PAINT WORKSHOP: Shaped Painting Exhibition
Posted: March 19, 2014 Filed under: Documentation, Field | Tags: Art, Art Student, artist, dry brushing, exhibition, Fine Art, fine art project, green glow, heightened loneliness, loneliness, mini exhibition, monochrome, paint, paint workshop, painting exhibit, shaped painting, the loneliness of city life Leave a commentIn the first hour, we were given the task of putting the final touches to our shaped paintings in preparation to informally exhibit what we have created within these sessions to our peers that have been working in other discipline sessions within fine art.
I am incredibly pleased with my shaped painting, so much so that I am thinking of presenting it as one of my final pieces. I think the green glow coming through the monochrome is quite eery and heightens the feeling of loneliness within the painting. I have spent a lot of time working on this and I feel it definitely shows, I was really excited to exhibit this piece along side the shaped paintings of the other members of my painting group.
It was really interesting to see how each of us had approached the task of creating a shaped painting very differently. All of the pieces had our own stamp on them and were painted in completely different techniques. Some people had completely covered the green underlay, some had let it show through as I have. It was fascinating to me that we had all been given the same brief and interpreted in very varied ways. I think presenting all our work as a mini exhibition was a great way of consolidating all that we have learnt the past weeks and the perfect opportunity for each one of us to take a step back and look at what we have achieved. I have really enjoyed attending these painting sessions on a monday and I have learnt a massive amount. I had never experimented with green underpainting or dry brushing or creating a shaped painting before and I have acquired valuable skills that will continue to influence my work and that will stay with me through the rest of my artistic life.
Large Painting – Reflecting and Bringing Together my Findings so Far
Posted: March 12, 2014 Filed under: Documentation, Field | Tags: Acrylic Paint, alone amongst others, alone in the city, Art, art degree, Art Piece, Art Student, artist, charcoal, consolidating, dry brushing, gouache, hidden loneliness of the city, Ink, loneliness, Mixed media, painting, palette knife, reflecting, sepia, sepia tones, underpainting, urban loneliness Leave a commentI am very pleased with the body of work that I have been producing relating to the City. I feel like I have an interesting concept, exploring the Hidden Loneliness of the City and have experimented with this idea in depth. However, I felt like I needed to consolidate my findings and portray what I have learnt and think is working so far. I decided to make a piece reflecting on these findings.
In this piece, I have incorporated a variety of different medias including paint, ink, charcoal and gouache. I have portrayed the sepia tone influence that I have been working with inspired by an artist I came across in Berlin and user Shoe 18 on the deviantart forum. I started off with a dark brown ground here, influenced by my experimentation after undertaking the grounds workshop, I also painted an underpainting using a palette knife and worked on top of this employing Dry Brushing techniques that I learnt from attending the paint workshop sessions with James Green. I have worked with the concept of all of the people around you being insignificant and portrayed that they are just bodies and may as well just be white silhouettes because I believe it is particularly successful and left one person in colour to show they are lonely and singled out among all the others that they do not interact with.
I wanted to formulate a piece that includes all the experimentation and things that I have learnt that I believe have been positive and successful within this project. I believe this is an accurate reflection of this and a successful piece of work in itself. Now that I have consolidated and reflected, I feel that I can move on in my project with confidence and continue my experimentation.
After my tutorial on Monday, I realised that I haven’t experimented with monochrome because I was so inspired by the influences of the artists I mentioned, but this is what I will be working with next, I believe that the loneliness may be heightened by an empty monochrome background and the colours of the one person will appear more vibrant and therefore the person will stand out more. This seems like it will progress my work further and add to the portrayal of the Hidden Loneliness of Cities.
PAINT WORKSHOP: Working on top of Green Underpainting
Posted: March 10, 2014 Filed under: Documentation, Field | Tags: Acrylic Paint, Art, Art Student, art workshop, Black and White, board, dimension, dry brushing, Fine Art, George Ayers, green underpainting, grey, monochrome, painting, shaped painting, tonal variation, tone, tones of grey, working on top of green underpainting, Workshop Leave a commentToday, I attended the paint workshop, where I started working on top of the Green underpainting that I have been working on this week. Prior to this workshop, I had a tutorial with one of our tutors – Susan Adams, who suggested that I worked in monochrome to highlight the one person that is in colour within my work. I think this is a great suggestion and I will experiment with this technique throughout the further stages of my project. In this session, based on the feedback I have been given, I decided to work with a monochrome layer on top of the Green underpainting, and I was interested to see how the green would shine through the greys.
