Author: Eva Antebi-Lerman

This semester i’ve learned how to better analyze and share my artwork through a written lens. I created a website to host a mix of paintings and pieces of writing from the semester including a podcast about titling artwork.Writing about my artwork helped me think through changes I wanted to make and inspired me to move forward professionally in the art world.

This course increased my awareness for rhetorical situation and took me out of the bubble of essay writing. I’m looking forward to continue experimenting writing in different genres during the capstone.

https://evaantebilerman.wixsite.com/oils

Sometimes my friends come over to my house and try their hand at oil painting. I know how to guide them through setting up a palette, provide them materials to paint, and help them choose a reference to work from. What I haven’t yet discovered is the “correct” amount of information to share with them. Do they want to hear about the three waves of pigment (the natural pigments, the industrial pigments, and the dye-based pigments)? These waves influence choices of color mixing and help balance intensity when new painters are starting out. Do they need the explanation of how this influences the way I recommend setting up a palette? Do they want to hear the names of the colors and see different ways of mixing them? Is it too much new information all at once? Is a hands-off approach better? Do they just need an open space to branch out and try something new?

I’m not sure if my friends are interested in this level of detail when I’m throwing so many new things at them. Sometimes I decide to just give them the space to play until they ask for help. Even though it might be too much to process for my friends in such a short time, I think that the average bored retiree–or anyone who is willing to take the time and put forth the financial investment–would definitely be interested.

For my third experiment I am constructing a how to paint piece called The Committed Hobbyist—A Twist on the Traditional Venetian Technique. I plan to guide readers through the historical relevance of waves of pigment, the importance of lighting and the factors important in establishing a good space, and finally the steps of setting up a pallet and painting.

As my audience is primarily older folk with time and money to spend, I will make this tutorial accessible to them in a paper manual format as well as a digital PDF format. It will be connected to a youtube channel with a few guiding videos.

In my research in how to organize a how-to tutorial, I learned that a good tutorial should be practical and specific. Avoiding walls of text is an essential aspect of a good tutorial and—if applicable—the tutorial should also include pictures. I think most good tutorials are “skimmable”—they provide a ton of information, but highlight what you really need to know if you are just trying to get the gist of what to do. The formatting should be varied to stress the key points and to allow the interested reader to dive into the piece if they so choose. I will try to organize my “how to” in a visual, easy-to-read manner that conveys information about every step of the painting process from deciding to try painting, to what paint to buy, to finishing the last brushstrokes. Additionally, I plan to make a few brief video accompaniments of things that need to be explained in movement instead of the typed word or photo. However, this will not be a “do what i’m doing,” kind of tutorial–it will instead try to give the viewer the tools and initiative to try something themselves.

A few key points to remember in writing a how-to tutorial:

• Start with the importance of the skill that the tutorial is teaching–establish why your reader needs to keep reading and ensure that your reader is in your intended audience by giving them a quick summary
• Consider discussing historical relevance and background information
• Dive into your first steps, and integrate them with photos! What should the reader DO? How should this change the way they are currently acting?
• Continue to list out the step-by-step approach while adding in photos and explaining the importance of each step
• Finish up with a few further sources if the reader wants more information on the topic
• Verbally support your reader to follow through and do it!

I titled this blog post, I title my paintings, I title my papers. Why do we as humans feel the need to label and title people, objects, and concepts? Going off of this, I plan to create a podcast for other artists or curious members of the art world surrounding the idea of titling artwork and why this may or may not be conventional in different spheres.

Within my art practice, I have struggled with the decision of whether or not to title my work. As a general rule, I title my work to help me organize it and to give the viewer some concept to chew on, but something about titling my work has always felt unnatural. It’s a painting, choose to look at it or not.

