Yesterday was a bit of a disaster for me in life drawing class. I was almost in tears with sheer frustration at how appallingly bad my painting was. I kept going, and I have to say I got practically nowhere. Today, it was back to the drawing board, and I wondered if today was going to be as bad as yesterday. No life drawing, but I had to start work on my painting for Contextual Studies.
I showed you a couple of ideas I had for composition yesterday, and I started out this morning with a fixed idea of what I wanted my painting to look like. I thought to myself that it probably wouldn’t turn out anything like I expected or wanted. It so happened that it didn’t turn out quite how I expected. I even told my tutor in detail what I was going for, and she liked the sound of it. I did too. However, as most of you will know, nothing ever really turns out how you expect it. That’s not to say my day wasn’t productive. It was. It was extremely productive and I felt much better today.
I went into class, and started on my work immediately, while people were still coming into the class. I was desperate to get on with my work. I laid down my background, and it looked hideous! I then attacked it with my graphite stick – quite frantically, I may add. Then I started adding paint. I kept my palette really controlled – just using burnt umber, mars black, zinc white, and cadmium yellow. I was trying to keep it fairly monochromatic. However, it was feeling rather cool even though I liked how it was going. So I added alizarin crimson into the mix. Adding it to the cadmium yellow and burnt umber. This made a huge difference.
By the time class ended 2 hours later, I didn’t want to stop. I was in the zone! I was worried that I wouldn’t get my mojo back in the afternoon, after my second class. However, I was able to get back in the zone. Then I hit ‘the wall’. You know that stage when you know it needs work, but you haven’t a clue what to do about it? So I got a bit of expert advice from my tutor, and I added a touch of colour in small areas and voila, it was done! Three and a half hours of bliss, and this was the result. Click to enlarge.
Acrylic on paper (42 x 60cm)
Now it is actually a bit darker than this in reality, but that’s down to the camera and the light. I think it has changed quite a bit from the original Dali and Picasso images.
Picasso – Seated Bather
Picasso – Dream
Dali – Pierrot Playing The Guitar
Picasso – The Studio
I’m really chuffed to bits with this painting, as you can probably tell. I have one more painting for this subject, and that’s me finished. The problem is that I still have almost 5 weeks left to go. So I’m thinking that I will create some more based on all of the paintings I selected for study. That will at least give me more paintings to take in for my interview at uni!
I completed my wire prototype for my 3D design project today, and have it all stitched together, and I’m quite pleased with it. It’s a bit transparent but I think it will look much better when I start to apply an art solution to it. After all this is just a prototype. I worked on all three other prototypes today, but they are not complete yet. Hopefully, it shouldn’t take too long to get them all done, seeing as I have the main design down.
I’ve also done some initial quick sketches for Contextual Studies, where I have taken the works of Picasso and Dali and made them my own. These are the 4 ideas I’m playing with, but I’m not sure which one to go for. Really they are just compositional sketches and I have a fair idea of the actual imagery. Personally, I prefer the first two sketches. I may actually paint both. I’m undecided yet. Hey-ho and on we go.
I’ve been working since 7am this morning on my 3D design project, and I think I’m making some headway with it. At first I was making a headpiece, which was very pretty and I was really looking forward to making it. However, I was told to change that 3 weeks into the project, so I had to start from scratch. Why did I have to change it? Simply because of my university application. If I want to get into uni then it is better that my design is geared towards a fine art solution which can then go into my portfolio, since I am applying for the Fine Art course. This has meant me going back to the drawing board, and trying to come up with a 3D piece that fits into what I’m doing on the rest of the course. This also applies to my Creative Textile course.
