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| Art Coursework. |
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| Technique |
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| I began my art project with a lose pencil sketch. The initial drawing was intended as a purely abstract piece ? a rough outline of the aesthetic style my work would follow. |
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| This was followed by another drawing ? much tighter, but using the same style as the initial sketch, allowing me to establish my initial style of drawing. After I had found a basis for the structure of my work I moved on to add two new elements ? colour and texture. At this stage the colour was kept fairly simple, earthy browns to enhance the style of texture with a red scheme to add a more vibrant feel to the work. Many areas of the work where left white ? or with white background, this made the piece lighter and simplified areas to balance some of the more active areas of the composition. The texture of the piece was achieved by first applying torn newsprint to the surface ? then using white acrylic to build up a background texture. This gave me an initial texture to build upon with coloured acrylic paint ? by rubbing paint into the surface I was able to highlight the background texture and also give gradient to areas of colour. The use of cross hatching with black pen also enhanced the gradients and dark tones of my work. I applied this texture for an aesthetic based upon influences of artists I had looked at (see influences/resources) and on subject matter ? towns and cities, and so most were continued throughout most of the project. In my next piece however I had tried to create a thinner style of composition, giving the piece an impression of height ? this was based on Vieira Da Silva?s vertical landscapes. I had achieved this by firstly creating the background texture ? newsprint was now torn in long, thin strips, and in addition to this acrylic was applied in much longer thinner patches, using long brush strokes up and down the page and often smeared straight from the tube. In addition to the slight change in composition ? the rectangular structures appearing much thinner and longer ? this helped me achieve the required appearance of height and vertical space. The next significant change I made to my work was in colour ? I had already begun to widen the range, but now had chosen to add a wash of colour to my work, after the texture was laid down. This gave the work a much better sense of completion, and added to the subject matter of towns and cities ? giving a darker/grittier feel to the work. I also began to experiment with different colours and methods to achieve the series of crossing marks (inspired by ?The Disaster?), using different colours and on this occasion laying a gradient of grey acrylic, with the structure illustrated with black pen. This lead to a stage of colour simplification ? I produced 2 monochromatic pieces both in green. This simplification allowed me to create a new aesthetic quality ? these pieces perhaps lack the appeal of a more colourful piece, but gain a stylised aesthetic unlike the other works. Simplification of colour also allowed me to evaluate textural technique, and these pieces in particular gain a much more expressive underlying background texture ? for which emulsion was used for its more fluid properties. Emulsion allowed for a much more abstract expressionist style of technique ? splattering and throwing the paint to the surface. In addition to the green pieces I produced a single brown painting ? this did not however meet the effect or quality of stylisation achieved in the green pieces, but did lead to a further experiment with the expressive crossing ?disaster? marks. In the brown piece the crossing marks were used in order to emphasise more of a focal point to my work ? an enclosed, central box. I now moved to a larger scale, and also to a different material ? |
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| MDF board allowed me to work in large scale, whereas this may not have been possible with the weakness of paper. I produced a large piece of work using a fairly light emulsion surface ? using the techniques I had used in my previous work, however I chose to focus solely on the rectangular shapes in order to avoid confusing the composition. In order to utilise the material, MIDF, fully I decided to compose a new style of work by mounting smaller pieces over each other ? this gave an abstract surface which added to and complimented the idea of overlapping rectangles within my paintings, also drawing on my cubist influence. I then continued to work large scale ? however the MDF pieces lacked some of the darker, grittier backgrounds that my other paintings had achieved. In order to solve this problem I began a large canvas, although this discouraged me from using newsprint to add to the depth of my work it did give me the advantage of using the canvas to absorb washes of colour. This was a property my previous surfaces had lacked and allowed me to spend much longer preparing the background to work on, I was now able to use multiple washes of various tones and different colours to create a much deeper background which I was able to later utilise and highlight to add to the painting. The washes also allowed a much more expressive feel beneath the rigid rectangular structures allowing for a diverse and varied aesthetic. This was perhaps the most successful piece of work achieved in my project. |
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| Influences/Resources |