I want to then take a historical approach that looks at both famous painters who do title their work and famous painters who leave their work untitled. Monet created a series of water-lily paintings of the same pond over different parts of the year. He titled those works “Water-Lilies” followed by the number of the series. For example, “Water-Lilies 29.” His other works (and many artists from the impressionist era) titled their works based on the place that they were painting. Contrastingly, many artists today don’t title their works or they choose to construct titles based on abstract concepts (which is primarily what I do in my practice). These can play an important role in the way that we as viewers see the work.

In this podcast I want to look at the affordances and constraints of titling works and the impact that this practice has on the gallery world. Does artwork need titles? Does it need signatures in the bottom right-hand corner? Why do we as artists sometimes choose to lock our artwork into a specific title?

The following portion of this post will expand on the conventions of writing a podcast and important pieces to include.

Notes to remember in building a podcast:

• Podcasts describe stories verbally and in a sequence of voices and perspectives.
• Be sure to pepper bits of informal conversation throughout (especially at the beginning before getting into the meat of the episode).
• Be sure to switch voices frequently to make the episode feel like an easy conversation.
• Have one person consistently narrate throughout the entire episode

Step-by-step how to write a podcast instructions:

1. Open up with introducing you podcast and what you will be talking about today over a musical intro that remains consistent between episodes.
2. Hook your listeners with a short anecdote of how and why you began writing the story.
3. Lead into the bulk of your first segment.
4. Bring in a guest or two who provide alternative perspectives and act as a primary sources.
5. Use sounds or musical bits to guide your listener through the way you want them to feel during transitions.
6. Transition to your second segment.
7. Bring in a guest or two who provide alternative perspectives and act as primary sources.
8. Tie together your two segments and review the episode’s purpose.
9. Consider bringing in a final relevant perspective.
10. Finish up with your closing remarks.
11. End with a musical finish—possibly the same as the music in your intro.

I plan to use this recipe to organize my podcast. My favorite podcast off all time is called 99% invisible. In their podcasts they look into obscure histories of words, technologies, design that shape the world we live in. I want to use their podcasts as a jumping off point in creating the tone and the pacing of my podcast on titling artwork.

This weekend I listened to a few episodes of the podcast This American Life. I experienced the linguistic and aural components, but anyone who ventured to their website would be introduced to visual, gestural, and spacial components as well. While listening, I focused the way that the storytellers were guiding my reactions with the help of aural components. Background sounds, stretches of music, and simple tones were very significant aspects of my experience.

The president of the environmental fraternity that I am a part of sent this email this weekend. The email is organized and easy to follow, the survey and form stick out in blue, and the tone conveys warmth. I think that this is one example of an effective email that uses visual, spacial, and linguistic components.

I read a chapter of The Social Construction of Drug Scares by Craig Reinarman. Reinarman organized each page formally so it blends into the background and the reader is able to focus on the text. As is common in formal papers, the linguistic, visual, spacial modes to organized the information.

I also went on twitter this weekend. I spent time looking at how people express themselves differently. Some give life updates, some share their political standing, but I am particularly interested in a project I talked a friend of mine into doing. Every time she experiences a sexist act in her life she tweets about it. On Saturday she was harassed by a group of men two feet behind her on the sidewalk—this is the tweet. She used linguistic, spacial, and visual components in the tweet to better convey her message. The colon and the line separation between the two clauses explains how the linguistic elements should be read and shadow her tone.

I watched A Nation of Scofflaws, a film about the prohibition era, for one of my classes this week. It is the only source that I found that used all five modes of communication.

I am surprised that only one of my sources used all five modes and that I only selected texts that were (at least partially) linguistic. These texts feel easier to capture, but also in many ways leave out the artistic and visual aspects of my life. I spent a lot of time this weekend looking at the ways that artists divide images across canvases in multi-panel paintings. Yet, until now I didn’t think to include those searches in this post.

Juxtaposed against one another, the podcast and the tweet displayed the most differences. Listening to voices through the hour-long format of the podcast was a very different experience than reading the short but powerful tweet. Both used linguistic components. Additionally, the podcast also included aural components, while the tweet was visual and spacial.