Life Drawing - Week 6 (final week)

One two-hour charcoal drawing

Favourite Life Drawings

A collection of a few life drawings done over this term that I feel show the most progress or are the most accomplished.

'Inside Veins' - Final Video

Life Drawing - Week 5

Four five-minute charcoal sketches

One twenty-minute drawing

Two approximately twenty-minute drawings

Video Piece - 'Inside Veins'

A screencap from 'P.T.' showing my favourite camera angle and lighting

 My inspiration for the video piece stems from a combination of literature, music, ambient sound, video games and art. The above is a screenshot from 2014 game 'P.T.', an interactive teaser for 'Silent Hills', a new survival horror game title by Guillermo del Toro and Hideo Kojima that was since cancelled after Konami pulled out of the project. The game uses ambient sound to create a rich, disturbing atmosphere and also uses repeated visual motifs in a unique way that gets a huge emotional reaction from the player. Weather is used for pathetic fallacy, lighting is used to create tension, and ambient noise makes use of minor sound distortions like TV static and radio interference to create a textured sound-scape. There is often the sound of rain against the windows, a lamp creaking, distorted groaning, a fly getting electrocuted by a naked light-bulb - all these ways of using sound to build atmosphere are incredibly inspiring for this video piece.

Likewise, indie horror game 'The Path' uses ambient sound in engaging ways, usually to foreshadow future events. The game has a different repertoire of noises such as swings in a child's play-park, birdsong, trees rustling in the wind and moaning vocalizations that sound either from pain or pleasure. 'The Path' is produced by small Belgian company Tale of Tales, led by Auriea Harvey and Michael Samyn, and explores Gothic motifs reminiscent of 19th Century art in their re-envisioning of the Brothers Grimm fairytale 'The Grandmother's House.' There are recurring visual symbols used in the game and a way of editing cutscenes that gives a surrealist effect, inspiring me for this piece.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnp4-RoRxSo

The above link features the opening credits sequence to Naughty Dog's 2013 title 'The Last of Us', which features monochrome time-lapse footage of fungi spreading. I've been using the clip as a visual touchstone for the palette of our own piece, as the high contrast and monochromatic filter would create a brilliant tonal contrast. We want to create images of a heart attack occurring, and also display the way that the organ shuts down and eventually withers, and perhaps by taking some vegetable or plants and allowing them to decompose will create a similar effect. If we take photographs of the decomposing matter each day and string these images together to they give the illusion of a time-lapse video we may be able to achieve a similar effect. I hope to use photographs in a stop-frame animation way during this piece as it will add visual texture to the video.

A selection of screenshots from the opening sequence, to showcase the visuals that have been inspiring me

I created a short piece of video experimenting with colour filters, cuts and sound so that I've got a distinct idea of the kind of feel, sound and type of cuts I might want to use in our final video. This was made quickly and spontaneously so that I will have an idea of the tone and atmosphere I want to use. Audio clips are from the internet for the sake of time and creative freedom but in our actual video we will devise ways of creating sound beds ourselves.

A photograph taken before shooting the short video

The above is another short piece of film, this time using only text and sound. I wanted to use fragmented poetry to convey a narrative behind our concept, perhaps even to illustrate the character of the person who is having a heart attack and create a motive and personality for them. I used my camera and filmed myself typing, as I felt this was more nostalgic and interesting than merely typing into iMovie, and it also meant I provided typing noises that felt calming and relaxing. Over these, I sourced rain sound from youtube and layered the sounds to create something soothing. This video is deliberately simple, relying on the observer's ability to use their imagination to create images.

A screencap of the original piece of poetry

We used footage of bubbles in a sink of running water and various filter effects in iMovie to achieve this look of blood rushing through an artery.

The above video is another finished segment of the project - this particular section is made primarily of close-ups and detailing the process of a heart attack. The audio is sourced from online.

  

Unedited clips that we used for our movement section of the video.

This video is our texture section of the piece, whereby we used our own images of blood cells and textures we thought were appropriate and combined them into a slideshow of images.

 

 The video above is a stop-motion piece of animation representing the flow of blood around the body and the processes occurring in the body before a heart attack. In the final few frames, the camera zooms in on the heart to represent entering its cells, which links to the textures in the next part of the video.

We collectively brainstormed ideas and edited together. I wrote, shot and edited the text and close-up section, the ink section focused on movement was Abbey's concept and driven by her, and we all participated in making the footage. Katie edited the pieces of film and put them together, and she also had the idea for the stop-frame animation section, which she directed. Abbey and Katie also used their own photographs of cells and edited each photo before we put them together into a slide-show. We chose sound clips and music collectively and most of our efforts were as a group, not as individuals. Our concept behind the video was on portraying the process of a heart attack, and in particular the journey the body and the emotions go through prior and during the heart attack. We were also inspired by the idea that a person will know when they are about to have a heart attack, and that they will have an impending sense of doom. Perhaps the video takes place in the moments before a heart attack occurs and shows an internal perspective, both physically and psychologically, on the process.

