El Moss research

Ideas, research and context work

[elmossresearch]

After the masks I made another sculptural piece, this clay charm or token. I like how it resembles a grotesque, like what the characters are originally based upon. I found this difficult to paint because of it’s size and intricacy. I do like how it looks after I coated it in PVA glue however, as it gives it an interesting shiny texture.

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I then proceeded to make some masks of my sheep and goat characters. The red and purple is made from modroc, the green and pink is made from air dry clay. I wanted to make them in different mediums to show their different natures. However, if I wanted to use these for a performance, I would probably use modroc as it is stronger and lighter. 

I didn’t like the grainy texture the modroc had and next time would layer it with a thin layer of plaster to smooth it out. The clay received the paint much better, although if done again I would’ve tried to make the face of the clay one smoother.

I found these came out very well, although if I did them again I would use something sturdier to create the horns, as I just used newspaper and masking tape to make the inside of them, which was too weak to keep it’s shape especially in the clay mask which took longer to dry.

I would also like to try making a mask out of ceramic at some point.

[elmossresearch]

I did a nude study to try out using more neutral colours in my painting. I like it, but I feel like the bright colours I tend to use are more powerful. Perhaps I would benefit from using neutral colours in a more minor way to make my bright colours pop from the image more.

[elmossresearch]

This is a larger scale acrylic painting I undertook. This piece was planned out a number of times, and although I enjoy the colours and mood the image has, I found that this planning wasn’t as good as some of the composition of previous automatic drawings. It felt a little forced and slightly stiff. My favourite part of the image are the two characters I’ve focused on in this, the ram and goat like gods. 

This piece was intended to feel like an alterpiece for the pantheon, with all the faces representing different emotions or symbols. However, I feel like it suffered by the rest of the characters not being as fleshed out as the ram and the goat.

The multiple faces doing different things was inspired by the narrative pieces by Fra Angelico’s narrative frescoes, with disembodied faces and hands doing things in them.

I would like to do another painting on this scale, but I feel like I could improve on the composition, solidifying the narrative of it more, as I feel this piece is a little too ambiguous. I still like this piece, although it didn’t do exactly what I intended.

[elmossresearch]

The major progression in my creation of these characters was through these paintings, it laid the groundwork for their interactions and ideas they represented. A lot of the audience feedback on these works saw the larger, red character as ‘masculine’ and ‘aggressive’, probably due to the large exaggerated smile and the size and power of the character. 

I was originally surprised to see it described as a ‘he’ as I deliberately didn’t align either character with a gender in my own eyes.  The other character was characterized by the audience as ‘feminine’ and a ‘victim’. I found this interesting as it seemed like the power dynamic between the two characters implied a heterosexual relationship between them, with the woman as a victim. Some people even found it sexual, perhaps manipulative or abusive. 

This sexualization was somewhat deliberate, but not in a particularly aggressive manner, so I was surprised to hear this also. The characters were intended to be opposites ‘yin and yang’ sort of symbolism, connected but at odds. I found that these genderless god characters being assigned genders by the audience very interesting.

[elmossresearch]

I did some studies focusing on women, imagined or from life.

[elmossresearch]

I did a performance piece where I painted Phoebe’s leg and videoed it. The painting and drawing was entirely automatic and took place over a straight hour without breaks. The aim was to use the skin as the canvas and see how the images would look on this different shape.

I really enjoy the outcome of this, as I feel it gave my drawings a different element and texture because it could move with the skin and curved in interesting ways. I also enjoyed the performance element of it, as how it created and transformed the leg into a canvas slowly was an interesting process. I would definitely like to do this again.

The video of this performance can be seen on vimeo at this link:

https://vimeo.com/307270121

[elmossresearch]

I did another transcription of an old painting- this time Waterhouse’s Hylas and the nymphs. (Shown below) A lot like my other painting study, I preferred this image before I added colour with editing.

