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

Life Drawing - Week 2

A collection of three minute charcoal sketches

A thirty minute drawing

A twenty to thirty minute drawing where I focused mostly on tone

A twenty minute drawing of the model reclining

Life Drawing - Week 1

A collection of charcoal sketches each taking three minutes.

Two larger sketches, each taking ten minutes, using the very end of the stick of charcoal (left) and a small piece of charcoal on its side (right).

A large drawing that took around twenty minutes.

The final twenty minute drawing, which I feel was the most successful.

Definition of Romanticism

 The Romantic movement began in the 1760's and continued until midway through the 1800's, but the movement has also been revitalised in various forms such as Neo-Romanticism, which took place primarily between the 1860's and the Second World War. Romanticism often draws upon the Classical and Neo-Classical movements, and it was often the case that artists were considered Romantics by others though being self-proclaimed Classicists. Delacroix was one such artist, and Goethe also had a similar distaste for being called a Romantic. Degas, however, differentiated between the two by saying “a Classicist is a Romantic who has arrived.” The statement itself implies that one movement crosses over with the other and they share some defining qualities; for this reason, Romanticism as a movement in of itself is difficult to differentiate. Romanticism cannot be defined by any thematic or stylistic criteria, but rather by its focus on the internal and the individual. Baudelaire states that “Romanticism lies not at all in the choice of subject or in exact truth, but rather in a way of feeling.” And individual emotion is something that can be seen as integral to the movement. Some of the most innovative paintings of this age were those that incorporated the sublime, whereby the intent was to overwhelm the observer with what they were looking at and the emotions that followed. Romantic art of the time was, as a result of this, highly emotional, and Jean Clay describes the effect as follows; “emotion … breaks down all defences and propels the artist outside himself, causing him to break the rules and exceed the limits of artistic practice.” So Clay states that the sublime also has an effect on the artist. This importance of the emotions of the individual are present in some of the most celebrated Romantic pieces, such as Gericault's 'Raft of the Medusa' and Delacroix's 'Liberty Leading the People.' We cannot say for certain that all Romantic artists executed their pieces in a particular way, but some of the most popular features include naturalistic detail, purified contours, restrained depth and illusionism.

Romanticism is at the root of what we now call Modernism, and some state that Modernism did not begin at the beginning of the 20^th Century as often thought, but in the 1800's. The Church's patronage and the power of the crown were diminishing around this time, and thus art was set against a radically different social backdrop than before. Art did not have to revolve around religion, and this in cohesion with the work of Kant and other philosophers bolstered a society that allowed artists to produce work that matched their own interests. Influences became subtler and each artist began to build a repertoire of personal processes and themes that previously could not have occurred. The movement was largely international, often with emphasis on France, England and Germany, and this is another reason why Romanticism cannot be defined simply – due to the very nature of the movement, there was an incredible variation of pieces being produced. However, the theme of the power of the individual was consistent. Even after the 1800's, Romanticism was present, and Neo-Romanticism saw a resurgence in the particular styles of painting employed during the original movement. It may have perhaps been so difficult to define Romanticism because the artists at the time were constantly surrounded by the environment that was continually creating Romanticism, and in hindsight we may find it easier to differentiate the movement from others. Neo-Romanticism also proves helpful to gain insight into what the movement really signified, and we can see that there are some recurring motifs.

Romanticism resembles Classicism and Neo-Classicism, and the similar use of illusionism can be what makes it difficult to set the movements apart, but Romanticism is unique in that it uses a similar style to represent the internal and emotional life of an individual, as supposed to representing mythology or Bible parables. It often makes use of the macabre and psychological, such as with Goyer, or even the political, as with Delacroix and Gericault. Romanticism taps into the connection between human beings and nature, and most importantly our connection to ourselves.

Bibliography:

- 'Romanticism' by Jean Clay

- 'The Last Romantics' by essay writers MaryAnne Stevens, JGP Delaney, Lindsay Errington, Benedict Read, Alan Powers and David Fraser Jenkins.

- 'The Romantic Spirit In German Art 1790 – 1990' by Thames and Hudson

Sculpture Project - 'Juxtapositions'

Shot of early drawing and brainstorm notes - my original concept was to create a wire ribcage.

Pencil drawing of later concept - I decided I wanted to juxtapose papier mache with wire and create a hollow torso for my vessel.

Early Inspiration Drawing:

A pencil, biro and acrylic paint sketch I created that later inspired my sculpture concept.

I wanted to feature the female form and explore the theme of something that is hidden, which led to my decision of creating a torso and housing the vessel within the hollow chest.

The photographs below show the actual sculpture near to its completed stage, and it's apparent that my materials and my concept have altered during the process of creating the sculpture. I began by lubricating a female mannequin with vaseline and then using papier mache to create a shell over the top of this, the vaseline acting as a barrier so the cast would not stick to the mannequin. I originally intended to layer up papier mache repeatedly until the sculpture was solid enough to support itself, but then a classmate offered me a large amount of air-drying clay, so I decided to create an armature instead, wanting to experiment with materials. I applied the clay but overnight the front half of the cast had cracked considerably, with big fissures making the structure very weak. After some research, I discovered that this happened because when air-drying clay becomes hard, it contracts and if the clay dries too fast or too unevenly, it makes plateaus that essentially just pull away from one another, making cracks. So I made some slip and took more clay to fill these in, then completed the clay structure and wrapped it in cling film overnight. During this time, I began to think more about what my piece represented and how the cracks would come into this concept - I was thinking of dealing with human fragility, and so it made me think of Kintsugi, the Japanese art of filling cracks in pottery with gold. It is a celebration of fragility, and the more something has been broken, the more valuable and beautiful it is considered. The photos below show the sculpture once I had taken it off in two halves from the mannequin and glued the them together with a glue gun.

