Completed Oil Series-

I am pleased to say that I finally finished my oil painting’s in preparation for mu uni interviews. Overall, I am happy with the final outcome, although it has definitely inspired me to move onto creating more contemporary work, which isn’t totally revolved around just painting’s.

I’d say this is my personal favourite out of the three, due to it being up to date with recent news. Furthermore, I like the style of the painting and the expression, which my cousin expresses. 

I like the pattern of the boot, which creates a marching sort of movement within the painting. 

I feel that the bullet holes are really effective on the skin of this portrait however I am not so sure abut the blood, which is dripping from them. 

Portraiture Experimentation- December 13th

Recently, I have been experimenting with the style of my painting, and as you can see below, I have been choosing to partially paint the portrait. I thought about how emotions can change so suddenly, and so I thought it would be fitting, if there were to be areas of the face missing, to represent the disclarity of emotions.

As you can see below, the series is coming together however I do feel that the painting to the right doesn’t work as well as the piece on the left, and so I will probably not be including it as part of a series, but as a piece of experimentation. I feel that I need to keep producing more work, so that this unit can reach a certain level of clarity.

I have also recently spoke to Joe, who gave me some useful ideas for developing my work and so I will soon be working on a much bigger scale or I will create a sort of time-lapse painting; all will be explained when I start it.

First Study of Series Two -24th November

Today I began a new series of paintings, which are based around my cousin’s image. As I said initially in the planning of my work, I wanted to create series of paintings, which are all related. In this series, I would say that my painting style looks illustrative and for once, I am fairly happy with what i’ve done so far.

As you can see, I have documented the process of my painting, so that if i go wrong, i can see where I made my mistakes.

 I decided to add a complimentary blue background, which usually looks good with the tones of colours, which I chose to use for the skin colours. Below is the finished piece, along with some close-ups of the detail.

I might decide to go on and take this painting onto illustrator and add more effects onto the image as a sort of experimentation.

 

Lino Printing – 19th of September

In the morning, we were given a piece of linoleum and a v-shaped chisel, and then instructed to gouge into the material, using a photo or sketch as reference. I decided that I would use the photo, which can be seen below, as i felt it had plenty of detail and really captured the idea of ‘documenting the day’. It took some time getting “the hang” of cutting into the linoleum, but once I fathomed the technique, I began to really enjoy what I was doing.

After some time, I decided that I would create some prints with my lino drawing to get an idea of what it would look like and then decide whether any more detail could be added in order for improvement. As you can see below, the lino prints turned out very well, although I plan to add more detail and will be posting the final results, when I have had the chance to spend more time on it.

After making my Lino print, i decided that I would carry out some research into some contemporary artist’s , who are known for Lino prints, and I came across a man called Justin Kramer, who has made some interesting pieces. From looking at these Lino drawings, I would like to make some Lino Portraits myself, as well as adding more detail to my current Lino.

 

 

 

 

China Town, Manchester- 17th of September

After taking pictures and sketches in the town or Blackburn, I decided that I wanted to document the day in a different place so that I could compare the people and surroundings and more importantly gather more material for the project. I created a really interesting set of photos in China Town and personally I really liked the vibrancy and the colourfulness, which I was able to capture.

 

Film Making- 15th of September

We were given a brief introduction about film and what frames per second means. We then got to look at a roll of film for a trailer for the Spider-Man movie as well as viewing a film made by an artist called Len Lye, who is known for putting moths directly onto film to create a really interesting and abstract piece. As you can see in the picture below, we were all given some blank film, and instructed to draw what we liked onto it with sharpie pens. As you can see in the picture below, we had to draw onto really small sections, and for every twenty four frames we drew, it counted for one second of the film.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As you can see in the picture above, I have tried to create The Big Bang; the picture gradually changes from light to dark and below are some shots from the video of everyone’s film put together.

Below is the final and completed video of everyone’s film. Personally I think the whole video worked really well, and I like the music, which has been added to give an old- fashioned style effect.

 

‘Defining Drawing’ Lecture- 8th September

On the third day of college, we had a lecture about being “experimental”. We looked at some contemporary artists, such as Tracy Emin, who is most known for “My Bed”; a modern piece, which you can see in the picture below. Personally, I really liked this piece of work, and it helped to gain a better understanding of what contemporary art represents. Jamie informed us that there are three things to consider when it comes to understanding art.

• Art is always contemporary in the time it is made

• Art has always been experimental

• Nothing is new. Everything is new.

I thought that the idea of art being contemporary opened my eyes as one might presume that contemporary art is something which surrounds the present, however, if we look back through time, every piece of artwork has been contemporary at some point. After leaving the lecture, I felt inspired to create my own work from the research, which he had carried out the previous day. I wanted to take Emin’s pirincipal’s of being bold and different, and channel that into my own work; I wanted to create a piece which had a true meaning to it. And so, I decided to create a few sketches, which might inspire me to go on to create a painting. Below, you can see some of the different stages of development, which took place in my drawing.

In the piece above, I wanted to portray the variety of emotions, which I witnessed, whilst carrying out my research in Backburn; some people seemed happy, whilst the majority of people walked down the streets with their heads down and a vacant expression on their faces. I thought this was really interesting, and I felt that it was a big contrast to the school children in the Mitchell and Kenyon short films, who seemed excited at the prospect of being filmed. I decided to shade in the figure to the far left, who appears to look sad as I felt that it was important to create a solemn sense of emotion. In my previous blog, I talked about creating a time lapse, which displays movement and so, I wanted to create a sketch, which would strongly demonstrate the theme of dynamism and the idea of fast-paced movement.

I liked the rough lines in my sketches as I felt it added a sense of confusion. As you can see I liked the effect from the overlapping of the people in my piece. I felt that this woman’s look, which is amplified by the numerous drawings of her, could make the reader feel intimidated. I decided that I wanted to add oil colour to my composition as you can see in the picture below.

I have purposely made the piece look messy with blocky colours, as I felt that it would add character to the piece and display a sense of mystery about who this woman could be. Furthermore there a sense of ambiguity, as the colours of her clothing darken towards the left of the piece; which person does she actually represent?

I also had a go at multiplying the drawing of the woman into a collage and personally I think it works really well. When I look at the piece it makes me feel as though I am being watched by hundreds of people; not only do I feel confused but so does the woman looking back at me. I hope to try and follow on with this initial style and develop it onto something else.