I got a book on Frank Stella from the library on Friday, which has really helped me. I was totally stumped as to how to make a 3D piece into something like a painting. I have been playing about with different things for the past 2 weeks, but without actually seeing some examples, it was really hard to visualise anything. The book was a godsend, and very inspirational. Frank Stella’s work is more like construction on canvas. Here are a few samples of his work:
As you can see his work is very colourful and leaps right out of the canvas. His work has given me lots of ideas. So today the ideas finally started flowing. I have to create a drawing, and based on those drawing I must create 4 prototypes from the following:
Paper
Card
Wire
Mixed Media
I already have some wire and paper pieces in class, but I managed to create some more at home. I also created some card pieces today, but first here is a drawing I’ve been playing with:
There are lots of overlapping materials here. First of all I created a sample ‘canvas’. For this task I took a piece of copper wire woven material. It’s quite a thick ‘fabric’, but very jaggy and I’ve slashed myself several times on it! I then wove in 12 wire like sticks, then covered with wire mesh.
After that, I placed on several pieces I created to see how they fit together.
These are only basic ideas, but I really like where they are going. I have lots of accompanying drawings which I hope to get further mileage out of. I think it will be interesting to see where it ends up, when I finally get them onto canvas!
I was sent a link to a YouTube video yesterday and I wanted to share it with all of you. This amazing video was created by the band, Hold Your Horses – a Franco American band. Highly original, it will appeal to all artists and art enthusiasts alike. If you love art and art history, you won’t be disappointed. Basically the band recreated 25 famous works of art, and it’s great just trying to figure out what the paintings are and by whom. The song itself reminds me of Sufjan Stevens but differs in the lead vocalist’s style, but it has that folksie feel to it.
I contacted the band and Catherine has kindly allowed me to put the video up on my site. You can check them out on their MySpace page: www.myspace.com/holdyourhorses or on their website: www.logre.tv. See if you can figure out the names of the artists and/or the names of the paintings. I will post the answers in a few days!
I also wanted to share another link to some artwork that I was completely blown away by. This is the work of Dave Devries, who has worked at Marvel and DC Comics. Essentially, he was watching his niece draw one day, and he wondered how it would look if a child’s work was painted realistically and turned into a work of art. He projected the child’s image and then traced over it exactly, then rendered it. Here are a few snippets of his work. You will see the child’s drawing and his beside it.
Oh, I decided to challenge myself and bought myself a bunch of flowers to paint a still life. Never done flowers before! It’s a work in progress, so here’s what I have so far:
Obviously that is the photo, because there’s no way I could paint like that!
I’ve managed to block in some of the colour and there’s a long way to go on this painting, but I managed to knock this up in about an hour. That was the easy part. The devil, however, is in the detail!
I wanted to show a few more pieces I did yesterday in Creative Textiles. I had my first assessment for this course yesterday, and thankfully I passed! We had to produce our moodboard, a design plan, and a minimum of 3 paper pieces (using painting and sewing techniques) and 3 textile pieces (dying, batik, devore, etc).
This one I knocked up whilst sitting have a cup of tea in the canteen. It’s photographic paper which I drew on, then I added coloured ink and ran it under the tap, to let the ink drip off the paper. I added more ink and repeated the process several times. I am thinking that some of the patterns can be knitted into a textile piece, such at the chain pattern running through the centre. That’s very easy to do. Thankfully, I’ve been knitting since I was a child so it should take me too long to do. I can add in stitching using the sewing machine to get the branch pattern. Not sure how that will turn out but I’ll give it a go.
I showed this piece the day before yesterday, but I added some stitching into it and covered in PVA glue and liquid latex, which will protect the fabric dye.
This piece was created using devore material which I soaked in liquid latex. I blowed dried it then covered it in layers of fabric dye. Now it feels like a stretchy latex material, but the patterns on it are quite interesting close up.
This final piece was made using wallpaper. Again I used the latex but I thickened it and poured over the underside of the wallpaper, then poured inks over and brushed with some dye. The inks and dyes tend to stick really well to latex and creates interesting patterns. I really like the effect so I have managed to nab some more paper from college to practise on.
I'm a student artist, and have just started my second year at college. I work in many areas of art, specialising in abstract fine art, and I'm also studying traditional realism at an Atelier School in Aberdeen. Follow me on my journey, and share my experiences, as I progress through my studies.
