Research & More Research

This week I spent a lot more time reading scholarly articles, studies, and other information for my research paper. In the beginning I was a little okay a lot, all over the place. I wanted to cover a lot about progression and growth for an artist and what we can do to make it happen, but was also branching off into themes of social media, mental health in artists and the way those things interact with each other but it was too much for one paper and I ended up stripping it back a lot.

I always enjoy diving into art history, and while articles, essays, journals etc. on databases tend to be a bit dry I did come across some interesting things (non related to my paper) I wanted to share.

The first was I couldn't find much of anything of what I was looking for on social media and art. I guess the "scholars" haven't really delved here but I think they should. It has had a huge impact on the art industry and artists themselves.

Second and I learned a lot about how women are very far behind in equity in the art industry. Much more art is sold by men all around the world than art created by women.Many shows will have a lot more male participants than women. At auctions, women can usually only get a fraction of what a male artist can get, it is extremely rare for a painting by a woman to sell for over 8 figures but not for men. When you think of famous artists how many men can you name vs. women? Why is this? Some interesting that I read was about how artistic qualities are more feminine and therefore more expected in a woman meaning its less impressive than it would be for a man. I could write so much about THAT.

The third thing I will stick with was a study done about artists who are eccentric have their artworks favored higher.

They did a study where they had two groups, one they told the group about the artist, the other they didn't showed them their work and then had then rate it. The people who were told about the artists being eccentric rated the pieces higher and enjoyed the artwork more. The examples they used were Van Gogh and Lady Ga Ga. It was cool, maybe I should try and be more interesting?

Anyway that enough writing, on to some art.

I spent my time working on a detailed and well rendered turn around of the character I had a concept for from last week.