Good Day, Sunshine

It's been bea-u-ti-FUL for a past week or two here at Syracuse. The temperature has ranged from around 67-80 degrees and hasn't been humid at all. It's so nice to just lay outside in the quad and not think about final projects and exams. It's almost like meditating- clearing everything out of your mind and taking a breather. Now that I think about it, this past winter was fairly a warm one. We didn't get a tremendous amount of snow or had that bad of wind chills. This winter was kind of like winter back at home- home for me is Long Island by the way. I don't know if I'm just being positive because the semester is coming to an end but I really, really loved my sophmore year. I loved all the classes I took, the illustration professors I met, the new friends I made, the WEATHER of course (especially now), and even the struggles I went through. Syracuse is definately my second home and has become a great comfort zone. Though it is comfortable here, I still feel like there are many new things to discover and and new paths to take. In terms of my career, I still don't know what I want to become but I think taking many classes according to my major gave me a certain path to follow. At least, now I know what direction I'm walking towards. Even though I'm super happy and positive now, I'm sure that I'm going to go back to my dorm and cry over the million artwork that must be completed in the next week and a half. But "s`all good"... the extra stretch is always the hardest but the most memorable part of the semester. I decided that I'm going to enjoy the next two final weeks.

Art is Not "Easy."

Many people get the misconception that visual art and design is really easy and doesn't require a lot work or thinking. Yes, it's true that you can listen to music while you paint where as you cannot when you read 50 pages from a textbook, but I believe that the level of work and intensity is just about the same. I know this for a fact because I take as many academic courses as art courses. It doesn't matter what your major is or how you challenge yourself; as long as you're getting challenged and solving a problem in order to comprehend something, you are learning. I think that a student has the power to bring meaning into that major or class.
Before I digress, let me explain why art is not easy. If you read my previous entries, you would recognize that I am an illustration major. Underneath the brilliant layers of acryllic and oil paint, there is a thicker underpainting of information and research. Though many illustrations consist of many unproportional, extra exaggerated caricatures and funky galores, it is VERY important that they still have the universal theme of what objects should appear as. For example, when exaggerating a face, you still have to know the bone structures beneath the skin because people still need to be able to recognize what works in real life. My art teacher in high school once told me the cliche saying, "in order to break the rules, you must know the rules." I believe that this is true because if there weren't any basic structure or formula to something, there would be no point in making a statement at all. Hence, researching movement, anatomy, environment and other means of nature is very important when creating art.
Last week my professor told me that physically making the art takes a very small amount of time compared to the time that is invested in reaching and planning out how it will work. He had been working on an artwork with animals for a month however, he spent 3-4 weeks on just studying the movement and habitat of animals and just about a day to actually paint it.
Because illustrators are time efficient and have to do many projects at the same time, it is a big deal when an artwork require a lot of time and effort. If you calculate everything, we really don't have enough time and have to constantly be working. I don't know about you but I really don't think that art is easy at all. But because I am an artist, I have the responsibility to keep creating something new. As long as my effort has great results and enough impact to stir other people, I think that time, money and energy are all worth the anticipation and struggle in the end.