Thursday 4th October - Pathway

Today was one of those days where you were just left to do 'your thing'. I sat there with a pile of my work in front of me, not really knowing where to start presenting and sticking it in from. The thing with this course is that there is no real structure to how your sketchbook should be presented, and I find that hard to deal with, come from the strict regime of A Levels. I told Jo that I was struggling with this prospect and didn't know what to do. She just told me to go for it!
She had a look at my work and told me to look up a couple of artists. One of them was Julian Opie, who is an illustrator.
Over the past decade, he has consistently pursued painting with a strong graphic and pared down style. Drawing from influences as diverse as billboard signs, classical portraiture and sculpture, to classical Japanese woodblock prints, Opie 'paints' using a variety of media and technologies which enable him to make three-dimensional explorations of his subjects. His work is very simplistic

 

 

Opie's work is very simplistic, and he draws out the main features from the face. It is a very effective technique, but I think he makes the features a bit too simple.

Another artist that Jo suggested I have a look at was Gary Hume. He is known for figurative and abstract paintings on aluminum panels, which often feature startling color combinations made with paints purchased premixed from a hardware store.

 

Hume's work is not as simplistic as Opie's, and I prefer Hume's, but I feel that it is still not the kind of thing I should be looking at. It has given me some inspiration and ideas, but I'm not sure if this is what I want to do.

It was also open evening and I stayed behind to do some more work. It was really busy and hectic, and there were lots of worried parents and curious students asking questions.
What I decided to do was a bit of experimentation with dyes, some skeleton leaves and bleach. I dyed a couple of block coloured backgrounds in the shape of squares. On one I even put some salt on and it looked a bit like ripples.
I had a piece of sample fabric that I got from an interior design shop and the pattern was raised. I smothered it in bleach and put it on to the dyed backgrounds. They turned out really well. It almost looked like I had photoshopped them!