Module 3. Assignment 4. The little house of wire.......

The next question asks us to interpret the style of any of the artists we have looked at in this module and to come up with an interpretation in our own style using any materials we like. The subject of the picture must be taken from, or relate to one of the photographs used in assignment 2.

My first Photo I chose was the Aldeburgh sunset.




I adore everything about this photograph. It was taken at the start of an idyllic weekend. The sun was bright orange, reflected here in the grass, the sky was pink and the cowslips in the foreground were luminous green.

The style I have chosen to follow with this painting is probably closest to Matisse. The vibrancy of the colours are in his style as is the fact that the composition is kept simple. I have kept the colours fairly accurate to nature but they look pretty unnatural and were a rare sight to see so I think he may well have painted them as seen as well. I have used soft pastels which I think keep the colours nice and soft and they are obviously easy to blend together.










The second piece I chose to make struck me after reading about Alexander Calder. His wind defying sculptures were wonderful to see and I especially liked his earlier work of scenes of people, circuses etc all in wire and found objects. The work by artist Lucy Casson whose work I so greatly admired at the recent Smile exhibition is very reminiscent of his work.

Alexander Calder was a great friend of Miros. I found this out today whilst listening to the excellent audio guide at the Tate Modern. In fact you could probably imagine they were friends as some of Alexanders sculptures look like 3D Miro pictures.










In fact Miro was inspired to paint Message from a friend after receiving a letter from Alexander Calder. Alexander had put an arrow on the front of the envelope pointing upwards to indicate that the letter should go by airmail.

Miro liked this imagery and painted a huge black mound with a red " tail" on his canvas. The black mound and the red tail, or point were symbolising the arrow. Miros pointed down. I wonder if that was because that was the direction the letter would have had to end up going to reach him.

After reading about Alexander Calders work I immediately was inspired to use wire work for my next piece. I was once a florist and also have done a jewellery making course so wire is something I have quite a lot of. I have attempted to make sculptures and things from wire before but not so complicated as this piece which was actually supposed to be recognisable.

The picture I chose was the seafront at Aldeburgh again. This photograph to me is so inspiring and also represents somewhere I am very happy.







These I images and Alexander Calders wire fish were to be the inspiration for my wire houses.

Here are Alexander Calders wire fish:




And here are my wire houses in all their various stages until they reach the sea shore.















The coloured areas they are sat on represent the colours of the houses in the photograph. The buttons are the muted colours of the stones on the beach. The two outside houses are made in Copper wire and the prominent. Central blue house is made from green florist wire. I like the effect of the different colours although if I did it again I would probably use a darker wire as it is easier to see in the finished article. The copper is much easier to work with though so I was thinking about wrapping masking tape around it and painting it.

I am really enjoying the way my mind is expanding in a sculptural way and I hope to use wire again very soon.

Module 3. Assignment 4. Artists

For this module we are first asked to make notes on the following artists and discuss their painting styles.

Gauguin - Believed in "pure colour-everything must be sacrificed to it."






He lived for a long while in Tahiti and painted a great many scenes of people in everyday life. The colours are deep and vibrant and heightened if not sometimes completely inaccurate. He paints the feeling of what he sees rather than the accurate colours. The result is stunning and immensely enjoyable to look at. The colours are rich and of a similar tone and depth. He used muted tones

He regularly used Prussian and Cobalt blue,Emerald Green, viridian, Cadmium Yellow, chrome yellow, red ochre, lead and zinc White.

He painted in oils and typically painted the outline of the subject in Prussian Blue. He then filled in using opaque colours rather than building them up. The colours are separately defined and do not run into one another at all.

He liked to use an absorbent ground as it created a Matt palate, he used rough, unprimed canvases and usually painted with a brush, occasionally using a palte knife. Gaughin painted with flat, even application rather than lots of small brushstrokes.

George Seurat- Invented the style known as "Pontillism" with Paul Signac. This style uses tiny, tightly packed dots. Painted close together to create objects, from a distance this creates a stunning visual impact. When looked at closely you can still delineate the objects but you can also pick out the colours that are so cleverly used.




Many artists followed him in using this technique. Above is one of his most famous paintings. The banks of the River Seine. The painting is done in oils with a tiny brush creating a dot, rather than a stroke.

Henri Matisse- painted in the style of "Fauvism" which translated means wild beasts. The style is to paint subjects in a simple style, the colours were bright and wild. He used oils and later changed to gouache but had little regard for the subjects actual colour. The paintings show a lot of detail, window views, paintings within paintings, details on fabrics, all simplified but evident nonetheless.



















Mark Rothko - Heavily influenced by mythology, Philosophy and the work of Nietzsche. He insisted his work was full of content and brimming with ideas.