I used thin strips of foil to create a kintsugi effect over the real cracks in the clay, all stemming from the hole where I fill place the glass vessel.

On the back of the piece, I described what I was aiming to hint towards with the cracks, so that anyone observing the sculpture will be able to research what I had intended. I wanted some kind of explicit hint to kintsugi to prevent the piece from seeming too obscure.

The above two photographs depict the finished piece, with its interior completed and the paper moths added. I used pages of my own writing to represent the inner monologue, the private narrative, that composes a person's life - I had always wanted to use words for the interior of the torso, as I feel that words and emotion compose the inner life of a person. I knew I would not be creating a piece that just put two juxtaposing materials together. Narrative is central to the work I love, and also to what I create. The glass vessel represents the human heart, and I've used string to suspend it in the air within the torso. Both the outer shell and inner vessel are fragile and liable to break, and this is true of the human body and heart. Likewise, the moths floating above the open throat were inspired by some free-writing I did for a poem, and moths were a recurring image in what I wrote. As a personal symbol, they represent desires and goals. Moths always have a destination, a will to find light, and so I wanted to have them suspended above the light-bulbs to represent the desire that keeps human beings alive even though they are fragile. I've juxtaposed the interior and exterior, the hidden and the revealed, the transparent and the opaque, but my main focus is the juxtaposition between aspirations and reality.

Artist Inspiration - Hans Bellmer's Dolls

 Hans Bellmer is a German sculptor, photographer, etcher, lithographer and writer born in Katowice, in Silesia in 1902. His most popular work is a series of dolls, 'Die Puppe', constructed in 1933 and published a year later, under the rule of the Nazis. Bellmer gave up all activity useful to the State after the Nazi rise in power, and it is said that his highly sexualised dolls of adolescent girls are a critique of the Nazi emphasis on adhering to a certain kind of physical beauty. However, it is also hypothesised that Bellmer's disturbing dolls were catalysed by a troubled relationship with his father, who persuaded him to study engineering at the Berlin Polytechnic earlier in his career. Bellmer, however, became friendly with the painters Grosz and Dix, and though some of his work still resonates of engineering and mechanics, he otherwise abandoned the practice. 

Bellmer's work is simultaneously beautiful and gaunt, and that is why it inspires me – it makes the observer feel intensely uncomfortable, as if they are viewing the private erotic fantasies of the artist instead of work produced with an audience in mind. There's an intimacy to the sculptures and the drawings, and the distortions of the body and all its multiple points of articulation heavily inspires me. Bellmer takes the female form and manipulates it to a point where it is difficult to recognise as a body, as supposed to a machine or a kind of organic growth. It makes you consider your own body, and his sculptures of the female form have inspired me to focus my sculpture project around the body, also. I want to use black wire or a plaster cast of a female chest as a shell in which to house the object I am given – I want to experiment with concepts of fragility, humanity and protection. I'm drawn to creating either a black wire ribcage to suspend the object within, or a hollow cast of a female chest, and I may also combine these two materials to juxtapose my ideas. The glass object I am given will most likely be presented in such a way that it represents the heart, or even the soul, belonging to the body sculpted around it – glass is such a fragile material, and I feel that using a glass instrument as a metaphor for the human heart relates to how we learn to put up walls in our interactions with others, hiding our emotions and constantly poised to defend ourselves because we are so delicate. 

Hans Bellmer, 'Rose Ou Verte La Nuit'

Some of the names of these pieces are in German, whilst others are in French - this is most likely due to my having sourced the images from French sites, but I did not translate the titles back to German in the event that this may not be the case. The drawing above shows a woman opening her own chest, and this is the kind of symbolic imagery I want to evoke in my sculpture - she looks like she is made up of bricks, or large cell structures, that she is peeling away in order to look at her own insides. I love Bellmer's illustrations because of their delicacy and the often insubstantial lines, as this contrasts with the gross distortions of bodily proportion in his sculpture and the strong lighting in his photography. I find it interesting how using different materials has an immediate effect on Bellmer's style.

Hans Bellmer, 'Souterrain'

 The above piece is an etching by Bellmer that features his signature bodily distortions, and also some surrealist imagery. The sinuous shapes he draws all echo the female form, and I love the use of monochrome in this etching, as well as the variation in tone.

Hans Bellmer, 'La Poupee'

 This is a photograph of one of Bellmer's dolls. I chose this image in particular to draw inspiration from because the doll is dismembered in this photograph, and all the limbs are juxtaposed by being placed next to one another in a way that would never be seen on a normal human body - her hair is touching her hips, thighs, and so on, and there is even what looks to be an eyeball at the very bottom of the image. It's the feeling of disorganization that is special, as you can almost believe that Bellmer did not pose this shot, but that it happened spontaneously whilst putting one of his dolls together. I love how Bellmer documents his art, and his artistic process, in his photography.

Hans Bellmer, a print of a photograph from his 'Die Puppe' series

 Finally, I chose this image to use as a touchstone for my sculpture. The use of tonal contrast is beautiful, and the patterns in the backdrop cohere with the mottled light and dark on the stomach of the doll. What really strikes me about this, however, is the placement of the rose next to the bald head of the doll - a rose is such a symbol of femininity, of beauty, whereas the doll lacking any hair or eyelashes completely goes against the stereotypical conventions of femininity. It almost looks as if Bellmer was trying to create a beautiful image but the aesthetics of the doll preventing him from achieving it. The space between beauty and ugliness that Bellmer's sculpture occupies is something I want to evoke in my own work.