Drawing project

For drawing I had an idea of making an animation.
The theme was based on the idea of the journey of learning an instrument.

Drawing - Journey

These drawings were experiments for the project 'journey'. I drew them with continuous line drawing as I find that a really successful way of drawing as it does not always have to look completely accurate. I think that I want to develop the landscape further. I may bring paint into my drawings as you can draw with paint.

I think that it may add to the continuous line drawings and make them appear more alive with the use of different brush marks.

Painting

Oil on canvas

Oil on paper

This painting is still a work in progress. I thought this image was intriguing as it was just a big group of people that appeared. I also liked the different emotions in the peoples faces which is like analysing their body language and enhancing some actions more than others like the man pointing his finger. 

Prismacolour pencils on board (composition idea)

Even though the last image is coloured pencil I think I am going to paint it but use different brush marks to get a different overall feel. I think it will be visually interesting to see it in two different mediums and what effects they both bring. Also the colours will be different. 

Lens and digital - video

This was a stop motion I made for lens base and digital. Most of the photos I took were in London apart from the part where people are walking fast were photos taken in Leicester. I thought that they fit the idea behind the video, which was travelling. Which is why I included the train and post signs. I think it would work if I put more post signs in to develop the idea further. 

I was pleased with the way the stop motion turned out although one thing that I would change would be the way the composition jumps around. I think I will use a tripod next time to make it more still. 

Composition ideas for painting.

For painting I started off by taking photographs like these. I was looking at the idea of exploring the people in the city catching them off guard. 

For the images I did crop them to decide what composition I wanted . I then started to draw continuous line drawings from the images. 

2013

2013

These drawings are ideas for paintings. In some of the compositions I put more than one photo together as I thought that it worked and enhanced the original composition as they may have the same expression or are looking the same way , which looks visually interesting as you wonder what they appear to be looking at.

oil on board (a4 board) 

Pencil on paper ( a5 Sketchbook )

Before I started the painting I worked out what composition would work best. 

Oil on board

(Work in progress)

I started to look at my photos and analyse them to make them work into a composition. For this painting I took two different images and cropped them and then put them together. From looking at the drawing and the painting I have decided that I need to change my  painting slightly as it does not look quite right. The jaw line is too thin and the hair line is also not wide enough . Another thing that I need to change is the eyebrows as it does not show his emotion as that is one of the things that I am focussing on.

I also need to change the drawing of the woman as it is not quite right. It is useful seeing them next to each other as I can see where I am going wrong.

Edward Hopper 1882-1967

Edward Hopper created paintings of the American life. He found it hard to find his own style and often returned to illustration. A quote from Edward Hopper " Its hard for me to decide what to paint. I go for months without finding it sometimes. It comes slowly."

In 1913 he travelled to Gloucester, Massachusetts , to gain some inspiration and started his first outdoor paintings in America. He painted 'squam light'.

Squam Light 

Edward Hopper trained under Robert Henri. Another quote from Edward Hopper " It takes a long time for an idea to strike. Then I have to think about it for a long time I don't start painting until I have it all worked out in my mind. I'm alright wen I get to the easel." 

Hopper found the idea of  power of the subconscious mind is the expression of every art.

Edward Hopper seemed to explore different themes regularly, from seascapes to cityscapes. 

Hopper travelled a lot to find inspiration of places to paint and documented through drawing. 

The atmosphere created in his paintings is very intriguing as it is dark most of the time. 

A key theme seems to go throughout Hoppers American life series. The people depicted all seem to be alone and isolated , in their own world.  He seems to focus on one individual as it creates an uneasy atmosphere. 

David Shrigley (1968-)

David Shrigley is a British artist shortlisted for the Turner Prize 2013. He grew up in Leicester and did an art foundation course at Leicester Polytechnic before going to Glasgow School of Art and now lives in Glasgow.

Shrigley works in a lot of different media including photography, books, sculpture, animation, painting and music. He is probably best known for his child like drawings which combine image and text.

Shrigley says of his own work : “ Everything should be humorous on some level. Every part of our understanding of the world needs to be a humorous one” and “ I would say I tend to keep the things that surprise me and chuck the things that don’t”.

David Shrigley, Headless Drummer (2012).

David Shrigley has said that he thinks that the best way to look at his drawings is in books. Here is an example of one of Shrigley’s books called “Why we got the sack from the museum”. 

David Shrigley, I'm Dead (2010)

Shrigley has said that his influences are Philip Guston , Raymond Pettibon and Rene Magritte.

Other people have compared his work to Jean Michel Basquiat and I can see the similarities to Shrigley’s drawings.