He began painting figures in estrain stations. He enjoyed the straight lines of people in queues and observed how you could pick out straight blocks of colour from these queues with the facial tones all going along in a strip and then below the dark stripe of the suits. He liked the straight lines of pillars and railway stations orderly concourses provide many blocks of colour and ordered shapes.

He then began to build on the colours and took out the multi forms of the subjects preferring to concentrate on blurring greeters blocks of colour. This is when he became more influenced by philosophy and even though his paintings contained great colours and tones he believed the viewer should see beyond that.





He painted in oils but used a lot of thinner so that the brushstrokes are not evident and the blocks are more solid. The edges of the colours blur into each other.




He also used minimal brushstrokes, just applying a line without repeatedly going over and over it. He ended up sadly committing suicide and for the last ten years of his life worked only in black. This seems a great shame as he puts colour together so well and I could look at his paintings for inspiration for hours.


Jackson Pollock- Famous for large paint splattered canvases using enamel paints which he would drip over large canvases pinned to the floor.




His paintings are created using paint tins with holes in the bottom to drip or splash over the canvas. He would swing them across in linear or circular motion. When he did use brushes they would be used in a forceful, rapid, impulsive way. He used sticks, knives, trowels and would often walk around the edges of his paintings and leave his footprints in the picture.







Bridget Riley - She works meticulously achieving precise hues and density of colour. Her paintings are abstract, sometimes views, such as the sea.







Her paintings are first done in gouache in small scale before building up to an often enormous size. These are painted first in acrylic and then finally in oils.







Her painting style is also, as Rothko, to thin the paint to such a consistency that you cannot see the brushstrokes. Unlike Rothko the colours have a strict boundary and do not bleed into one another. This makes them very striking to look at and I imagine the straight lines are very hard to achieve. All of her paintings are painted freehand although she often has other people paint the large final pieces which she oversees.

Joan Miro - used the style known as " Automatic drawing" - a way to undo previous established ways of drawing, developed with Andre Mason this was the first step towards Surrealism.

He used heavy, bold primary colours, black geometric shapes and used colour independent of it's nature, similarly to Gaughin and Matisse but you would not say their styles are at all similar.

Module 3. Assignment 2. Aldeburgh circle section

I took a circular section from the photograph of the beach front at Aldeburgh.


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The photograph shows the houses behind the wall along the beach front at Aldeburgh. When you view the scene through the circle the images that leapt out at me most are of the straight lines of the houses versus the pebbles in the beach. The colours are very striking. This scene was taken at dusk and all of the colours had a muted look about them. The sky was pink.

I decided to use the shapes as my starting point which I planned out in pencil.



Then I decided to make the picture more abstract literally using the lines as shapes rather than windows and houses. I also made the decision to use gouache paints in seaside shades.

Gouache is a new medium for me and I love them. They are not as heavy as acrylic paints and do not dry out as quickly. The colours are wonderfully bold and yet they combine easily too. A new favourite!

The finished painting makes me feel very sea sidey and happy. It is very simple and bold. I used the same colours on the blocks and squares as on the pebble shapes to balance the painting. I have used a palate of colours which I see at the seaside on buildings and on the shingle beaches but have spread those colours all through the painting rather than limiting them to their normal areas.

Module 3 assignment 2. Tube journey cross section picture.

The second assignment is based on taking photographs of our surroundings, then taking a section of these photographs using a rectangular window, a circular window or a 3'square window.

In the previous post I showed you the photographs I was considering using for these cross sections. The final photographs will be explained in this blog post and the next. The first photo that I have chosen is:


Anna & Elliott on the tube train......






The section I took was through the rectangular window:







First of all I drew an A3 pastel picture of this section. This picture does not depict the whole sequence as I found it hard to condense the rectangular image onto the square paper which was a totally different dimension.







Then I decided to make a textile piece as my final conclusion for this photograph. I picked out the strong, vibrant colours and shapes and placed them in blocks on a piece of denim. This was all stitched by machine.







To unite the pieces I used a blue embroidery thread.







This is the final piece. I really like the shapes and colours and enjoy the visual impact of the blue and red ( squares) and then the red and blue (spots). The orange contrasts with the blue and the green with the red. On the right hand side I like the quieter theme of the blue denim and the brown felt. This goes well with the blue and White spots and creates a strong but quiet contrast to the brightly coloured opposite side.

I was talking in my last post about making this piece up using machine embroidery. I think this would be interesting but would take much longer than using blocks of felt as I have done. I think it would look similar to Mark Rothko's style of painting but in machine embroidery( although I have not seen him use spots!!)

