Title: Beauty Myth Medium: Block Print Size: 15x23cm The artist wanted to challenge herself, she chose Beauty Myth/Role of Women as her theme. In this piece she wanted to show of how society expects the role of women and how they are supposed to look like. Photoshop, filters and internet has made a big sick influence in today's society. Expecting women to have very beautiful looks and expecting them to have the perfect body.
Planning I wanted to do something with society and something different from other people's themes. I looked up the themes and what really caught my attention were family tree and beauty myth themes. I was debating on both of those themes but like I wanted to do something different from the rest of the class I chose Beauty myth. I wanted to connect society and the beauty myth as one and make my piece relate to it. I later started doing my sketch of what my piece was going to look like.
Process 1. First I made my drawing of what my piece was going to look like. 2. Then I did the Graphite transfer to the block 3. Then I started to go over the design in the block, making the designs more darker 4. I started to carve in the block with the special tools that were provided in the class 5. Once the piece was carved, I later put the water based ink into the block and then making prints on a white sheet of paper 6. Repeating the process, until I get a nice clean print of the design
Artistic Inspiration I was inspired by Mucha and I incorporated Art Nouveau into this German Expressionism piece. I was inspired by the piece of Mucha named "Champenois". I wanted to incorporate the lush of designs and flowers around the beautiful young woman I drew in the center of the piece. Also, as the block print was similar to German Expressionism I was inspired by the artwork of Kathe Kollwitz, her use of harsh lines expressing emotions through her pieces.
Meaning behind the Piece The meaning behind this piece is demonstrating of how society has an expectation of women's appearances. Society has made a very sick influence expecting how women should look in today's day. Women shouldn't feel worried when they put certain clothes on, they shouldn't either worry when they either have makeup or no make up at all. They shouldn't worry if they look pretty for others to see, because women are beautiful just the way they are. Respectfully, I had this problem and questioned myself if my clothing is nice or do I need makeup, I still do but not as much like before, but you know what? Society shouldn't label women or men or anyone as they dress or what they wear, because we are all the same. When time comes to an end we are all going to the same destiny.
Reflection During this project it took me a lot of patience. Patience was like my priority for this project. Due to this, is because I did a lot of designs and I had to be very careful with the designs and be very precautious with every single detail. What I struggled the most with the block print was carving out the excess I didn't want to show during the printing process. I had problems during this process, because I was afraid I was going to carve through the block and make a hole. Basically, I had to be very precautious with the details to be very clean and noticeable during the printing process and I had to be very careful not to carve through it. One of my biggest failures was when I carved out one of the details when I shouldn't have. Overall, I was really satisfied how my final piece came out, just how I imagined it.