What the critics say about the Turner Prize and David Shrigley :-

“Why David Shrigley should win this year’s Turner Prize. This week editor Rob Alderson reflects on the Turner Prize nominees and nails his colours to the mast of who he wants to win.

When this year’s Turner Prize nominees were announced, Guardian art critic and former Turner juror Adrian Searle was quick to set out his stall. “A world-class artist in the way that the others are not, the bottom line is that (Tino) Sehgal is already the winner.”

His article ran with the following introduction. “The deviser of unsettling public encounters is a world-class artist in a way that the other contenders – Laure Prouvost, David Shrigley and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye – are not.”

Elsewhere though, it’s the inclusion of David Shrigley that has provoked the most discussion. Within minutes of the shortlist being unveiled, my Twitter feed included a passionate hope that he is named the winner come December, and an equally bombastic plea that he is not. The latter Tweet came from someone who works within the arts and design industry, the former did not.

I wrote a piece back in October that called on the Turner Prize to be more open about their criteria but the inclusion of Shrigley moves this debate on a bit.

Maybe it’s the fact that his wildly popular show at The Hayward Gallery was such a mainstream success that some turn their noses up at the Glaswegian master of surreal silliness. But while I enjoyed being unsettled by Tino Seghal’s Tate Modern performance piece – where a flock of people, ran, danced, played and approached you for whispered, random conversations – and I am a big fan of Laure Provost, Shrigley is my clear winner.

And it’s precisely because he gatecrashed the mainstream consciousness that I want him to win. In the past the Turner Prize has revelled in flagging up lesser-known exhibitions and has done it well. But sometimes the shortlist has smacked of a certain kind of snobbery. Shrigley’s show was joyous, funny, thought-provoking and tackled that hoary idea of what art is. To do all this and have them queueing round the block is certainly “outstanding” in my eyes.”

Because I have not seen any of Shrigley’s books or exhibitions I have found it quite difficult to respond to his work. However, when I viewed his animation ‘Headless Drummer’ (2012) on the internet I instantly did like it and found it humorous. Since re visiting the animation it has not had the same impact.

Ellen Gallagher (December 16, 1965 - ) Frieze Magazine Autumn 2013

Ellen Gallagher was born in America. Throughout Gallagher’s work she explores the theme of race and identity using a wide variety of mediums such as the moving image, painting and drawing.

Some of her methods include found imagery in magazines and then manipulating them to express her ideas. Gallagher references to the theme of race whilst making it current to todays marketing.

I find Gallagher’s work very powerful, her use of cut and paste is very effective.

 It is strange to view faces with no eyes this may have been a reaction that Gallagher wanted to shock the audience and make them feel uncomfortable. It appears quite scary in a way as they look like dolls with no thoughts of their own.

 However this draws your focus to the bold yellow wigs perhaps this is why she decided to cut out the eyes. It also makes you focus more on the skin tone.

On the one hand, you feel as though you are looking into emptiness by taking out the eyes there is a loss of character and personality of the person being portrayed. However, the wigs being so different to each other add a whole other level of personality of the character.

I think that the colour scheme is really clever as it takes your attention straight to the focal point of the piece.

Presenting them in a grid form allows the viewer to examine the individual wigs but also so that you can view them together almost appearing as an army. I think that the way Gallagher has spaced her images out is visually interesting as she does have some wigs that overlap each other which is an aspect that I really like as it seems they are interacting with each other.

Ellen Gallagher’s influences include Agnes Martin and writer and artist Gertrude Stein. Gallagher has said that she likes the way Gertrude Stein used text in her art.

Following is an extract from a review of Ellen Gallagher’s exhibition at the Tate by Alastair Smart in the Telegraph.

‘And then there’s her series of Yellow canvases, each one a vast grid containing hundreds of adverts – for wigs, hair straighteners and skin whiteners – lifted from vintage, black-life magazines of the mid-20th century.

Gallagher revisits a benighted time when black cultural identity was so suppressed that a desire to look white was commodified – and she zanily restyles each ad’s model with a hairpiece of yellow Plasticine. Her aim, playfully and retrospectively, is to liberate the models in the process.

One wonders, though, if she’d have made more impact leaving the original ads unaltered, so unsavourily revealing are they in themselves. Unusually, Gallagher seems to be affirming the surface of her work at the expense of what lies beneath.’

I disagree with this review as I felt when I walked around the show that the way that she added her own style of the ridiculous bright yellow wigs brings more of a statement forward than just leaving the ads ‘unaltered’.