ADV 1321 Sophie Heidenreich

 When you cant travel during a pandemic but you're in love with the beach what do you do? The answer is simple, you just draw a picture of the place you'd rather like to be in. I decided to draw a landscape picture of my favorite beach in Germany. I realized that the only appropriate motif would be the 'basic beach sunset' picture that every 6 years old has drawn at least twice in kindergarten. In order to convey the soft, warm, and lovely feel of the scenery I decided to use water paint. The soft and smooth aesthetic that water paints create allowed me to perfectly encapsulate the feeling that I felt when seeing this sunset in person. While it does look like a 6-year-old has drawn it, I really enjoyed working on this artwork as it gave me back a piece of my home which I reminisce about daily.  

I recently saw a lot of art pieces where the artist decided to use texture in order to convey emotions, mood, and tone. I was especially fascinated by all the portrays that use abstract colors and texture in order to paint a face. While no features are drawn, they are visible through the use of texture. Inspired by this I wanted to create my own texture portray. While mine did not turn out anywhere near as good as those that I saw I had a lot of fun playing around with different mediums including acrylics and oil paint in order to create this piece. 

 As mentioned in my previous blog post, there was really nothing you could do during Corona in Germany. Thus I had to come up with unique creative ways to spend my time. As we were encouraged to leave the house as little as possible, I decided to have a DIY photoshoot in my room. While the pictures that I took looked good and cool they weren't as artsy as I would have liked them to be. Evidently, my room isn't a professional photo studio and unfortunately, I don't have the props or the equipment to turn it into one. Instead, I decided to use the photos I took and manipulate them via Photoshop in order to give them a cool, artsy, and aesthetic appeal. This was one of the results... I tried to make it look as if it was taken out of a fashion magazine or as if it was a Poster.

Spending winter break at home this year was very hard. Due to the Corona crisis, Germany is now having its fourth lockdown and has remained in a state of lockdown since the beginning of December. In Texas the lockdown rules were extremely flexible and malleable, this strongly contrasted to Germany where no stores were allowed to be open apart from grocery stores, and one person was only allowed to see one other person from a different household. These rules were upheld by the police force and if not followed you could end up with a 20 000 fine or even jail. While this might sound like something taken from a movie it was a harsh reality for more than 80 million people. I often recall how I tried to explain the situation to my American friends here, but no one was truly able to imagine how horrible and strict it really was or still is. Families were forced to spend the holidays alone and you weren't even able to meet up with more than one other person from a different household. To p...

 As previously mentioned I love to ask my friends to assist me in photography. For this artwork, I decided to use skin-friendly glue to apply glitter all over my friend's face. I decided to use silver glitter in order to give it a spacey almost futuristic aesthetic. In order to heighten this feeling I also purchased a white straight hair wig. These elements combined perfectly together to give my model a futuristic modern and aesthetic look. I later manipulated the photos to make them look dynamic and as if the photo is following the movement of the model. I loved how the photos turned and believe that they almost have a mannequin-like appeal. 

Four more blog posts I have to do, then finally I will be through.  Oh lord help me to come up with more ideas, So I can finish this assignment and get some tortillas.  - Sophie H original 

 Over the years the Rap genre has been extremely criticized and labeled as controversial. While some view it as a form of art others see it as vulgar and a waste 'of music'. I personally believe that rap is an extremely unique genre and is a lot deeper and meaningful than often credited for. Evidently, there is a lot of rap that is vulgar and may not be as deep as other songs. Yet I feel that the controversial image of rap overshadows some of the true potentials that certain rap verses carry. In this blog post, I wanted to share some of my favorite rap quotes in order to portray how meaningful and sentimental rap truly can be.  “Next time you see a brother down Stop and pick him up, Cause you might be the next one stuck.” –  Grand Puba ,  Mind Your Business “Never become so involved with something that it blinds you. Never forget where you from; someone will remind you.” –  DMX,   “It’s On “Life without dreaming is a life without meaning.” –  Wale “The...

