Continuing my interest in colour studies, I did a page considering some contrasting colour combinations. Like in Holly Warburton's art, I was really drawn to orange and blue, so I decided to continue with that.
The colours of this scan are very inaccurate unfortunately, but these are some oil pastel studies I did. The orange is lighter and while the overlapping orange and blue does appear green, it's not as deep as this in real life. I enjoyed making these, but I found it difficult to make them feel "finished".
Because of the limited palettes we've been using in our life painting classes, I was interested in finding artists who use limited or specific colour palettes in their work. An artist I love is Holly Warburton, who I always think of for her blue-orange and purple-yellow contrasts. She says that her colours are inspired by the Impressionists and how they use colour to influence mood, which I think is clear in her work.
I'm an illustrator and 2D animator, most inspired by the people I see around me everyday.
We started with 30 seconds drawings to warm up as usual.
After that we did thirty minute poses where we could decided how much time we wanted to spend on preliminary sketches before moving onto our main piece. I'm actually really please with how I did in these because I could see how much I've improved in understanding and approaching a pose.
This one is probably my favourite because I got exactly as much done as I meant to. I'd still like to get better at getting the face in though. The charcoal kind of took on a strange texture or some reason here, maybe because of the drawing board I was using, but I don't mind that.
Did a page of exercise like the ones we do in our life drawing class, then I wanted to try and make it a bit more interesting than a straight-on self portrait. I took a photo of myself drinking from a can to have some more interest and tried approaching it in different ways and mediums. There's some pencil studies, a blind drawing, a pen sketch. There's also a painting done in gouache because I missed painting with it, and I really enjoy the textures it creates.
The first page is from before Easter break, the second from this week.
For the project brief of "Portrait" I didn't really know where to start, so I chose to do self-portraits and began with what we were learning in workshops. These blind drawings were made before Easter break, I just didn't get a chance to scan them in until now. I found I really enjoyed blind drawing, so I did a few.
I also did this one on a napkin I picked up at a cafe, which I didn't really like. Then some red ink bled though onto it and I decided to lean into the ugliness. The back of the napkin has Mary Oliver's poem "Wild Geese" written on it over and over.
This morning we got a talk from Stephen Murphy which was really interesting and useful. I learned a lot about finding your niche as an artist and what can direct your art and style.
Why do we make art? There are two reasons - to receive pleasure, or to escape pain. Murphy says his reason is to escape pain, that art scratches an itch in his brain. Because of this, his work tends to be serious and laborious, or seen as tortured. He said that people are often surprised when they meet him that he isn't an overly serious person. I think this is a great point that art can be used as an outlet and exploration.
For example, this work of his "Playing Possum" shows a child playing dead, following a theme of death in his work. It's a solemn image, contrasted with the childish toys and costume.
He also talked about some of the practicalities of being an artist, like receiving criticism and rejection or dealing with competitiveness. Because art is subjective, people will have all kinds of opinions on it. While constructive criticism is useful, It's important to consider your own feelings on your work and what advice you choose to take on or not. Rejection isn't a failure and opinions on your work may change over time. He also reminded us that we're not in competition with other artists, like our classmates or exhibition applicants. I think that was good to hear, because since art is so subjective, you might feel that you're fighting to have objectively the "best" art when that isn't possible to achieve.
We also got to ask questions at the end, so I asked about his approach to art - did he start solely as a painter, and would he recommend exploring a multi-disciplinary approach right from the start? Unfortunately my answer from Murphy was cut off as we ran out of time, but I got to hear him talk about how as a painter, he stubbornly painted everything, even when it may have made more sense to draw it or approach it another way. Later he moved into drawing, collage and sculpture, and said to keep in mind that the medium should match the message. Some works make sense as paintings, others as sculptures, it just depends of what you want it to say. I thought this was really useful advice to keep in mind.
I got to life drawing a bit late this week, but it was easy to get into the swing of it! We did some two minute and ten minute drawings. I really liked the poses this week and I'm pretty happy with all of the work I made.
For this piece we had half an hour, so I did a quick observational sketch then began working on the main one. Having so much time for this one was strange, I think my approach to adding details was a bit skewed because of it. I also probably need some practice with drawing drapery and blankets.
This weeks life painting was a little intimidating because I was out of practice with painting after the break and we had a new pose with harsh lighting, but I'm actually pleased with how this went overall. I enjoyed the process of painting it, and even though I ran out of time I like what I managed to complete. I didn't really tackle the harsh shadow on the wall this time, so that's something I'd like to practice.
