Journey and Ambition - Susan's pieces

Hello everyone,

For the exhibition I made two pieces in which I tried to show my own interpretation of the subject Growth. I want to show you the two pieces first, so you can form your own vision, before you hear mine. (Click on the pictures for a higher definition.) Left is called Journey, the one on the right Ambition.

I hope you took the time to look at the pieces, and think about them for a bit. Here is what my message was behind the pieces: I want to start with the piece Journey. I was thinking about what growth means to me, what personal growth means to me. I tried to visualize how I see my personal growth, and how I see personal growth in general. Pretty quickly the scenery you see above came to mind. I see personal growth as a journey, you need to take different steps in order to grow. But not every step is as easily taken. Sometimes there will be hole in the way, like you can see on the second steps. You need to take a leap, or get the help of others. You need to dare take that step! The same is with the last ‘bridge’ you see, it’s just two ropes. Sometimes you need to face your fears to get up, you need to get out of your comfort zone, in order to grow. The person you see in white, is me, or maybe you. If you look closely you might notice that the face you see on the piece ‘Ambition’ is the face of the person in the piece ‘Journey’. The face looks up with green eyes, full of ambition and a bit of curiosity. You need ambition and courage to take the steps. But you also need to be curios, you want to learn, otherwise you don’t have a reason to take those steps.

I came across this beautiful quote from Emma Watson, that I think fits perfectly with the story I wanted to tell:

‘’There’s nothing wrong with being afraid. It’s not the absence of fear, it’s overcoming it. Sometimes you’ve got to blast through and have faith.’’ – Emma Watson

Next I want to show you guys the process of the pieces I made. Sadly, most of the process of Journey was lost. This is pure the design/production of the piece, not the concepting fase.

-    Susan

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Tell me more about the future: Sanne's pieces

Tell me more:
The story behind this picture has to be that not everyone would be able to listen up, yet this fantasy creature craves for the reality and the stories from above. And progress behind the picture was more than interesting, as I tried a new technique. I used grey tones to then head over towards colours along with details.

The Future:
As you can see I started of with something else, a monster to speak of. Yet during the progress I changed my mind and crafted a cyborg in the end. The story behind this picture would be that the future cannot behold all of our dreams and sometimes it may be intimidating; yet are you ready for the future?

- Sanne

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Tears sprouting and Blooming - Numana's pieces

Tears sprouting and Blooming
A little blog about the work I did for the art exhibition
Some of you make have known but the theme for our art exhibition was SPROUTING also to be seen as GROWTH. I made 2 pieces. ‘Tears sprouting ‘ and ‘ Blooming ‘. I will be talking about the idea behind these pieces.

Tears sprouting
Tears sprouting I made with the idea of negative growth.
The tears, to be seen as negativity is sprouting, growing.
These negative emotions are growing, making it harder for you to life, to do things you like.
It’s entangling your heart…

I’ve received a lot of different views on this drawing, because it also seems like that the growing is uncontrollable, or that the growing from the negativity is a positive reaction (kinda like crying and letting go is  good for you) and I love these views on my drawing! You can always see what you want, to me the growing is coming from negativity as in negativity grows as well, but the growing itself isn’t that bad… Sometimes you need a little bit of this to get to the positive side of things.  I’d love to hear more views on this piece! If there are any questions feel free to ask.

Blooming
Blooming is kinda a reaction to ‘ Tears sprouting ‘
This piece is more about positive growth, the growing now comes from the heart and it produces pretty things (like pretty flowers)
Doing things you like and enjoying those, just enjoying life as a whole.

The pieces on personal level
My first semester this year really SUCKED, and it felt like a really negative period but what I didn’t get at that time was that the negativity was growing… I thought it was a horizontal line but it’s actually a negative spiral going down further and further. For me it was important to show that negativity grows, and it’s just growing.  People have asked why I didn’t make the vines in the drawing more depressive and toxic, for what it was, but that’s because to me it’s still the same ‘growing’.

Now I’m trying to view things more positive and try to do things I like and just be happy.
It’s hard because you’ll always have bad times, but you also need to appreciate the good times.
Just be balanced. X)

I hope you enjoyed this and I hope you can tell me your own view about this =)

-Numana

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Get inspired - Michelle's pieces

‘Get Inspired’
What is your inspiration?
The tiger is my inspiration, they are strong and beautiful. They give me the message to fight for what I want to achieve. There is no time to glum because the key to success is not giving up!

Let others around you know what your    inspiration is. And who knows you will inspire another!

‘You have your life in your own hands’ 
You are the star of your own life. You decide what you are going to do today, tommorow or in the future. Is there something in life you wanna change or what you don’t like? Then do something today, because your life is in your own hands!

- Michelle

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Artlantis exhibition

Hello everyone,

Last week (26, 27 and 28 March) we finally had our exhibition, where we showed our art. This was held at the NHL Leeuwarden. Our theme was sprouting/growth, and everyone made two pieces in which they showed their own interpretation of the theme. In total we had 15 pieces (Ruben had one piece) which were showcased on plexi walls. The layout of the exhibition can be seen in the numerous pictures that were taken on the different days. To draw more attention towards the exhibition we used posters, facebook announcements and personal invitations. For the people who visited we had a few snacks and a ‘drawing wall’. All the artist were present, at all times, to give more insight in their pieces, when this was needed. We had a lot of interesting conversations with people who visited, and we got some great feedback.

Below you can find the pieces of every individual, as show at the exhibition. You can click on the pieces of every individual, which will lead you to a more indept description of that piece.

-    Susan

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Workshop Watercolor

Hello, welcome!
Recently I did a watercolor workshop with my group. This workshop was mainly just painting with watercolors together.

“Watercolor (American English) or watercolour (Commonwealth and Ireland), also aquarelle from French, is a painting method in which the paints are made of pigments suspended in a water-soluble vehicle. The term "watercolor" refers to both the medium and the resulting artwork “ -Wikipedia.

I really like to use this medium, because it’s a simple and you can do so much with it!

Starting
When you start with watercolor it’s for the best if you know your materials.
What kind of paper are you using and what kind of watercolor? Every brand is different.

My tip is just to experiment a lot! And read reviews on internet, there is a lot of information about watercolor brands, different types of paper and tutorials on techniques available.

Don’t forget to just have fun with it.

Some pictures and drawings

A drawing I did

- Numana

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Inspiration and Motivation

 Inspiration and Motivation:

This is a small written piece about my motivation and inspiration for the exhibition and the progress behind the scenes. I’d like to tell the viewers more about my experience and how everything was seen from my very own point of view.

Throughout the days of school we wanted to hunt after Numana’s dream; her very own exhibition of art. Of course she wouldn’t be able to perform that by her own, and without the required artistic skills our group would be nowhere. So we decided to come up with a plan, where Ruben entered the scene with workshops.
After a few workshops and giving everyone a chance to shine, we started our new journey on crafting art for the exhibition.

Of course there was the good, the bad and perhaps awful times; yet we made it. And I can say proudly that we managed to do the impossible, presenting an exhibition whilst having nothing more than just three weeks for it. I call that amazing, and it amazed me that each of us managed to provide a masterpiece or two in some cases. The styles were different and nothing had to be the same, yet everything found its place and it stuck together nicely enough. 

My inspiration to keep on going had to be the fact that I worked with friends for the first time during my schooling years, even if I wondered if that would be a nice option to go with; for I am known with my tantrums about perfection, and not everyone would be able to keep up with me if I go on this tantrum about art. Yet somewhere throughout all the trouble, I found it worthy a lot; more than likely to see that my own art improved in only a matter of time, thanks to both Numana and Ruben.


- Sanne

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