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Making a Blog
24/09/2020
Today I made a blog. The workshop explaining how to create this was fun and informative. Over the course of my degree, I will document all my work and research on this blog.
Artist Research
David Ambarzumjan
David Ambarzumjan is an emerging artist based in Munich, known for his surreal oil paintings in the series 'Brush Strokes in Time'. The contrast in his paintings are epic and juxtapose what is, what was, and what may be. I love how brilliantly David shows the effect humanity has had on nature in his work; from wildland to high rise cities, his work is phenomenal. Davids' paintings reveal the same place in two wildly different time periods, in which one is contained within a giant brushstroke that sweeps across the painting. David describes his art as 'depicting the wonders of the universe in a surrealistic way.' I love his painting technique and how he creates the effect of light bouncing off the rainy streets of New York. I love painting wildlife and Ambarzumjan's work has inspired me to take this further. Instead of just painting an animal I want to tell a story about the animal, which David succeeds at greatly in all of his work.
'Recover' 2019
ROA
ROA is a street artist from Belgium. He has created many amazing murals all over the world. He is best known for painting wildlife and rodents native to the area, sometimes combining life and death in his paintings. He does this by revealing internal organs and skeletons in his murals. During my research of the artist, I found that he only paints wildlife and rodents local to the area he his painting in. I love how his paintings create so much emotion, sending a strong message to the observer. He addresses issues, such as animal cruelty and hunting. I particularly like the mural he created on shipping containers, and how it appears the animals are caged in, chained, and trapped. I have been largely inspired by Roa's lenticular street art whilst working on my Shaun space project, in the way I have tried creating illusions and images that can only be seen from certain angles. ROA inspired me to try using spray paint as a medium, as I had never tried this before. I really struggled with it and so managed to create a similar effect using watered down black acrylic with large brushes.
This is a mural I created, which was largely inspired by ROA.
ROA inspired this installation I created in my Maquette. He creates optical illusions in a lot of his street art of local wildlife.
Vanessa Foley
Vanessa Foley is a local bird artist based in Newcastle Upon Tyne. She is known for her detailed graphite pencil drawings and rich oil paintings. Her paintings appear to have several layers, giving them a lot of depth and colour. I love how Vanessa creates such a dramatic contrast between light and dark in her work, it really makes her paintings catch your eye. Once Vanessa decides on her next creation, she spends a lot of time gathering reference and observing the birds she plans to portray. She observes them in motion to get a sense of their posture and interactions. This extra research allows her to express a lot of emotion in her paintings. Vanessa has inspired me to experiment with oil paint, as I have not yet tried it, but I love the soft texture she manages to achieve with the medium. The hornbil painting below looks as though you could stroke it and appears quite magical. The painting of the hummingbird is one of my favourites by the artist. I especially like the gold ring she has encased the bird in with some speckles of gold falling away as the bird takes flight.
George Boorujy
George Boorujy creates immensely large wildlife paintings using acrylic, oil, or ink. His hyper realistic paintings are from an unexpected perspective, it's as if the animal is looking directly into your eyes. This gives a confrontational aspect to his work, which I find intriguing. It really makes you stop and take in the artwork. George creates this perspective from lots of research and mini clay sculptures of his subjects. George's work has really inspired me to create more large scale paintings, I plan to incorporate my sculpture practice with my paintings to help me get a 3D sense of the subject I am painting. Creating sculptures of what I plan to paint will help me to create interesting angles and scenes, as I struggle painting without a reference. My sculpture project was also largely inspired by Boorujy's work. I sculpted a dog's head using clay, in which I attempted to make it look confrontational and quite majestic. I didnt quite achieve the look I was going for, however it was my first experience with sculpting and I hope to try again and spend more time on it, instead of the timetabled two hour session we had. Not too long ago I emailed George Boorujy asking if he could offer any advice on a painting I was working on. He sent me some photos of paintings he was currently working on and gave me a few great tips; " I make little sculptures that I work from as there would be no photographs that would be of the angles I use in my compositions. It's a really helpful part of the process and one I recommend to my students often. I'll include a photo of some of those little sculptures. As far as the actual process, I start very light and build up the ink in successive washes. It's a bunch of layers, one after the other."
A lot of inspiration for this piece of work I created came from Boorujy.
'The Mountain Range' A linoleum carving collage on 1970 topo map of rocky mountain national park.
