'Real' Chicago

In If These Walls Could Talk, Unit 2, we learned about revolt murals, different types of mediums and techniques. Artists who were inspiring that we studied are JR, who uses different media - mostly wheat pasting - in each country he visits, and Banksy, who uses spray paint and the trompe l'oeil technique. We practiced the mediums and techniques of watercolor, block-printing, wheat pasting, gels, acrylic paint, and more which helped in deciding what to use in the action project. For the action project we were put into a group of five to sketch a mural idea, and then each member chose a media to use to recreate two parts of the mural on swatches. My medium, watercolor wash, was fun to use but became difficult when it came down to small details. Another problem I faced was with my group when we had to come up with a finalized sketch. Eventually we were successful and with the help of our teacher we were able to create a mural conveying the message we wanted. It was a lot of fun experimenting with different mediums and techniques and to create a mural of our own. I'm definitely looking forward to creating this mural full-scale. Please enjoy our sketch, my swatches, and my artist statement below.

TS
'Real' Chicago
12/15
11" x 3.5" and 11" x 3.5"
Watercolor Wash

AJ, JM, MS, TS, TC. Sketch. 12/15

In our groups sketch you see the skyline of Chicago and five tears with something different inside, burning money, the CTA train map, gang signs, the bean, and signs/flags. This is meant to be what people see as the 'real' Chicago and what actually is the real Chicago. Each tear has a different meaning, three good and two bad. The two negatives are the one with burning money, which is supposed to be a representation of the corrupt politics and brutality, and the one with gang signs, which represents the gangs and violence that is present in the city. The three positives are the one with the CTA train map, showing the great public transportation system we have, the one with the bean, proving we have more beautiful architect and culture then what is popular, and the one with many signs/flags, representing the acceptance our city has regardless of race, religion, or sexuality. We were strongly inspired by Banksy and his use of trompe l'oeil and our unit 1 action projects. The aspects that had been taken from our previous action project had been the skyline, trompe l'oeil, and CTA train lines. It took a long time to finalize our sketch since there had been so many aspects we wanted to cram in. The only idea that we originally wanted that ended up not incorporating had been the use of chains AJ used in her previous action project. It was a really great concept, holding Chicago down to what outsiders want it to look like, but was unable to fit in the piece in a fluid way. We did love the skyline and the trompe l'oeil like tears. Since there had been five tears we gave one to each individual to come up with something to represent the tear. It gave us the freedom to include something each of us wanted adding a unique touch to it. This mural is both a revolt mural against the steriotypical view of Chicago from an outsiders perspective, and tribute mural of the true essence of Chicago and who we are as a city.

TS. Swatch One. 12/15

TS. Swatch Two. 12/15

The material I chose was watercolor wash because I have past experience with it and I've seen beautiful watercolor paintings. It gives bright vibrant colors and adds depth, very important to our piece, to the image. In class we learned how water colors are best for giving a painting or drawing depth and texture, also its ease to mix is a great asset. It helps convey the message through its depth which shows we are more than what is on the surface and the colors that blend show we are one. The swatches ended up looking messy and with smudges in places that had lots of detail. It was very difficult to control my medium because of how easy it is to blend and I did not have a small enough brush for the small details. In the end the swatches did not turn out how I hoped because the colors weren't as bright as I hoped and the details were far to difficult to paint. I believe if I had a smaller finer brush I think it would have worked. We will not be using this in our final mural because of the lack of bright colors and difficulties with the detail, which is a major part of our mural. It also didn't present the realistic look we were going for with the skyline.

JM. Swatch One. 12/15

JM. Swatch Two. 12/15

AJ. Swatch One. 12/15

AJ. Swatch Two. 12/15

My group decided on using wheat pasting with a laser print image and stencils with sharpie oil based markers as the final medium because those seemed to of worked best out of all the mediums chosen. We are still doing the trompe l'oeil technique because we believe it is the best way to get our message out. The wheat paste will give the realistic feel we were going for and would be used for the entire skyline and water. Since the image would be laser print the colors would already be there bright though slightly matte. Stencils would then be used for the small details that were too difficult to do with watercolor, pumice gel, or acrylic paint. It would create a clean cut images for our representations and tears with eye catching hues. We highlight the city for what it is with the skyline and positive traits in bright and vibrant colors while the negative traits will be in darker more matte like colors.