Life Drawing - Week 4

A collection of three-minute charcoal sketches

A twenty-minute drawing focused on a specific detail

Two quicker drawings of detail

A twenty-minute figure drawing

Collage to Painting - 'Game Over'

A digital collage using photography and digital drawing

These digital pieces came about by using a photograph of my previous painting as inspiration for a collage, which would then be translated into another painting. I previously explored the way that society changes, and so in these next pieces I want to investigate further aspects of modern life - in particular, my interest was drawn to technology. Hence, these experimental collages center around how technology is a form of human creative expression. For my next traditional painting, I am also considering playing with pixel art styles and visuals that are reminiscent of the video games I played during childhood. I will be using video games as an allegory for how we approach our real-world choices.

A close-up screenshot to show detail

A work-in-progress print-screen before adding more colour

Another digital collage, this time using the painting itself as a foundation and layering found photographs

A third collage using an image of cells splitting, to experiment with various textures

I was inspired by the video and text work of contemporary artist Ed Atkins, and almost immediately upon seeing a still from one of his pieces I decided that my collage and painting would be focused around varying forms of digital media. I chose to represent a typically non-digital form of art, the collage, in a digital format and also to represent a digital form of art, namely video games, in a traditional format. I wanted to subvert tradition, and I also felt that by having a digital collage as the bridge between the two paintings it allowed for the subject, colour palette and intentions to change drastically, in a way that would be more dynamic than if I had created a conventional layering of physical forms to build the collage. In the same way that a traditional collage juxtaposes different materials, my collage juxtaposes photography and digital art.

What first struck me about Atkins' work is that it is digitally rendered in the way that the assets for a video game character are created, but used for a more explicitly artistic purpose. There is such a realism to these renderings that it is sometimes difficult to tell what is a photograph and what is rendered in a 3D modelling program, and I was also inspired by how Atkins bridges the space between the two mediums - does he take photographs and overlay them atop a 3D model? It is unclear. However, the visual appeal of his work stems for me from the space between computer rendering and photography that it seems to occupy. The intensity of expression in the still above is what engrossed me.

 A still from another of Atkins' projects that I wanted to use as a visual touchstone for how digital media such as video games affects a person's life - often, people use video games for means of escapism, and they desire a genuine emotional connection with a piece of digital art. This created the foundations for my concept.

 It is unclear whether this image is digitally rendered or a photograph.

 This was the first piece from Atkins that I saw, and I immediately loved the tension between text and image.

A still from Atkins' 2014 video project 'Ribbons', which combines 3D rendering and poetry.

 My final A3 painting alongside my digital collage. This painting was based upon the work of Ed Atkins but, most importantly, upon the effect that video games have on people's lives. Video games are not often considered an art form in their own right, despite combining 3D modelling and rendering, screenwriting, traditional and digital art, voice talent, aspects of film-making such as cinematography, and also music and soundtracks. Due to the commercial nature of most popular video games, artistic aspects are often overlooked, despite the art form realizing Wagner's concept of gesamtkunstwerk, one complete artwork. In this piece, I wanted to explore how video games do not offer, as most people think, escapism from the real world, but instead offer a platform to realize the importance of decision-making. I incorporated classic video game aesthetics into my piece to create something visually playful, but also with more serious undertones. In life, there often seems to be two different routes one can direct their life down - there is a more hedonistic, living-for-the-moment approach, and there is also the route of self-preservation and reasoning. I wanted to show the conflict between these different ways of living, and how it is often difficult to make decisions without the aid of other people.

 

A photograph of the final painting without the collage. I used a pencil, biro and rotring pens to create the drawing before using acrylic and oils for the painting itself.

A detail shot of the figure itself.

'The Edge' - Painting Project

This project was inspired by 'the edge', whether it be psychological, literal, natural, physical and so on. The edge I chose to depict was that between modernism and post-modernism, not simply in the artistic sense, but in terms of culture. I wanted to highlight the differences between 20th and 21st Century society, and in particular the change in visual styles and progression in issues to do with gender and sexuality. I chose to make a 1950's style oil paint pin-up inspired by Gil Elvgren and subvert 50's culture by creating a camp, sexualised male pin-up who embodies modern 21st Century culture and breaks down gender stereotypes. I juxtaposed modern motifs with a retro artistic style to trace the edge between modernism and post-modernism, and tried to create my own unique synthesis of the two contrasting social environments.

A photograph of the painting near completion

The completed painting with its frame

The above photographs showcase different experiments with painting that I created prior to narrowing down my ideas to my final painting - I used coffee granules, medical gauze, dripping, sugar crystallization, experiments with tin foil and some other techniques to determine the textures and colour palette I wanted to use.

Life Drawing - Week 3

Four five-minute charcoal sketches

Twenty-minute study of reclining model

Another twenty minute study of reclining model - my favourite from the session

Fifteen-minute study

Final fifteen-minute study, which I'm not so pleased with - I believe I lost steam and became tired towards the end