Art-MOOC Assigment 2. Fantasy and you

In june 2013 I started a new MOOC on Coursera: Introduction to art: Concepts and techniques by StatePenn. I just love MOOC’s. Anyway, I thought it would be nice to place my assignments in this part of my site. So, here’s the first assignment.

Assignment details

For this assignment we have to create an artwork that demonstrates our understanding of the Fantastic Art Movement. Our artwork should be a personal approach to Fantastic Art that in some way addresses the concepts and/or techniques of the movement and its artists.  In a brief Artist Statement, we will describe the idea behind our artwork, our medium, process and the overall intentions.

My artist statement

Title work: Claustrophobia

This week, I made a collage out of photographs and a drawing. As far as I can remember, this is the first collage I ever made, and I liked doing it very much. I printed the photo’s in the right size, but I cut each piece separately. You can see that more clearly in the enlargement.

The photo of the building is made by me and is the building I used to work in. The background is the inside of a hot air balloon which I also took. The photo of the hands and the drawing of the tin can lid, I borrowed from the internet.

The story I want to get across is a claustrophobic feeling. The first time I went into the building I was kind of afraid of it falling down and I actually wanted to get out. When I was in the hot air balloon and I looked up, I also had a feeling of being surrounded. Although I’m not actually a claustrophobic person, I do get a little nauseous when looking at my own collage.

I chose to make this specific art piece because I frequently dream about it, unfortunately.

Peer assessment

Every week, a minimum of two students perform a ‘peer assessment’ of each others works. first, there is an overall evaluation/feedback on five issues (5 points each, a total of 25 points possible) and the possibility to add additional comments or feedback.

The five standard issues
1. Concept, the idea behind your art piece, ability to be creative and telle stories through images. I scored 4 out of 5.
2. Technical skill, your ability to use art elements, mediums and techniques. I scored 5 out of 5.
3. Composition, placement of image whitin picture plane and use of space. I scored 5 out of 5.
4. Craftsmanship/presentation, the quality of your application and use of various tools and mediums; visibility of your artwork. I scored 5 out of 5.
5. Artist statement, the description of your artwork, the story behind it; explains your intentions for creating the artwork. I scored 4 out of 5.

So, I got 23 out of 25 possible points. Needless to say, I’m pretty happy with these scores!

The additional comments or feedback I got

• peer 1 → While the top part of the picture does give me a feeling of claustrophobia, for me personally, the bottom part (with the white part of the building, glass and trees) does not continue that line of thought. A suggestion would be to have only kept the darker tall part of the building, and filled the rest of the space with something that enhances the feeling of being trapped, for example a fence or something like that. Overall, though, well done and well thought out.
• peer 2 → Hello! I thought this was a very interesting piece. Once I read your artist statement it made a lot of sense to me. I enjoyed that the use of the hot air balloon created a radial perspective that brought the eye into the center of the collage. I think the concept could have been pushed a little more. Maybe used a different perspective of the building–maybe a perspective that wasn’t on ground level. Excellent craftsmanship, very clean, and trimmed well. Overall eye catching and enjoyable! (Hope that helps!)
• peer 4 → outstanding job keep up the good work

For me that was very usefull feedback! Especially the part about the bottom part of my collage. I could have done more with that. I’ll do that next time :-).