Paintings

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Painting Elective

So I started my first elective this week, and I really enjoyed it. We did some blind line drawings in paint and then painted with small squares of card. I found this really hard but they turned out ok. This week I painted completely differently to the way I normally would. We were taught about technique and only used the three primary colours.
On Monday we were told to pick a painting we found interesting and create an installation inspired by it.  I chose 'Wood' by Annie Lapin. It took me awhile to get my head around what exactly it was we were to do but on Thursday we all spent the morning setting up our installations and they looked great.

From these installations we did some quick line drawings and then planned out some zoomed up areas by drawing a few thumbnails. We then painted these sections using a palette knife.

For the weekend we had to pick a Lucian Freud painting and make an exact replica of it. Whatever size it was in the book we had to paint it that size. I chose his portrait of the Queen and the photocopy I got was less than A4. I found this really difficult to do! It took ages and it's still not finished or close to being perfect but I found it pretty impossible! The idea of this was to learn technique, see how Freud used his paint and brushes, figure out what colours he put down first and to learn to paint background first then middle ground, and finally foreground.

I gridded it out first and drew it as accurately as I could. 

There's still a few bits left to finish before the morning, and then I'll take of the masking tape! The colours came out a lot brighter on mine, so I'm going to try tone them down now. I'll post a picture of the finished one in the morning. 

Assessment Time!!

All set up for my assessment now, it's on at 12.

I stuck a series of my fridge drawings together on this black sheet to show the movement of objects on a day to day basis. This was where I started back in September.

This was just an experiment with the drawings, I drew a few of them one on top of the other and I'm happy with the effect I got!

So that's the end of my Movement and Motion Project! Looking forward to starting something new next week and trying out my three disciplines.

Keep it Simple!

Before the Christmas break I was advised to keep my work more simple. Mold can be quite aggressive and this can definitely be seen with my plaster piece. I decided to take a step back and just concentrate on one molecule of growth, the patterns mold makes on an apple, and how to simplify what it really is.

When I first started down this track a few weeks ago I set myself a brief, to make something inspired by mold but that is beautiful and not grotesque.

Dieter Roth. Big Landscape.

Using Dieter Roth's 'Big Landscape' I tried out his idea of looking at a mold from the side. This is just a small page in my sketchbook but I went on to make my own version of this idea by looking at the rotten apple from a side view. I made it out of paper and will upload a photo soon!









Looking at the growth of mold on a slice of bread I saw a pattern and simplified it. I wanted to make a painting that was simple yet effective, inspired by mold but not imitating it. I got four squares of wood cut and used these as my canvases.

Stripping down the idea of mold again I made this piece. I took away all colour and just kept it white.

Christmas Work

So my internet stopped working the weekend before my assessment.. not good! Final posts have now been left until last minute.

So over the Christmas break I concentrated on food going moldy to work with the patterns and movement it created. Influenced by Sam Taylor Woods Still Life video, I tried to do the same thing and set up a plate with a slice of bread, a piece of cheese, and an apple with a slice taken out of it. I planned to take a photo of it every day and watch as it deteriorated. However, mold is not a very pleasant sight or smell and with relations staying over Christmas I had to move it away from the spare room and things went downhill from there! I didnt have a tripod and each picture was taken from a different place, so when I tried to make a movie out of it it just didnt look good. As well as this the bread didnt go moldy, just went hard, and the cheese stayed the same. In the end I gave up on this and just concentrated on the apple, which I got some great results out of!

Some pieces from my sketchbook....

My finished mold paintings...

My Videos

Finally got my stop motion videos up on youtube so now I can link them here.. The first ones I did were to do with objects moving around a fridge. I made the objects out of newspaper and put magnets on the back so that I could use the fridge door as my background.

I used the special effects in Movie Maker to change this video into a line drawing, I really like this effect.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yETpHl6xHTA&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL

My last video is another quick stop motion of my paintings of an apple rotting over a week

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlFRQFfW5Fc&feature=related

and in the line effect...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oq2_0UUABnw&feature=mfu_channel&list=UL