasize more on the emotion of unwillingness on her face. Basing off of my inspiration, my use of female subject seems quite lacking compared to Mucha´s, so I will have to come back to the background and add in some details such as Mucha´s, and for the patterns that were based after Klimt´s can be emphasized more if I were to add them on the top of the dress. Overall, the execution was done well, but the connection to the original artists can be improved more on.
Compare and Contrast
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ACT response
Clearly explain how you are able to identify the cause-effect relationships between your inspiration and its effect upon your artwork:
Mucha´s use of women subjects and Klimt´s technique that combines both Eastern and Western art influence my piece.¨Em Chang Phai Thuy Kieu¨, which uses both Mucha´s glamorization of female subjects and Klimt´s oriental patterns.
What is the overall approach (pov) the author (from research) has regarding the topic of your inspiration?
The authors of the research focused on the culture that the artists were in and how what they experienced in their times influence what they put in their art. Mucha´s uses female subjects in his works because the commercial industry were filled with masculinity and barely any female aesthetics. While Gustav Klimt start incorporating his oriental patterns after Japan´s port open up to the West and Asian arts were imported to Europe.
What kind of generalizations and conclusions have you discovered about people, ideas, cultures, etc. while you researched your inspiration?
I was about to discover more about the idea on why so many people use women as their main subjects in their own pieces. Women can be portrayed in various way as they experience more unfairness in society compared to men and they are subjected to more standards; which can make it possible to portrayed them glamorously or plain.
What was the central idea or theme around your inspirational research?
The central theme around my inspirational research was to be able to look for techniques that would elevate the theme that I have for my piece.
What kind of inferences did you make while reading your research?
I inferred the techniques that was used in the two pieces and how the life events that occurred during the two artist´s lifetime affected their works and how it differ their piece´s energy from each other.
Mucha´s use of women subjects and Klimt´s technique that combines both Eastern and Western art influence my piece.¨Em Chang Phai Thuy Kieu¨, which uses both Mucha´s glamorization of female subjects and Klimt´s oriental patterns.
What is the overall approach (pov) the author (from research) has regarding the topic of your inspiration?
The authors of the research focused on the culture that the artists were in and how what they experienced in their times influence what they put in their art. Mucha´s uses female subjects in his works because the commercial industry were filled with masculinity and barely any female aesthetics. While Gustav Klimt start incorporating his oriental patterns after Japan´s port open up to the West and Asian arts were imported to Europe.
What kind of generalizations and conclusions have you discovered about people, ideas, cultures, etc. while you researched your inspiration?
I was about to discover more about the idea on why so many people use women as their main subjects in their own pieces. Women can be portrayed in various way as they experience more unfairness in society compared to men and they are subjected to more standards; which can make it possible to portrayed them glamorously or plain.
What was the central idea or theme around your inspirational research?
The central theme around my inspirational research was to be able to look for techniques that would elevate the theme that I have for my piece.
What kind of inferences did you make while reading your research?
I inferred the techniques that was used in the two pieces and how the life events that occurred during the two artist´s lifetime affected their works and how it differ their piece´s energy from each other.