I started to realise that I had already done a lot of the work by putting detail into the underpainting and that I could use it as a guide to work on top of. I focused on creating dimension and tone in the underlay and this definitely helped the success of the paint I was applying on top because I could follow the tones I have considered and thought out previously. I have employed dry brushing techniques here so that the glow of the green underlay is allowed to come through. I have been researching artists that use these techniques within their work and I came across the YouTube video’s of George Ayers, who incorporates much of the detail into a green underpainting and like me uses it more as a guide to work on top of.
I am really pleased with how this piece is turning out. Before these sessions, I never realised quite how useful an underpainting could be and how it really does inform the outcome. It is definitely something I will be condsidering a lot more in my future as an art student and an artist.
I will continue to work on this piece this week and finish it ready for next monday’s session where we will be exhibiting what we have created and presenting what we have learnt.
Finished Painting: Underpainting, Pattern and Dry Brushing
Posted: February 27, 2014 Filed under: Documentation, Field | Tags: Acrylic Paint, acrylic painting, Art Student, art techniques, artist, Artwork, depth, dry brushing, Fine Art, finished painting, painting, sketchbook, Still life, successful outcome, three dimensional, underpainting, working on top of green underpainting 1 CommentI have spending my evenings working in the studio, I have now finished my still life painting that I have been producing in and outside of a paint workshop I have been attending every Monday and I highly pleased and proud of the result. At first, I was unsure of the benefits of underpainting, especially using green tones but I have been pleasantly surprised. The green tones coming through under the colour I have dry brushed over the top has definitely helped add depth to my painting. It has also changed the colours on top and undoubtedly helped inform my decisions when painting in shadows and highlights.
In my opinion, this is an incredibly successful outcome and I have learnt so much about painting that I didn’t know before. I think the depth in the work and the three-dimensional quality it has is one of the most successful elements. The addition of a dotted pattern in the chair and thin line work on the book edges has shown me how to create subtle detail and add texture to my work when working on a flat surface. This has been such a valuable exercise for me and I will definitely be using underpainting and techniques such as dry brushing within my work in the future and within this project.
PAINT WORKSHOP: Session 2: Colour, Pattern and Dry-Brushing
Posted: February 23, 2014 Filed under: Documentation, Field | Tags: 3d, Acrylic Paint, Art, Art Student, artist, Arts, Artwork, colour, documentation, dry brushing, field, Fine Art, green tone, ground, grounds, paint workshop, painting, pattern, realistic colour, scuffing, Still life, Texture, underpainting, underpainting in green, visual art, Workshop Leave a commentWe were asked to bring our Green tone underpaintings along to this session with a view to working on top of them with more realistic colours. The idea was to see how the underpainting informed the painting produced on top. The tutor showed us an example of a green underpainting that he has been working on and showed us a few techniques to think about when painting on top of our pieces. He asked us to think about pattern, and how using pattern in painting can be effective. He used the example of wood grain within our still lifes and delicately showed us how to apply thin brush strokes using a small brush. Next, he showed us a technique known as “dry-brushing”, which is when you almost scuff the surface with paint. It is best to use an old brush for this and it was a valid way of applying paint for us in this workshop, because the highlights, lowlights and green tones of our underpaintings could show through the new thin layer of paint being applied.
We were then left to experiment with these techniques and start building up a more realistic image of our still lifes using more accurate colours. I started my piece by observing the texture of the surface that it was on, this week there were no tables left and I had placed my items on an orangey brown canvas chair which worked out really well for adding colour to my painting. I used a dotting effect and spotted pattern to render the chair and then used the dry brushing technique to add a scuffed orange colour over the top, allowing the green to show through slightly. Dry brushing over the pattern also gave emphasis to the dots themselves and it started to look highly textured and effective.
I continued employing these techniques and built up a substantial amount of colour within my work. It was really interesting how I found myself being informed by the shadows and highlights that I had thought about when producing the underpainting in the first place. The green tones showing through also seemed to give my painting a lot more texture made it look more three-dimensional. The green underpainting definitely effected the colours that I painted on top. For example, The photograph that is laying on the book was painted in dark greys but when applied on top of green, pink tones were emerging, which was highly interesting.
I have learnt a lot from these sessions and underpainting and dry brushing are definitely techniques I will be using in my painting in the future. I will now continue working and finish this piece in my own time ready for the next session on Monday.
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