I'll also make sure to get a better photo when I can, as I took this one while it was wet so the colours are inaccurate and the shine is quite bad.
Once again, after life painting in the morning we had life drawing with Eoin. I was really tired coming into the class, so it took a little bit to get back into the swing of it, but as usual it was really fun and good practice! Here's some of my 30 second and 10 minute poses
I'm pretty pleased with these, but could use some practice with foreshortening. We also did some blind drawings, which was a really nice way to loosen up a bit and help wind down for the end of the day.
This Monday's painting felt like it went much more smoothly for me. I think I learned from last week and my practice how I can approach it better. This week I managed to get the whole figure in and the plinth he was lying on, so I feel good about that! I think I still have a lot to learn here, but I'm enjoying seeing my work improve.
When we were given a choice of artists to research, I immediately zeroed in on Marilyn Minter. Her work was suggested to me by Sylvia for the movement brief, but didn't end up suiting my concept, so I was glad to get a second chance to look at her work.
Minter's work tends to follow themes of sexuality and eroticism. She wanted to oppose the overly perfected and refined beauty that dominated the media, especially the fashion world. I read this article talking about her thought process and artistic approach.
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Her work juxtaposes the beautiful with the disgusting - makeup, heels and lewd gestures paired with spit and dirt. I like how she shows people as they are, wrinkles, acne, stretchmarks and all, while elevating her subjects with meticulous and glamorous sets.
Today we set up mirrors to create portraits of ourselves using palette knives for an impasto technique. This was my setup and the thumbnails I made for the composition.
Here's some photos showing my process. To be honest I was very impatient doing this and didn't spend very long considering how I would like to set up my mirrors or how it would affect the composition, but Sylvia and Eoin were very patient in giving me advice to simplify and organise my work, as well as choosing to scrape off and repaint the background. I think today I just wanted to get started and really enjoyed just making marks and trying things out. Overall I'm happy with the result because of that.
Next time we work with mirrors like this, I'd like to take my time with deciding how I want things to look, and mark them out properly before I start putting paint down. Because I worked so quickly this time, I don't think I'll be afraid to try and make mistakes.
After working with Sylvia, we did some life drawing on Monday afternoon with Eoin. This was really nice because I felt like the life painting was kind of a challenge and drawing is more in my comfort zone. These are some of my 30 second and 10 minute drawings. I liked the variety of poses and felt like I was getting a better grasp at using my time wisely.
On Monday we started the day by doing some life painting with Sylvia. This was really interesting and fun, I find that I really enjoy working from life where I can see how other students approach their work. I found this pose really difficult however and found that I kept losing the figure I'd started with as I layered paint, and I was a little confused about how to actually approach under-painting as it isn't something I do very often, which was also a problem I had when taking the life painting workshop during the six week module.
Again, this just made me more eager to try again and I did a couple of attempts in my sketchbook later just to help understand the technique. I think it helped me a lot to practice much smaller and slower for a little while, and I'm excited to see how my next life painting benefits from the practice.
Slightly cheeky addition, but I've been working on this crochet piece in my free time and it occurred to me that it also suits my concept! On a slightly different track (physical remains rather than spiritual) but I thought I should put it up anyway since it also follows the textile work I was doing in testing textures through crochet. Even though we're out of time for this brief, adding this piece inspired me to evolve my work in a new direction and consider the physical aspect of my concept, even though I might not be able to make any more work towards it!
I started my project by listing word associations for "movement", then created a mindmap from the words that were most interesting to me.
I narrowed it down to an interest in the movement of the body and began to focus that into what primary sources were available to me, where I could take my work, etc.
I attached to the phrase "moved on" as a way to refer to the dead and how that could be represented. From there I focused on spirits and ghosts, as well as haunted environments. This included primary sources like the house I'm currently living in (which is rumoured to be haunted!) and references of myself in the house.
I used this concept as a basic guide to approach my electives - painting, print contemporary practice and fashion/textiles - and let the work I made further my concept and vice versa. By engaging with the elective workshops, I felt I learned a lot that helped to develop and realise my project as a whole.
In CCS we studied the works of Fragonard, which lead me to the works of his wife. I found her miniature portraits really charming and was especially drawn to the frames, so I spent a little bit of time studying them.
Later, I wanted to do a painting and decided to incorporate the things I had been studying, including my earlier self-portrait, the works of Angela Deane, and these frames.
My camera isn't great, sorry. Here's my final painting. It has a mix of all the elements I've been looking at, and the background is based on the wall of the living room in the haunted house I'm renting! With more time I would have liked to spend more time on this piece, but I'm pretty pleased with the end result!