My sculpture inspired by George Boorujy
John Fellows
John Fellows is a printmaker, specialising in lino print. Instead of printing onto ordinary pieces of paper, he uses maps and a variety of found bits of paper, some of which date back to the 1800s. You can tell a lot of thought and planning has gone into each of his prints, for example, this piece called 'The unwanted burden'. The print, which depicts a sailor carrying a bottle of water with an old ship inside, has been printed onto an old nautical map. Fellows' creates a relationship between his print and the paper, which really makes you engage with the artwork. These links between his prints and the paper are what really struck me about his work. Johns' art has quite an old, vintage aesthetic, which is something I really like about his work. After thoroughly enjoying the print making and tote bag making workshop, in which I printed onto a tote bag instead of paper, i would love to experiment print making on different materials, such as old sheets of music paper.
'The Unwanted Burden' A linoleum carving collage on a used nautical map from 1920
Lucy Pass
Lucy Pass is a painter and describes herself as an 'anti-portrait artist'. Lucy is not a traditional portrait artist, all of her portraits are defaced in a way, with expressive marks and missing features. she may choose to, instead of painting an eye, paint a circle or a square. her paintings incoorporate realism with expressive, contemporary art. I particularly like her series of eye paintings, in which Lucy focuses on the human gaze. The eye painting below caught my attention in the way it looks as if there is a pool of string forming below the eye, which seems to represent tears in an usual, yet interesting way. Her series of eye paintings were all placed in small golden boxes, which reminded me of the Georgian lover's eye. Lucy's work reminds me of another artist i am inspired by; Cristina Troufa. Troufa also creates unfinished paintings, in a perfect way.
Paul Heaston
I come upon Heaston’s perspective drawings, when looking for inspiration for my first drawing project. I had not seen anything like Heaston’s work before. He draws everything he can see from his perspective; he even includes his hands and sketchpad in the drawing. Everything in the room becomes slightly distorted, as it is not an architectural drawing and he sometimes includes three or four walls of the room. He inspired me to draw my bathroom and include all four walls, the ceiling, and the floor from my perspective. This was quite a challenge, especially when drawing the tiled floor and walls as they did not meet up perfectly. Heaston works mainly with a fountain pen, whereas I decided to use pencil. This was due to fact I wanted to create lots of detail using smooth blending techniques.
This is my room drawing for my first drawing project, inspired by Paul Heaston's perspective drawings.
Julie Rhodes creates fiercely realistic wildlife artwork, using pastels or acrylic paint. She works on a large scale (over 70cm tall), which allows her to pack in lots of detail. Julie's pastel works are particulary a favourite of mine. I love the smoky effect she creates with the pastels and how the animals appear to be emerging out of the canvas. Julie has inspired me to draw and paint on a much larger scale, the impact this creates when you see a painting of a tiger or lion that is looking down at you is astounding. Julie inspired a recent pastel drawing of mine, I watched some of her videos on social media for some hints and tips on creating realism with pastels
This is a pastel drawing I created recently, inspired by Julie Rhodes. This is one of my favourite pieces of artwork I have made and I really enjoyed the full process.
Julie Rhodes
Cristina Troufa
I have been a fan of Troufa's work for many years now. She is a portrait painter who uses herself as the muse. She paints self-portraits in which she seems to be portraying her thoughts, feelings, struggles, and self-growth. I love how she manages to tell a story in every painting from just painting herself. These paintings here, for example, the first I feel is showing monsters under her bed, except her mind is her own monster. The second painting seems to show her punishing herself, perhaps it portrays her feeling guilty or wanting to punish herself for a sin she has committed. The last painting shows her holding herself up, the higher self is portrayed with what seems to be a halo around her head. I love the unfinished aspect of Troufa's work, The empty space removes context from her compositions, forcing you to focus on what is happening in the painting. The unfinished paintings have a very dramatic effect and show that she is still learning and growing. I also love Troufa's painting style; the bold colours and hints of blues and purples in the skin tone. Troufa inspired my painting project, specifically my self-portrait and glasses painting. I would love to be able to paint skin tones like Troufa does and believe I will get there with some practice.
Andy Warhol
Whilst researching screen printing, I became inspired by Warhol's work. The soup cans and Marilyn Monroe screenprints are particular favourites of mine. Warhol inspired my digital drawing project in the way of using bright, bold colours. I also repeated my drawing several times, which Warhol does quite often in his work, such as the soup cans. I came across the book 'Warhol in ten takes' in the university library, which I found very interesting. One thing that I came across in this book was his 8-hour silent film of the empire state building.