 One of my art teachers once told me that a good artist is able to see the things that aren't there. Evidently, this is a broad statement and can be interpreted in many ways. In my opinion, art is extremely subjective, and such thing as a good artist or a bad artist doesn't exist. I do believe however that it takes a lot of skill to come up with concepts and visualize them. Especially when considering cartoons or other forms of unique sketches where the artist is pushed to visualize things that they have never seen before in person. I often try to come up with unique concepts like these in order to push my creative boundaries to see what I can create. Here is one of the sketches I have recently created:

 As previously mentioned in my other blog post I love tattoos. While I love the aesthetic I don't always want a motif to be permanent forever. The perfect solution to this is henna. Henna originated in old Egypt almost 9000 years ago and is made from the powder that is extracted from the henna plant. Henna tattoos are nonpermanent but can be visible for up to two weeks. Knowing this I decided to buy myself a henna kit and just mess around with some common visuals usually drawn during a henna session. I decided to draw the eye of Horus. The eye of Horus represents protection, illumination, wisdom, health, prosperity, and the spiritual ability to perceive and interpret the unseen and the seen in the universe. In other words, is symbolizes our third eye. 

Paint. Oh lord do I hate to paint. Well, I love to paint for myself but I am not very good and creating 'good' paintings. My biggest struggle is to wait till all the paint has dried in order to apply a new layer. Sometimes I allow myself to use paint in whatever way I like without particularly aiming to create a 'good' art piece.  I love the texture and messing around with mixing colors in order to create depth and tone. In this piece, I tried to create a field of abstract flowers. While it definitely wasn't my best work I had a lot of fun creating it. 

 Sometimes I try to challenge my inner creative spirit by coming up with original cool creative sketches. These sketches are not meant to resemble anything instead they are made up of creatures that can take form in any way you like to interpret them. For this sketch session, I tried to create creative visuals that resemble animals but arent quite animals. While this wasn't a formal artwork I had loads of fun just messing around and seeing what I could come up with in a limited amount of time. 

Instagram has become extremly boring. Even though I love seeing pictures of my friends I realized that they consistently look the same.  Everyone can smile in a camera and take a picture and even though it's lovely it extremely repetitive. Furthermore, I noticed that people are extremely reluctant to spice up their Instagram game by posting their photos with some cool edits. Most people believe it's too "extra".  Luckily for me, I love being extra so I decided to spice up my Instagram game by posting cool edits I've made. 

  This piece mirrors the social consumption patterns that are currently appearing in our society. The flowers resemble the beauty, the good, and the pleasure in consumption contrasting to the snake which symbolizes the bad, the ugly, and the negative effect of consumption. While the attention is drawn to the flowers first emphasis is placed on the snake which is through the intense use of pattern.  

  Do not touch the art piece (the piece was made and exhibited before Corona) Medium: Bodypaint, Performance art, Dance Size: Unknown This ´piece` consists of a woman who is covered in body positive and empowering imagery and language, while pole dancing. The label `do not touch the art piece` and the painted body, work metaphorically to objectify her as the art piece. Sexual objectification represents the individual primarily as an object of sexual desire rather than as a whole person and plays an important role in gender inequality and exploitation. The performance guides as a female-empowering piece as the imagery and language juxtapose the performance as it is often seen as socially unacceptable to pole dance. The performance redefines social expectations and amplifies the beauty of the dance rather than often being misconceived as something unacceptable.

  Barbies Heaven Medium: Photography, flowers, nipple covers  Size: 60 x 45 cm The surreal photographic print in combination with the bright color consolidation creates a lush and sensual voyeuristic hallucination. Within the piece, the woman is portrayed as an object, with any realistic features that signify that she is a human being covered or distorted. The piece reflects how Society teaches us through media and advertising that women, girls, and sometimes boys can be portrayed as weak and submissive, existing mainly to satisfy others’ needs.

  The flying installation piece is composed of a range of different mediums each independently working towards the message that is being conveyed. The piece uncovers the truth about issues that are commonly claimed to be the result of peer pressure. The various elements such as the cigarette packs with the mouth or the wool that is leading to the headless body extenuate that these issues are the cause of craving social acceptance. While the piece seems to be directed at only teenagers it has a broader audience as acceptance is an emotional demand that every human experience .