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| Initially I studied Piet Mondrian, his total abstraction works had given me a basis for the rigid, rectangular structure of my work. Mondrian was also inspiration for the initial phase of the use of blank, white spaces ? avoiding a confusing image. Mondrian was also good to look at because of his attitude towards abstraction ? as this was my first abstract project it was important to study different versions of abstraction, what it should mean and how far it should abstract. In the case of Mondrian abstraction gradually grew to become absolute, and an appearance of simplicity. Mondrian was also a good example of a very stylised artist which I later considered when producing a personal response to stylisation in my green pieces. However Mondrian?s work was extremely different to the direction I had decided to follow in my work. Mondrian had most famously expelled any texture or subject matter from his work ? whereas I had decided fairly early on to explore various textures and had planned to focus on the subject matter of towns and cities. |
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| Vieira Da Silva was an early influence to me. Vieira Da Silva?s work gave resource to the textural aspect of my work. Although Vieira Da Silva?s technique had been through an extremely slow and precise process, using oils and on a much larger scale ? it had still drawn me to attempt similar textural style and to fuse the combination of fixed rectangular shapes with a more free, expressive texture. Da Silva was also influential in colour ? again fusing contrasts, of dirty/earthy and vibrant colours. This was reflective of the subject matter ? the urban environment, a combination of often dark and unwelcoming structures as represented by harsh textures and dirty colours ? yet often with vibrant populations and areas of avant-garde architecture and development, amongst other deeper urban diversities such as race, belief, class, etc. Da Silva was also extremely influential in one particular piece of her work ? ?The Disaster?; this gave inspiration for expressive, structures composed of numerous straight brush strokes/pen marks. This gave my work a more varied aesthetic and allowed me to add movement to an otherwise static foreground. However I feel that in my work I have used my own personal interpretation of Vieira Da Silva?s work and a different response to the subject matter, using much more basic and flat structures, often with a much greater surface area, responding to the work of Mondrian. Also highlighting structural and cultural differences between Da Silva?s source of subject matter, mostly Paris ? a more hectic and chaotic city, and my own of |
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| Liverpool ? a smaller, more sparse, and calmer city (in my opinion).� I had also looked at influences of Vieira Da Silva, including the cubists and C�zanne, which gave textural and structural relevance to my work. |
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| Hans Hoffmann was another important influence on my work and source of research. My work is in similar aesthetic style to Hoffmann?s work, using often vibrant rectangular shapes in abstract fashion. Hoffmann also created texture within the rectangular structures and, often associated with the abstract expressionists, used expressive marks beneath and around the rectangles. This was an influence especially when coming to the 2 green pieces of my work, at this stage I had begun to focus more on the expressive texture of the background, and so looked at Hans Hoffmann and also at |
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| Hoffmann?s influences and at the abstract expressionist movement ? looking partly at action painting and more lose styles of modern art, such as Jackson Pollock. Although the aims and direction of this art was different to mine it still held relevance in technique and proved to be a valuable resource. |
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| Another resource was the work of John Virtue, demonstrating similar techniques and focusing heavily on texture ? such as drips of paint. Virtue?s subject matter was also a great resource ? as with Da Silva, Virtue focuses on cityscapes, however Virtue was important as he focused on British cityscapes, in particular London. However although |
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| Virtue allowed me to draw inspiration to paint an artistic interpretation of my surroundings, there were still large differences. Virtue often works on a much larger scale, and thus gives an epic appearance to his work. Virtues scale also allows him to experiment with a much fuller view of the city ? and even a 360-degree view. Virtue also creates a much more realistic aesthetic ? painting a more literal interpretation, whereas the direction of my project was a much smaller scale, abstract representation. Another key difference is in colour and atmosphere, Virtues work continues an artistic tradition of emphasis on the dark and often polluting atmosphere of the city of London, whereas my aims were to reflect the city of Liverpool as vibrant and colourful. |
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| Images |
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| Vieira Da Silva ? Vertical Landscape |
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| Piet Mondrian ? Composition with black, red, gray, yellow and blue |
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| Hans Hoffmann ? Hearld |
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| Georges Braque ? The Portuguese |
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| Jackson Pollock ? Number 8 |
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| John Virtue ? Landscape 182 |
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