London 14/11/13

On thursday the 14th, we had a day trip to London visiting the Tate Britain, The Natural History Museum and The Science Museum. I really enjoyed the entire trip, seen some amazing works of art and learnt some new interesting facts whilst viewing historic items which i thought were incredible, such as 'Apollo 10' which carried three astronaut's to orbit the moon and returned, to be right in front of me and 150,000,000 year old stones, previously digested by a dinosaur etc...

The images below are just a few of the many pieces i found interesting from the Tate Britain.

The painting below i liked simply because it interests me how it is done and it is similar to the artist Jenny Saville who i've been looking at recently, who also paints in a interesting way and manages to use a kind of unorthodox method of painting using large, clashing, expressive marks to create clear understandable images. This painting at a distance is an understandable image with people, depth and structure yet at a closer look like the images below, the paint is incredibly thick and laid down in an almost childlike manner with what seem like loose un controlled marks, heavily loading the paint without detail, just using random strokes and blobs of different colour to build up the image. The paint doesn't blend to bring the image together but the colours just clash or lay blatantly over each other.

I would like to try this technique to paint a final piece for The Rakes Progress project. For me i think it will be enjoyable to do this but i may find it difficult because i tend to over work and tweak a lot, for example if i was to apply thick paint like on the below images i'd struggle to leave it how i first apply it and not accept that area as complete, i'd have massive urges to smooth it out and make it more flat and blended to seem slightly more realistic. I think it will be a challenge to paint like this but i can't wait to try it and see what happens and hopefully resist my urges to over work the painting.

The first two images below are close up's of the third image which is the full painting.

Hyperrealism: My Area Of Focus

Below are videos of some amazing hyperrealistic pencil drawings, an area of art i am very much into and want to practice and eventually master. These are all incredible and are where my motivation is for me to brush up my skills and create equally as impressive art work. I need to take more time with my drawings from now on because i tend to get bored and rush without transferring to my drawing all the detail i'm actually observing, not making it perfect, but just similar. I only spend a few hours on my drawings at the moment and should aim to spend a lot more as many of the realistic drawings i've been looking at take anywhere from 10 hours to over 300 like the Emanuel Dascanio videos below. I've realised that it is simple to create drawings like this, it's simply time consuming and requires a hell of a lot of patience and the effort to draw what i see, i mean what i really see, not what i see from a distance but each and every flaw, freckle and detail on the subject no matter how big or small and fully represent light where there is light and accurately match on my drawing the tones and textures of the image i'm referring to. 

The next three videos are all of the artist 'Emanuel Dascanio' who is amazing at realistic drawings. I love his work just because how he manages to draw beautiful portraits on a huge larger than life scale without sacrificing any detail, but capturing even more!

Observational Drawing of Chloe

Body Casting: A Rake's Progress

In this class a few of us made plaster body casts of each other in different poses, all based on the eight paintings in A Rakes Progress. The pose i adopted was from the eighth painting (Bedlam) where Tom Rakewell lays in only a sheet, insane and in the comfort of Sarah Young. the first body cast below is the one of myself, in the painting my character is to the right behind Sarah, sat cowering with his hands clutched beneath his chin (shown in the first image below).

 I enjoyed being cast and also casting others. I will definitely say i was glad when i was free to move again though, it reached a point where my hands and legs were aching to move and stretch as i was sat in that same position for a while, i was aching everywhere. Also after the majority of the plaster had set it became harder to breath because i wasn't breathing heavily, i was taking small breaths and when i needed to take a big breath and expand my lungs i wasn't able to without damaging the cast, so that became quite a pain nearer to the end because whilst not wanting to break the cast i also felt rather claustrophobic. Although being uncomfortable and restrained i would still definitely do it again because i really loved the final outcome after i was free and it was set.

 

Mask making

Printing in Textiles

Pen Drawings From Youtube

I've been looking on youtube at some ball point pen drawings, i stumbled across these and my mind was blown, in shock to how such a smooth textured drawing can be achieved using a ball point pen. None of these drawings show clear pen lines or evidence of pen strokes to seem like a drawing what so ever but just look like a photograph. 

This is another area i want to look into and put my hand to, using pen isn't something i've ever tried before because i never thought such realistic images were possible, but it's yet another challenge i wish to defeat and eventually produce some drawings of my own which you have to look at twice to believe them and question their medium. 

Jenny Saville

Jenny Saville is an artist i've been researching and find extreemly interesting. She is a contemporary British painter known for her large-scale painted depictions of naked women. I find that her work really draws me in, i'm facinated by the way she uses the colours to create really fleshy tones and how the paintings seem very realistic whilst at a closer look you see she uses really large, thick brushes and the images are really quite shocking.