  The piece resembles a large collage consisting of red and gold condoms of which each contains an individual face. The golden condoms faces were altered to look like a devil, which juxtaposes the crucifix form in which they were assembled. The piece is a reactional piece towards the Catholic church sex abuse scandals. The piece addresses the hypocrisy of the Catholic church and how they have continuously committed a cardinal sin. My piece is meant to provide an intrinsic voice to the scandals, while it might be unpopular it must be heard.

  The work consists of several small-scaled graffiti drawings on a plastic sheet which work collaboratively to form one large piece, which guides as a lamp screen. In addition to a range of provocative images, the lamp tributes to several political issues, bringing these issues ´into the light´. These include racist, sexist and homophobic images or iconic figures from politics and popular culture. The work explores the many and varied visual symbols that form part of our shared global culture. Symbols with universal significance, such as the skull or symbols denoting various allegiances ideologies, and positions of power.

Line art is everywhere. Whether you see it in an art exhibition, on posters, or even on a person's skin as a tattoo. Line art has become extremely popular and is seen as extremely trendy especially amongst our generations. I personally love to recreate classical art pieces in a line of art style and then reinvent them by giving them modern properties. In this piece, I decided to draw a classical marble statue in a line art design. I then decided to write over it in german and English with different colors. I wasn't too pleased with the results as it seemed slightly overwhelming to me but all my friends loved the piece. I do think that the colors over the line art give it a contemporary tone that is trendy but yet artistic. 

Like most teenagers my age, I spend a lot of time on social media. Not only is it highly entertaining but I love to look at different artsy pages in order to inspire my next artwork. While I am not great at painting or drawing I still try to push myself to work with different mediums. While I don't think that an artist should be able to work with all mediums I do believe you should experiment and see what works and what does not.  I was inspired by this trippy photo I saw on Pinterest and tried to recreate it. Even though it is still a work in progress I am super happy with how it looks so far!

 A long time ago I had a little clothing brand where I would redesign cool trendy street clothes. I would usually use textile spray paint and create stencils and then just spray the design onto the clothes. Lately, I was considering making another clothing project. I love making my own trendy clothes as they are usually a lot less expensive than buying them plus they are unique and solo pieces. My next project is meant to be a trench coat. I want to use a wide range of textiles when creating them like felt or other fabrics. here are some of my drawn designs. 

Here is another series of photos I have edited. For this edit, I chose to use a photo of my boyfriend. He usually hates when I take photos of him and edit them as he thinks that it's very "extra". Regardless it's too much fun for me to stop so he just has to deal with it. ( plus he thinks they always turn out quite cool too) 

 In my free time, I love to experiment with photoshop and other cool creative apps to edit photos. I usually never know how they will end up looking as I just let the process take lead and see where it takes me. For this piece, I decided to edit a photo of myself. I wanted to go for a cool trendy aesthetic look and loved the results. 

I decided to recreate this trippy sketch of these yellow smileys. I thought the art piece was very colorful and bright and would fit perfectly into the collection of pieces I have already drawn.   

Lately, I have really been into using a lot of colors and shapes when creating art pieces. I don't put any pressure on what the final piece is meant to look like I just go with my creative intuition and create things that inspire me and hopefully others.  

 On Mondays I always got many things to do, I get up in the morning and put on my shoes. I work from day to night, and then I sleep tight. - A Sophie H original 

Sometimes I get bored and come up with weird little creative things to do to fight my boredom.  Today was such a day and I created a brainstorming list.  I thought about random things and gave myself one minute to think of as many things that relate to that thing as possible. Here is what I came up with...  

Sometimes I like to experiment with photography and makeup. While I must admit that I have never created a masterpiece I have taken some quite interesting photos.  The photo below is one that I took of my friend whose makeup I have done. I like to experiment with art in order to evoke human emotions. I like to see if my art can evoke a specifically intended emotion in someone. With this piece I wanted to evoke a feeling of discomfort, fear, and maybe even pain. 

One of my favorite things to do is check my Snapchat rewind. it is truly refreshing and exciting to see what I was up to one, two, or even three years ago. While the majority of them are truly cringe-worthy others are really funny and entertaining. While I won't expose one of my self-made Miley Cyrus music videos from three years ago I will share this... This is a rewind of the psychedelic art exhibition I went to one year ago.  I was especially mesmerized by this cool cat. I couldn't really explain what drew me to it but I thought it was a very refreshing and modern way to draw a cat.