Art Foundation

 When we did observational drawings of the still life, I used a variety of drawing techniques to capture the shapes. First I used white pen on black paper, in 10 minutes this was the outcome, I just stated off by drawing everything in front of me, just capturing the main lines, without much detail, just as a warm up. Next, I moved closer and looked at a small section of the still life, and spent 10 minutes focusing on light and dark, and adding more detail. I used a variety of pencils to try and add more depth to the piece also. I found by using the brown paper it made it easier to add shadows as it looks less harsh than it would have looked on white paper. The next piece I did was in biro, on very thin white paper. I spent 10 minutes using continuous lines. I found this quite relaxing to do, as it was more abstract in the approach, as I could just squint my eyes and scribble with the pen, I was able to create both light and dark tones, which were able to blend quite ea...

When looking back at the experiments I did influenced by Ed Moses, I wanted to refine these as I felt they could have been done in a better way. Some of the pieces I did look rather forced and I wanted to re-visit them. I began by evaluating the types of paint I used for certain pieces. For the strongest pieces, I used a cheaper acrylic, which dried matt and was less pigmented, and for the other ones, I used a glossier acrylic with more pigment. This meant it was harder for the brush strokes to be seen against the black background and the vibrancy of the colours was too high. I decided to use the acrylic which was weaker in pigment in order to get more transparency between the colours and the black background. I used a wider brush too, which gave me more texture in the marks created by the acrylic. I used marks with more movement than before, as the fluidity of the marks mixed with the texture of the brush strokes added a lot more energy to the piece. I then did another piece using...

As part of a workshop, I took a drawing which I had done, which I felt would look good on a large scale, and began by making a sellotape transfer. The drawing I used was a fineliner sketch in which was one of my drawings for inktober. I used this one as the skull had simple contours, which I felt would translate well onto a larger scale. I felt this as it was in black and white, had no shading and a variety of dark and light areas. I also felt that the cross hatching I did instead of shading would translate well on any scale. To make a sellotape transfer, I had to photocopy the image I wanted, and then place sellotape over the top, ensuring it overlaps. Once I had done this, I took some water, and wet the paper side and rubbed the paper off. It somes off and leaves the ink from the photocopier on the sellotape, creating a transparent copy of the image. I used the projector to project my drawing onto the wall, where I'd stuck up a sheet of large paper. I then decided to use a bl...

As a responce to David Hockneys work, and the experiments I'd done previously with the skeleton from the still life, we were set the task of creating a self potrait inspired by his work. I created 3 pieces in total, all progressions as I got used to this style. All the pieces I did I did digitally as I found it easier and quicker to resize photos and not have to print them out every time. For the first piece, which is right, I used photos taken of myself and layered them together onto word, as I found it easiest to crop and resize photos on that. I used square and rectangle photos for this piece, which is similar to the shape of the photos used in Hockneys work. For this one, when the photos were took, I was talking, laughing, smiling, moving and rolling my eyes. I did this to add the idea of time and movement to my piece, as each section of myself would be doing something different. By taking them from different angles, the light hits my face different, creating contrasts in ...

Since doing the acrylic transfer workshop, I decided I wanted to go back in after I've done some artist research and look into adding more colours into my work, but keeping it to a limited colour palette as inspired by Ed Moses. Moving on from the last set of experiments, I wanted to focus on using the primary colours/ a simple colour palette to create prints. I decided to use the continuous line drawing of my car I drew. I chose this as I felt its personal to me, and I want to work more onto metal and more obscure surfaces, so by printing a car, its liking the subject into the background, as cars are commonly made of metal. To create the above piece, I found a strip of metal, in which I cleaned, and the prepped. I took 4 photocopied of my drawing and selected the colours I wanted to print with. I chose the primary colours to keep it simple. The key to being able to print in colour and having sections transparent is by using clear gloss acrylic on the areas you want to stay tra...

 For the second artist who I find uses colour in an interesting way, is Ed Moses. An artist who also used acrylics on canvas, like Julio Le Parc. His marks are more fluid and abstract and have more movement and energy. I'm drawn to his work as the colour scheme tends to be very simple, black background with 2/3 different colours on top. The vibrant red and yellow tones stand out massivley against the black background, and also you can tell how thick the acrylic is on the page due to the amount of black from the background showing through. This adds another layer of depth to the piece, as you can also see the brush strokes which gives the pieces more movement.  The top 2 pieces I did with just red and yellow acrylic like I saw in Moses' work, but I wanted to include more colours, so I chose to add blue to the composition. I chose blue as its the other primary colours, so complements the red and yellow well. I found that by overlapping the colours whilst they are still w...