Drawing from observation

Patti Ellis- (Visiting lecturer from Camberwell) One on one talk

Found Patti really helpful and useful today. She looked through my work and said she really liked the techniques I use when I draw and paint. I told her life drawing is my main interest at the moment and she said  before I go into my life drawing classes I should set myself a series of tasks e.g. one week to draw the model  as fine as possible and then to emphasise a certain part of the body. Think i'm going to try this technique out and see what ideas I develop throughout the process.

Darren Hayman- One on one talk

' Not having an idea is not a good enough excuse to refrain yourself from producing work', when I talked to Darren he told me to never give up on art and that even when you feel you're all out of ideas, 'artist's block', that it is not a good enough excuse to not produce work. Most of the time you come up with ideas in the process of creating things, advice in which he believes helped create some of his best pieces. He told me to keep my work personal as I've been doing and to not just create art to please others.

Darren Hayman- visiting lecturer

Darren Russell Hayman is an English singer-songwriter and guitarist. He is best known as the lead singer and guitarist in Hefner

Really enjoyed Darren Hayman's lecture and what he had to say about his work. Even though he's more interested in the music side of art the way he very modestly told us how he got to where he is now was very inspiring. Very interesting personality.

Self portraiture

Decided to start looking at self portraiture and practice with many different media, going to research into Jenny Saville's work next and look at the techniques she uses in her way of working.

Experimenting with composition

Trying out new compositions and layouts using life drawings to produce work with a new meaning and purpose

Talked to Richard

Talked to Richard, said it would be a good idea to try working on a canvas. Feel like my ideas are coming together now, drawing different forms of the body and people who are personal to me in some way so that my work has meaning.

Life Drawing

I like how these two pencil drawings above (especially the second one) look very architecturally drawn. It almost looks like, after analysing my drawing, that I've drawn the woman like a building plan. Very structured, simple and accurately drawn. 

Jenny Saville

Before my next two life paintings I was researching into Jenny Saville's newer work, her 'Mother and Child' pieces. The first thing that caught my eye was the way she had very successfully created movement in her work and it gave me the idea to try it out myself. As shown by the two pieces below I used thick long brush strokes to create a sense of movement in my pieces as Saville did and I was very pleased with the outcome.

These two paintings above are definetely my favourite. I like the bold striking brush marks I have used to create these pieces as it brings a sense of movement and surrealism to the pieces even though the model is clearly sat still throughout.

Introducing colour- I like the difference in this piece above from the other few I have done as it seems more realistic but at the same time even more simpleised (if that's even a word). She seems ghost like and i think the piece portrays a sense of invisibilty, since I added no detail whatsoever. May experiment with coloured paint in life drawing again but using more exaggerated stroke marks next time.

Life drawing was the first thing on this course that I really felt passionate about and enjoyed. The body form interests me greatly and has opened a new pathway for me to explore.

Print Making

Not sure whether I like the way these have turned out yet so I'm going to work back into them using different medias and textures.

Charcoal Drawings

For these pieces I worked from my 3D sculpture of a skull and tried to make it seem more life like. I used charcoal to create tone, shading and depth of field within my piece so that the drawing stood up from the paper and really caught the attention of the viewer. I decided to black out the background behind the skull so it also added more depth of field and also brought the piece some character.

Dolphine Holme Residential Trip

Yesterday I came back from a trip with college to Dolphine Holme, which is basically camping in yurts on a farm. I procued quite a lot of observational drawings, these to show a few...

Experimenting with photographs and textures

Experimenting with photographs. I decided to experiment with the texture and colour of photographs by adding paint and scraping it across the piece with a ruler to create an interesting effect. I like the paints I have used in this work as I think the bright juxtaposing colours work well in contrast to the black background and light blurry figures on the photographs. If I was to experiment with photographs again I would like to try adding paint more accurately rather than just scraping paint across the piece to highlight certain point of my photographs and also I would like to add more textures than just paint so that my work would stand out and not look as 2D.

3D Sculpture

Whilst working with 3D sculpture, I decided since my preffered subject to paint/draw was people, that I would make something of a similar intention and see how it turned out. I was really inpressed by the outcome of my piece and I think it worked very well seen as thought I found the medium I was using very difficult to handle. As I find sculpture really inetesting I may experiment with the medium later on in the course to make my Fine Art pieces more interesting rather than just sinmply having 2D pieces.

Photography -Experimenting With Light And Shutter Speed

When working in the studios I decided to experiment with light within photography. These pieces so far I think are my favorite, as I have done photography before and felt at home working in this medium. I like the composition of my photographs and most of all the different effects the light has created. Working with shutter speed is a very impressive, creative way to work and I think I'll be continuing with this medium throughout and later on in the course. 

Fine Art Workshop

Working back into photographs. I decided to experiment with different medias and to edit and work back into photographs. I created a colorful background to work in contrast with the black and white images I have collected. Once i had composed my photographs on the background I decided to cover them in thick layers of acrylic paint simply only leaving the girls face visible to add a sense of mystery. I think this piece works well as the photographs used look very dated and the juxtaposed bright colors and textures used on top of them bring the piece more character.

Analytical Sight Sized Measuring

In our pathways, for Fine Art, we practised analytical sight size measured drawing, trying to copy an outside view from the college window. This is the first time I have used measured scale drawing to create work and must say I was pleasantly surprised. I really appreciate how accurate you can make your drawings seem from this technique and how much more life-like they seem, even though they do lack in detail (which I think for this type of working, is a positive)