Sunday, 22 January 2012

Fine Art project: Out of the ordinary


Clock drawing
This is my my first observational drawing of a clock which hangs in the backroom of my household. After quickly drafting out the proportion of the clock, I began to apply strong contrasts of light and dark to bring more deph to the drawing. To suggest that light is coming through on the left hand side, I applied more preasure to my graphite stick to get the dark shadow on the right hand side. To bring back the lighter tones, i worked heavily onto the drawing with the putty rubber. I would later rub my finger over the graphite and blend the lighter tones with the dark areas, bringing me a slightly surrealistic quality to the drawing.



Drawing experiments

On the first day of this project, our first tast was to produce a series of drawings of household objects using a variety of techniques. Some of these techniques may include drawing with your left hand (top right), without taking the pencil off the paper (middle), or with your eyes closed. The right-handed drawing of the pair of goggles is by far the best drawing I managed to produce. The bold, jagged lines are remenisnt the the drawings of Frank Auerbach. I feel by taking part in this project my drawing skills would become more versitile if I were to apply these new drawing techniques to my work.


Screwdriver Etching (Before and After)
This session provided me the opportunity to explore different ways of etching with a variety of tools. I used the screw driver as the prominent object as I was fascinated by it's overall proportion. For my first etching, I began by drawing out the object before working onto the outlines with tools including a craft knife andn extremely sharp pencil. My first etching (left) is rather basic and just represents the screwdriver in its most basic form. To take my etching techniques further, I produced the second piece (right) using tools such as a circular blade, pins, and the end of my scissors. By working heavily both into the screw driver and the background, I feel I've explored the potential of using different tool to enhance my etching techniques.


Ink work 1
To make our drawing techniques more versatile, we were asked to produce a series of ink drawings using a wooden stick as the prominent drawing tool. I was inspired the loose, gestural drawings of the Japanese artist Velasco, who is most renowned for her ink drawings of animals. While drafting out the object I was working from, I tried experimenting with different ways of applying ink onto paper. To suggest shadows, I would apply thinker layers of ink and thin, watery layers for the highlights. I kept my drawing style jagged and scratchy in order to maintain the distinctive visual qualities I'm currently developing. Overall this was a successful session, one while I thoroughly enjoyed and will come back to in future projects.




Textured painting experiment


Textured painting on board 1


Textured painting on board 2



Textured painting on board 3
                                                                  
                                                               


                                                                  A1 Painting Study
Before embarking on my exploration into painting, I researched a number of artists in the hope to find inspiration for my own visual ideas. After researching the heartfelt works of Anselm Kiefer, I realized that texture, dirty backgrounds, and gestural mark-making were the areas of my success. In my first A1 painting, I wanted to exploit these techniques. After creating the ground using spontaneous brush strokes and thin layers of paint, I began painting the objects I was working from. I applied the first layers of paint with a watered down paint brush before building up thick texture with my pallet knife. The object I'm most proud of is the metronome and how the naturalistic browns contrast with the hint of red paint on the left side of the object. This painting, to me, works pretty well in terms of it's colour contrasts, although I think it's perspective could be better.
 

Final Painting on Board
For my final painting, I wanted to bring all the successful aspects of my previous studies and incorporate them into what I believe to be one of the best works I've produced on this course thus far. To begin, I created the highly textured ground using organic materials such as saw dust and sand. Once the PVA glue fused onto the board, I blotted in the background using watered down paints, similar to what John Piper does for his paintings. Soon I began to incorporate gestural mark-making over the background using a range of paint brushes and, my personal favourite, the pallet knife. I only used three objects as I felt sometime "less is more".  The colourful gestures seemed to fuse with the heavily textured background successfully, pushing the painting towards abstraction. To me, this is almost like a tribute to abstract expressionism, hopefully something David Tress would admire.  

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