Streams of Thoughts 1: Creativity

I used to think that sketching and painting are the "highest" form of art. I admire the flowing of colors in western paintings and the beautiful transition of light in sketching; however, I used to look down on modern drawings because I thought they are meaningless.

When I first came to America, I learn one semester of drawing and I did not like it. I remember one assignment was drawing the outline of a hand. I tried to study the structure of hand and did a precise sketching. However, I got a B because the teacher said, "do not copy your hand, you should let your pencil 'flow' on the paper." We did at lot of creative drawings with whatever material we wanted to use; I could not grasp the idea of abstraction and hated my own drawing of object "without basic 3 D structure".

Everything changed after I started taking Sculpture class, and I started to understand the idea of Creativity. You can use any materials to make whatever form you what in Sculpture class, and to me it seems even bolder than Drawing class. I tried hard to pull the long-shut door of creativity and I was amazed by what I found. I saw a girl dropping pigments on broken glass, I saw a person embedding grass on a hand model, and I found myself turning a big chunk of clay into a  real size human head with explosion on one side of its face and newspaper coming out of it.

By breaking the fetter of material, I was able to think outside the box and open the door of creativity. Once the door is wide open,  there is no way to resist the fantasy world behind it. I started to explore new materials such as wax, clay, wire, everything.

I did do a lot of creative things for fun in the past, such as paint a T-shirt and draw on a turtle shell, but this time, it is WITH PURPOSE. I'm trying to search my own art style by trying to combine different materials. I worked with snow in the winter like I was carving a marble sculpture; right now I'm doing a clay head which is going to eventually turn to half metal half clay; I'm excited to try a painting on canvas using watercolor style combined with sketching; I plan to carve a watermelon into a cluster of roses this summer.

Albert Einstein once said, "Imagination is more important than knowledge." I truly believe it. I was once narrow-minded, and now I'm eager to try everything. I believe that the first step to achieve something is to dream about it; creativity is not only important to art but also crutial to life. The idea of exploring and thinking outside the box can apply to any aspect of our lives.

I'm excited to do more creative art projects, and I'm excited about my life!

Cartoons for the Crane Newspaper

I was invited to draw several cartoons for our school newspaper, Crane-Clarion Newspaper, early this year. Now, I'm a cartoonist for the Crane and doing illustrations for various topics.

All these cartoons are sort of ironic and related to social events. From Japanese Manga style, I have gone a long way and explored various art styles from pure sketching, painting, to western style cartoon. I have never tried this western cartoon style before and I always study numerous cartoons online to prepare of one frame of cartoon on the newspaper. The magic of life is that you catch the opportunities on your journey and they open a door for you to a brand-new world. 

Detroit Wire Car Project

Before the Spring Break, I was working very hard on a Wire Car project. The Wire Car project is for the world first Wire Car Cruise in front of Detroit Institute of Art Musem.

This is my first time working with wire. I learned a lot about mechanics by doing this project and I started to get familiar with wire. Making the wire car requires lots of mechanic design, such as how to connect the door so that we can close and open it; how to balance the springs so that the car will bounce a little when it is being pushed.

Saddly, I had to travel to New York during Spring Break and was not able to attend the Wire Car Cruise. Anyway, I enjoyed every minute working on this project and it was a totaly new experience!

A Little History of My Art Journey

Art is always an important part of my life. I started drawing since I was in Third Grade. At that time, I was so in love with Japanese Manga and I wanted to learn sketching in order to explore the fantasy of Manga. As other art students, I started with drawing apples, hundreds of apples; then I learned how to draw spheres, cubes, and cylinders; later I drew mostly plaster figures and real human faces. Now, I'm exploring various kinds of art materials from clay to turtle shells, and different styles from watercolor to paint.

I was going through my picture album online and I found some interesting pieces of art that I did during the past several years. I hope you enjoy the pictures and the little pieces of my art history that I'm going to tell you.

This is a huge painting I did about 4 years ago. It's about 30 inches wide and 47 inches long. At that time, I haven't learned any painting skills and I just copied the colors exactly as what I saw. Why is this painting so huge? Because I made it for the window on the roof of my dad's car! The funny thing about that car is that it's name is Citroen Picasso. The car gets so hot in the summer when the sunlight comes in from the window and my dad asked me if I can draw a painting to block the sunlight. We are still using it every summer.

 This is my first drawing of architecture and is also my first time using pen as a drawing material. I copied this one from a book, but I later drew a pen sketching of my host family's house by myself and gave them as a Thanksgiving gift.

 



This is an illustration in my own novel that I wrote 5 years ago. I have written 4 novels so far and one of them is published. This one is about a story of ancient Chinese monster (a fox with nine tails) turns into human and becomes a famous artist in an non-existent Bermuda island. In the end the monster destroys himself; the Bermuda island is cursed and numerous ships sink there for no reason every year. This drawing shows the influence of Japanese manga on me art style. The left is the ancient monster and the right is the princess on the island.                                                                                                                                              

 I tried to draw on a T-shirt with acrylics 2 years ago. I gave this T-shirt to my best friend as a birthday gift.

This painting is on a Turtle Shell!!! Chinese people sometimes eat a certain kind of turtle with soft shell and they keep the dry shells. I got this from my grandma 3 years ago and I decided to turn it into an art piece!

This is a painting I did 4 years ago. After graduating from elementary school, I spent one month on a summer camp with a bunch of highschool seniors who were preparing to go to art school. I drew 10 hours a day and it sounds kind of crazy! On the summer camp, I mainly did sketching but also started to learn a little about painting. Those highschool seniors gave me a nick name "Little Girl". I cherish the memory with them because those seniors were working so hard to chase their dreams and looking forward to their future. Although I did not quite understand at that time, I shared the excitement with them.                  

My snow sculptures

I keep the tradition to make a snow sculpture every winter. In my hometown in China, it hardly snows in the winter, but since I came to Michigan two years ago, there has never been any snow shortage! : )

I made a Sphinx in China 3 years ago, a Michael Jackson two years ago and a Lincoln last year. I did Lincoln after I took one semester of sculpture at school, and it's amazing to see how much my skill has improved after just one semester of training. I have found my passion in sculpture, because sculpture is not limited to the kind of materials that I use, and I can fully express my idea just like when I draw on paper.

Michigan snow is powedery, and I have to add water on it before I pack them. It took me 8 hours total to finish the Lincoln sculpture. I was completely exhausted when I finally finished it, but I enjoyed every moment working in the snow. 

I haven't decided what theme I'm going to do this winter.I think Marilyn Monroe will be a cool one!

My current sculpture: Behind the Mask

Right now I'm working on a sculpture called Behind the Mask.The right side is going to be a Beijing Opera mask and the left side is going to be a metal skull just like the one in Terminator. The whole head is made out of clay and is going to be painted with metal glaze and regular clay paint. I have got a fansy Opera crown, too.

I was inspired by a Japanese modern poem about the traditional Japanese culture and the industrialization of Japan. I think China is also an excellent example of rich ancient culture meeting rapid technology advancement. Since I'm a Chinese, I feel extrememly fascinated about this topic and decided to embody this interesting contrary of tradition and modernization in this sculpture.

I have been working on this sculpture for about 2 hours every day for more than two weeks now. Hopefully I will finish carving it next week and finish this whole sculpture in May.

Enjoy the pictures and I hope you can feel my excitement and passion in this sculpture! :D