PAINTING: Working with Monochrome and Being More Gestural
Posted: March 15, 2014 Filed under: Documentation, Field | Tags: Art, Art Student, artist, Black and White, Brush, city loneliness, colour, experiments, Fine Art, gestural, lonely, monochrome, monochrome paintings, painting, Paintings, palette knife, singled out, surrounded by others but alone, tones of grey, white silhouettes 6 CommentsAfter 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
SUMMER PROJECT WORK
Posted: September 21, 2013 Filed under: Other | Tags: abstract, Art, blending, bright, colour, expressive, Fine Art, paint, palette knife, Rheumatoid arthritis, thick paint, Wrist 1 CommentI really enjoyed producing the main abstract Image here. It is inspired by a piece called “Margerita” by Malcolm Chate.
Unfortunately Malcolm Chate had a severe case of rheumatoid arthritis and so was forced to make his artworks with the paintbrush between his wrists. As part of my summer project prior to starting my Degree, I was asked to produce a pastiche of an artist. Malcolm came instantly to mind as I find him incredibly inspiring, most of us would probably have given up if we were faced with the challenge of producing art with such a condition, but he didn’t! He continued to make beautiful artworks by thinking outside the box and finding a new way to apply the paint. I wanted to find out just how difficult it was to paint with a brush between your wrists, so that is how I produced this, I even put a sponge between them and dabbed it on to create the background. It was incredibly hard to produce and I definitely admire him even more now having tried it myself. I feel I have successfully managed to capture his influence and would like to experiment with more new ways of creating abstracts.
GemmaSchiebeFineArt 
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