Set one

First experiments with my miniature figures, I decided to play around with different foods and scenes, i used macro and depth of field on my camera get a detailed shot and allowed the characters to be the main focus. I really like these initial experiments and so i am going to continue down this root and hopefully produce a final set of photographs that look a bit more professional.

experimenting with filters and edits

Here I have just taken some basic photographs to experiment with colour shadows highlights and focus, I like the warm yellow tones and I like the idea of using more then one figure within a scene.

New Project, Choosing a Theme

I have been trying to gather inpiration for my first Theme, out of the list of words i was given the ones that stand out are, colour, scale and time, i really like the idea of colour photography but it's not a very good time of year to focus on this..I have so many ideas it's hard to choose and i want to explore techniques i haven't used yet.. these are just some images i have found that are helping me think!

Keira Rathbone inspired piece

I really enjoyed creating this piece, i used a date stamper and ink pad, this was so i could control the pressure, tone and marks made, i repeated areas to build up tone. I decided to use the same initial photograph for all of my artist influence experiments to see how it would be manipulated using different styles. I really love some of the portraits Keira Rathbone created using a type writer so this is where this idea stemmed from.

Presentation feedback

So last week we had to give a presentation based on our Artist influences and inspirations. I think my Presentation went really well, i was able to speak confidently and share my thoughts easily. The class gave anonymous feedback and it was pretty good, the critique i got which i can learn from was to work on my timing as it was a little short and I should have also included other influences such as music or friends linking into my work. But overall im pretty pleased :))

 

So i've finished my first postcard size piece based on my artist influences, for this i took inspiration from andrew wyeth, i like the muted colours and atmosphere to his work. For this i use acrylic paint on canvas and tried to get similar marks to wyeths, although his work is on a bigger scale to mine, i still think it looks good on a small scale.

More life drawings

Carrying on, i tried more techniques and different media...

Life drawing...

My first go at life drawing, i decided to make some textured surfaces/backgrounds before hand and i also experimented with pencil, charcoal and ink. My favourite media to work with was the ink, i tried to allow the marks to be loose like Daniel egneus ( an illustrator i have been looking at as part of my essay for inspiration) and i used very watered down ink, it didn't turn out quite as well as expected so I'm going to use thicker paper next time, hopefully this will be an improvement :)

Andy Goldsworthy Inspiration + land art

So we recently went outside to do some land art based on the work Andy Goldsworthy produced.
I was reminded of an old project of i have done where i decided to create a sculpture on the beach, made entirely out of natural forms, a sculpture which was not permanent but which was destroyed by nature, i left it by the sea and waited for it to be washed away as i took photographs. this was a project i really loved doing.

UCASSsss..

I spent today trying to write my personal statement for ucas but gave up and decided to paint some Halloween bats and pumpkins instead haha
Our next project is called 'Their theory your practise' so i also tried to make a start by researching some artists that have really influenced my work, or just inspire me to start creating work in a similar style... the artists I've found so far that i really love are Stina Persson and Cecilia Carlstedt. They work very much with fashion illustration and this is the type of work i definitely want to look at for the next project.

Final Pieces... First off i wanted to experiment with colour so i practised mixing by using a colour wheel

I decided i wanted to create a few paintings just on an A3 scale of me and family members as a final piece to the projects 'Me and my surrounding'. So here is what i have done so far, a portrait of my brother, myself and my nephew, i have used collage including road maps of places that I have been or that are important in my life, bus/train tickets and my nephews drawings because i love working with texture, I have then used water-colour paints to create the actual portrait, I am pleased with them so far :)

 

 

 

 

 

Liverpool Biennial! so we went on a trip to see the contempory art at the liverpool biennial..i've just included some of my favourite peices or the ones that i found most interesting..

squirrle- by Jennifer Phelan



Hand casting using mod rock and plaster... this was my first time producing any form of cast and plaster sculpture
Method:
first I cut the strips of mod rock to size, then layered them on the hand one at a time to pick up as much detail as i could, using warm water to activate it, alternating between the strips going over the hand horizontally and vertically so the cast is strong. I did this to the top half of the hand and then the same technique over the bottom side, leaving a gap in between to ensure the hand inside isn't trapped. then when the casts were hard enough i removed them from the hand and secured the two half's together with more strips of mod rock (this is where i went wrong as i didn't match up the two half's correctly, so this is something i need to keep in mind if i want to produce more casts.)
          Next we mixed the plaster up, one cup of plaster to one cup of cold water was just enough to fill my cast and after the plaster set i took off the mod rock and used sand paper to get a smoother finish, i just left my plaster white but i could experiment using colour in the future.

Large Scale A2 self portrait, I have tried working with different scales, textures and media..here i have produced a large scale self portrait using stick and ink, this is a media i love to work with because i like things to be big and messy. I have drawn from a photograph as i find it much easier to work from a photograph then from life, this is something i hopefully can improve on over the course

Wire Work

 creating a self portrait out of wire, harder then it looks!! definitely not a very realistic self potrait but i still really like it, to improve on this i could work on a larger scale with differnt colours/types of wire.

Another Black and white experiment... still focusing on my surroundings and objects that describe me. I created this using chalk and black paper. working on black paper meant i had to draw in the lighter tones and highlights rather then shadows and shading on white paper ( what i'm used to!). I like this as an experiment but probably won't take it any further.

Finally set up my blog :)!....so this was one of my fist pieces of work starting Art foundation- Me and my surroundings project, i liked working on this because i experamented with textures and different media. I used a fine liner pen to draw a close section of a piece of jewelry and by having newspaper and paint layered as a background, it helps to lift the over-all image.