This image was also the second I did, as the first I felt didn’t work very well. (Below)

[elmossresearch]

The first image is an automatic acrylic painting that I really liked. After I did this I did multiple drawings of this similar composition (like below) and decided as I went along to lean into the idea of gargoyles and grotesques as I liked how they are made to scare off bad spirits, and have the exaggerated faces like the original image. 

From the latter picture, I developed an enjoyment of two of these ‘characters’ and later began to develop them more and more.

[elmossresearch]

I did a painting in a similar style to some of my line drawings, drawing upon Picasso esque colours and cubism. I tried to make my colours more flat to imitate the flat planes.

[elmossresearch]

Some excerpts from my first sketchbook.

These all focus on capturing character and ideas rather than exact anatomy.

I particularly like the nude studies, mostly based off my own feeling of a pose, rather than the reality of it, drawing from memory of how it feels to sit or lay in that position.

I also enjoyed using text within my work, I like how it guides the eye around the image. In these images all of the writing was automatic ‘free writes’, unplanned and directly from my stream of thought. I found this works well with automatic drawing.

Doing studies of expressions was also very interesting, I wanted to see how much I could portray with the expressions, as they are vital to making narratives within images. I found that drawing faces more stylistically gave me more room for expression.

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Some assorted deepdreams made by combining my layered works with moodboards of different artists works and graphic work. I find these works interesting, but I’m not sure if I feel like they’re finished works in this form.

[elmossresearch]

These images are a few from some work I did collaborating with Phoebe Slosarcyzk. I scanned in some of her abstract paintings and combined our works together in various ways, layering and with deepdream. Some of the works came out extremely well, and sometimes my additions were overpowered by the colours of her work. However overall I enjoyed the challenge of incorporating different elements to my work.

[elmossresearch]

I attempted a drawing on a larger proportion, drawing on paper at A2 size. I did enjoy this size as I felt the looseness of lines was easier to achieve. I sketched this drawing in pencil before inking, but relied more on the curves of the lines rather than the guidelines. I sketched this drawing out multiple times before finishing on this interpretation. This image is cropped from the full image due to the size of the scanner. 

I then attempted attaching colour to this drawing, and effects. I found it helpful to do this as I learned more about my editing program, but I prefer how the image looks without the colour as it seems. 

This image was drawn from a 1600s painting as I wanted to reference a narrative, with all the connotations of the story it describes. This one was a painting of Venus, Mercury and Cupid by Nicolas Chaperon. I liked this image particularly as it had interaction between multiple people and the connotation of Greek mythology. (Image below)

[elmossresearch]

To take the work further, I started scanning in the drawings and editing and layering them with some of the watercolours I’d previously done. I like this process a great deal as it’s nondestructive to the drawings and I can try many different compositions with different colours and effects. 

As well as simply layering these images, I also coloured and used different filters and textures to the images to create some depth and feeling through colour.

In the last image specifically I also tried putting the final product through google’s deepdream to get different textures and colours to the image, which I also liked. I find the use of google’s deepdream interesting as it gives a strange element of collaboration with a computer, or a corporation to my work. 

[elmossresearch]

I experimented more with line, deconstructing people further or trying to capture two people interacting and capture the emotion or feeling rather than exactly the look of what was happening. This flow of energy and emotion was my priority over transcribing planes perfectly.

I also attempted doing this with a paintbrush and a background. I do like the tone the background lends to the image, but I found using watercolour in a small scale such as this tended to make me more careful with strokes, rather than expressive. Although I enjoy the outcome of this attempt, I felt like I wasn’t as true to the energy and feeling of the form as some of the other drawings.

[elmossresearch]

I started doing gestural line drawings, attempting to do them quickly in an almost automatic fashion. I wanted to preserve smooth lines and ambiguous in the  style. I didn’t want to limit myself particularly to a linear perspective and didn’t mind them flattening planes. 

With some I did the drawing in pencil, then redid in ink, but I prefer the ones that were done directly in ink. The latter had more ‘failures’ that didn’t look quite as good, but when succeeded had a very smooth, energetic feel to them.