Welcome to Term 2!

 Welcome to a new term! A-month-long holiday brought new sparks and excitement for me to start this spring term with a hope for better improvement than last term. Starting 2025, there are several goals I would like to achieve especially through my artwork and projects in this course. Reflecting to my projects feedback on last term, this term I would like to restricted myself on using any writing-enhancement software and improve my writing skills to better showcase my own voice. My other goal for this term is also to grow the courage to get out of my comfort zone and try a lot of new creative techniques and ideas. Last term, I tried to play safe by only using technique I'm already confident with, and felt that experimenting with a completely new ideas was too risky to try. So, in the end of this spring term, I hope I could have a lot of new experience of trying new software or techniques.

During the holiday, I spent a lot of time watching movies on Netflix and there's one movie that inspired me the most. This movie is about a group of four street magician that rob a bank with their impressive illusion of magic tittled "Now you see me". I have never felt so attached to a movie from the beginning until the end, but watching this movie the second time still makes my mind blown with the creative and smart plot. The movie have a very interesting ways to make the audience feel like they are watching the action right infront of their eyes and I can't help myself feeling nervous when they are almost caught by the detective or amaze of how unpredictable their magic trick was. This movie is what excites me the most during the holiday and made me thinking of how possibilities have no limitation if we could see bigger than what most people think.  

Recreating an Artwork Challenge

Marcella, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, 1910

As an icebreaker activities, we are given a partner to recreate a painting that we choose from severals painting provided by our tutor. Me and my partner decided to recreate the painting above by Ernst Kirchner because we thought that it was the easiest to recreate as it doesn't require many props. 

Ernst Kirchner was one of the founders of Die Brucke (The Bridge), a group of expressionist artists consisted of Erich Heckel, Otto Müller, Max Pechstein e Karl Schmidt-Rottluff (Citaliarestauro, 2018). The Bridge was a movement that focus on relating the character or subject to the scene, it centered around the social life of bourgeois people and mostly are portrayed in self-portraits or portraits. The intention of the artists of 'The Bridge' was to reveal the inner truth of the human soul even if it was uncomfortable or shocking. 

'Marcella' was one of severals painting by Ernst Kirchner of a spirited siblings from his neighboorhood that are portrayed with his unique expressionist style (Woodward, 2020). The angle point of view of the painting are unusual as it takes the audience to a taller perspective than the girl. The painting is mostly covered in soft yellowish-green tone of the yellow skin and lime green stripe on the dress with a little red on her slipper and blue for the wall and her socks. The girl's emotion are described well enough with her sleepy eyes and relaxed eyebrow as well as her loose sitting position that in my eyes showed that the girl might be resting while watching television or probably just have her mind wanders off as she gets sleepy. 

Process

To recreate this painting, the materials that we need for the background are green backdrop and paper for the wall and floor, a cat plushie and some bottles. For the costume, we tape a masking tape around the black dress to recreate the striped dress and painted blue paint on the tape for the socks. 

Our tutor suggested that we could make the pose different than the original painting to show a more modern recreation by scrolling through our phone while resting on the couch. I think it was a great idea to make our recreation difference. The picture is taken with a phone. 

Result Picture & Reflection

Overall the final picture looks good but there was severals changes I would make if I could re-do it again. First of all I think that the reclining pose is similar to the original painting and portrayed the relaxed feeling just like Ernst's painting. The angle perspective are also similar with a taller angle than the subject, however if we had more time, I would try to move the couch in different angle to better show the green backdrop and bottles behind, and I also think that the subject's expression should be shown more to look more like the original painting. But besides that, for our 'recreating an artwork' task, I'm quite satisfied with the result. 

References:

Citaliarestauro (2018). Ernst Kirchner artwork - Artistin Marcella (1910) - Citaliarestauro. [online] Citaliarestauro. Available at: https://en.citaliarestauro.com/ernst-kirchner-artwork-artistin-marcella/. 

Woodward, D. (2020). Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Artiste (Marcella), 1910. [online] ELEPHANT. Available at: https://elephant.art/ernst-ludwig-kirchner-artiste-marcella-1910-13072020/.