Le Tombeau De Couperin
Dreams vs. Reality
The category I chose for my second to last project was dreams vs. reality. I loved it, because it gave me a chance to explore a concept that I’ve been working on for a few years, but with more emphasis in the past semester. On the outset, my piece is of a whale swimming/floating in a school gym (representative of my high school gym in Indianapolis) with a boarder around the image of piano music. Every element of the piece was carefully thought through though. To get to the basis of my concept you have to know a bit about me and my intense dislike for crowds- my friends know me as the girl who passes out at concerts and panics when surrounded by too many people; I can easily become overheated and overwhelmed in crowds. So in high school, school functions like assemblies or basketball games etc. were not terribly bad but they were not always my favorite either. When I would sit in the stands bored and slightly assaulted by all the noise and action around me I would just let my mind wander and try to find calm places…and one day I suppose I was thinking of the beach and had a brilliant vision in my mind of a sea creature floating through my gym. I do not think I ever explored the concept further and it lay dormant until this past year when it reemerged. I finally felt like I had the skill to make that dream into a reality in my art- I wanted to make something beautiful and calming and majestic. I really still want to paint it, big and with people, but for now I like how I’ve explored the concept.
I did a lot of research for this project- a lot of printing out pictures of gyms and getting books with photography on whales and lots and lots of sketches. I even had to start one draft of my “final” piece over, luckily that was earlier on. In the end my major decisions were to use pen to really get the piece organized and add depth, and use watercolour over it- even with all my research I just do not have the resources yet to make the piece how I want entirely in colour. I made the whale transparent by allowing the lines of the gym behind it to show through- thus giving it a dream-like quality. I enhanced the space the whale was in by watercolouring the floor with light reflections like one would find on an underwater surface and giving the whole piece a blue-toned aquatic feel.
Around the main image I explored the concept further by adding a new element- music. I transferred pieces of piano composed by Ravel and Chopin that I particularly like; piano music is often very relaxing to me- perfect for a calm, underwater scene. The music is not easily legible and its composition adds visual interest around the boarder of the piece. It could be compared to whale song- beautiful but as far as I am aware, we still cannot decipher it. The boarder was toned a light blue to tie it in with the gym/whale images, and an additional white boarder was reveled after tape was removed to finish the entire piece.
Enjoy! And sorry for the stuffy language, I had to do a report on it too.
A disclaimer though, my camera really didn’t capture the true colours of the piece- the picture I have up will be changed once I have a better version- there are more nuances to the colours than in the picture- more shades and much much more vibrant. And I’m sorry it’s a bit blurry! Better picture soon!
Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
Tags: cathedral, gym, le tombeau de couperin, underwater, whale
No Responses Yet to “Le Tombeau De Couperin”