PAINTING: Working with Monochrome and Being More Gestural

Posted: March 15, 2014 | Author: | Filed under: Documentation, Field | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

After attending a tutorial on Monday, I was glad that the tutor gave me some direction and new ideas and techniques to work with. After looking at my work, she suggested that I work with Monochrome and use the tones of grey to enhance the feeling of loneliness and make the individual coloured figure appear even more singled out and alone.

She also felt that my work was not really gelling as a whole and that I was working with three different realities and had to express the relationship between the figures, the single figure and the architecture. She said she thought the detailed buildings that were included in my work detracted from the figures and from the message within the pieces. She suggested that I experiment with contrasting colours, monochrome and full colour as well as contrasting languages, the gestural and the more realistic. I was encouraged to make marks and shapes that represent the buildings and to make them more gestural rather than focusing on every detail, window or door etc. I have experimented with making less detailed marks to create the city landscape with both brush and palette knife.

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I feel that working with a palette knife definitely helped me be less controlled and more gestural but doesn’t really gel with the figures painted with a brush and therefore is unsuccessful so I have experimented with more gestural brush work.

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I think this is far more successful and the monochrome definitely heightens the feeling of loneliness and the colours of the lone figure. After producing this piece, I decided to experiment with how much of the surrounding is seen within the painting, because even though the technique is successful, I feel that the buildings still are overwhelming the figures here.

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This definitely puts emphasis on the lone figure and draws the viewer to wonder why they are the only one not painted as a white silhouette and consider their loneliness rather than being distracted by the buildings in the piece.  These are highly valid experiments and have inspired me to create a final piece working with monochrome rather than the sepia alternative I have worked with previously. I feel this colour palette and deeper contrast portrays a more negative vibe and adds to the feeling of loneliness within the work.

Life Drawing Workshop: Using Ink, Water and Charcoal

Posted: November 10, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Contextualisation, Documentation, Subject | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

In this Workshop, I experimented with a variety of drawing techniques using black indian ink and charcoal. I feel these techniques  have helped me to draw the life model more successfully than if i was just using a pencil or charcoal on its own. The ink almost guided me and took all my anxieties about proportion and making things perfect away. In this workshop I worked with two conditions: Wet on Wet and Wet on Dry. Wetting the paper first encouraged the ink to bleed and run more where as just painting it onto dry paper gave it a little bit more control and I was able to produce more crisp lines.

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I started the portrait below by wetting the paper and painting on the rough shape of the life models face and features with ink. I had no control over how the ink was going to spread or how much it would bleed, which in a way was positive as it stopped me worrying about making a completely proportionally accurate drawing and more about making something visually exciting. I added water to the ink in different quantities in separate containers so I could use the different strengths to create a sense of light and shadow and tone. The Patterns that the ink made were completely involuntary and out of my control. After I was happy with the appearance of the ink on paper I let it dry and used it as a guide to draw in the face and details in charcoal. I was surprised by how well this drawing turned out considering I didn’t think about scale or proportion at all. I usually find drawing the human face extremely challenging  but the ink made my drawing style more free. I let the ink guide me and then drew into it rather than drawing the details in first and then applying the ink.

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Before undertaking this workshop I looked at the ink artworks of south african artist Marlene Dumas. Her work encouraged me not to worry about what the ink is doing on the page because it’s the natural “mistakes” that can make the best outcomes.

MARLENE DUMAS

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Marlene Dumas portraits are very free and almost abstract in some ways. Rather than representing an actual person, Marlene’s portraits represent an emotion or a state of mind. Themes central to her work include race, sexuality, guilt, innocence, violence and tenderness. Her work encourages me to be more free in my drawing and to think about drawing in a wider spectrum rather than just putting pen or pencil to paper, she has opened my eyes to the fact that you can draw with many materials. I really like her work, it has so much passion within it and the fact that she displayed all of her portraits together as one big piece inspires me to do the same. One piece doesn’t have to be a large painting or drawing it could be a series of them. This is something to think about when displaying my artworks in relation to decay.

Ink and Charcoal together are materials I am definitely going to use in the future. I will also revisit wet on wet and wet on dry using indian ink as it is an easy way of making interesting and creative drawings and achieves a great result.