Module 3 - Assignment 2 Photographs

Attached are some of the photos I am considering for assignment 2.  I have also attached some of the details that i have obtained from the square and the rectangle. I havent done the circle yet.

the photograph on the right is the original size and the left hand side is the rectangular section. This photograph was taken at dusk and I like the colours that the setting sun is throwing out.  The colour of the road  looks to me like an almost direct contrasting blue to the orange of the sun. I was thinking of making it more narrow to just encapsulate these contrasts but I like the green as well. The orange sun is the focal point but the green leads your eye to the orange and in the left hand photograph I like the fact that this is slightly to the right of centre.

The above photographs are from a football match that my son was playing in.  The colours have been enhanced on the computer and I particularly like the contrast of the green and red.  I also really like the yellow of the field in he distance.  It is quite hard to pick out a strong focal point. I did wonder if it was the yellow when I took the photo, when it was developed the green tree in the centre stood out.  The central players in red also stand out although that is because they are slightly closer to the country rather than their colour as there are plenty of other red players!  This represents Ittens law well with the contrasting colours.

With the detailed sections I have taken a section of the more dominant top half with the yellow and the bright green and the reds. I can imagine this becoming a striking machine embroidered piece and I am strongly considering using it as my considered piece for this assignment.  The other photograph which features the legs is less striking and I was disappointed that the daisies that were so prevelant in real life were not present.

The photograph I am looking at next as a potential piece is this photo of my two youngest chidren looking very unexcited about a tube ride homewards. I like the striking colours Anna is wearing against the colours of the tube seat material. The orange and blue contrast beautifully. I am drawn to that colour contrast and interestingly blue and then orange are my favourite colours ( I wonder if that means I am well balanced!!)

The section that i have taken from this photograph looks very striking with the myriad of colours.  I think this would be interesting in any medium, Machine Embroidery/painting in gouache or acrylic/ an applique piece/pastel.

This piece has so much potential I am almost decided that it will be the one to explore further.

Another photograph taken at dusk. This is the beach scene in Aldeburgh where we spend a lot of family time.  The colours of the buildings are very seasidey and I love the tones of the blues/ yellows and pinks on the houses. The photo we have here shows the sky in a striking pink colour as the sun sets. In the detailed photograph I like the juxtureposition of the coloured houses and the shingle on the beach .  If enlarged further these stones would throw up a lot of interesting colours.

This photo to the left was taken on our way home, again in Aldeburgh.The sun was bright orange in the sky.  However when you take a photograph the colour seems to leave the sun and disperses into the sky.  Among the cow parsley you can see the orange glow of the sun which my be a reflection of some sorts.  I love the pale interesting colours in this picture with the bright green of the cow parsley.
In the detailed section I love the colours of the orange sun reflection and the green of the cow parsley together with the muted colours of the landscape.  I would like to explore the potential of this photograph in textiles as well. Maybe it would lend itself to an appliqued or painted background with a machine embroidered or lino cut foreground.

New Still Life in green

I have not yet spoken to my new tutor but we have corresponded by email to arrange appointments. Sheila has looked at the blog and although we haven't discussed any of my work she did correctly observe that it was incorrect of me to begin a watercolour painting with a charcoal drawing.

I think I did know this but I find charcoal so much easier to draw with than pencil and would use pastels over paints and pencils any day! So to remain, clinging on to my comfort zone I sketched out the original still life in charcoal. Having barely used watercolour since I was at school I was also curious as to what effect it would have with the charcoal. When I use paints it is nearly always acrylic and lashings of it so I was confident that the charcoal would soon be submerged. But water-colours aren't like that and I do freely admit the final picture was not as good as it should have been had I started in pencil. Also I am not very keen on the colours and think that the theme of having one colour running through the picture is not as strong as it could have been. The background is too strong in the wrong colour as well!

The one thing I do like very much is the table cloth!



So I decided to begin again.

I set this still life arrangement of green objects up outside and photographed it.


Unfortunately this arrangement soon got blown over by a very strong wind and the table I was using is our only table outside and as a barbecue was planned for this afternoon then I knew that this still life's life was short lived!!

So I recreated it in my art room and promptly forgot to photograph it. But here is a first draft in pencil (hb, 2b & 5b)




The composition is similar to the previous one but I think is more balanced. I think I have drawn it with a good representation of perspective and the objects are of a good size so that much of the papers space is used up. I am not used to drawing still life at all and I am quite pleased with the results of this drawing. It has given me the confidence to draw more and even though I like to draw from imagination I can appreciate that it is good practice for correlation of size etc as well as shapes to regularly draw still life's to practice drawing techniques.




This is the green still life with colour added in the different shades of green. I have tried to pay attention to the shadows and light and the shapes that the light creates and the colours this causes. This picture is about two thirds of the way through. I will post a picture when it is finished but I wanted to get this post done ready to speak to Sheila on Tuesday.