When Boredom Strikes

Like I said in an earlier post I became a bit lazy mid-way in the pathway and felt very unmotivated. My solution is always to start doing something random; so I got my images from Amsterdam and began painting in a style I’m not used to the outcome was this…

I worked once again with acrylic paint but watered it down to get this loose effect. I remembered that most of the paintings in the Rijks Museum, of fabric, where often made up of marks of paint which if view together created the final article. From this painting, I took a glimpse of my photos and noticed a postcard I’ve always had but never paid attention to. It showcases the painting by Philippe de Champaigne entitled ‘Cardinal Richelieu’

For the first time I noticed the dramatic nature in which the fabric is painted and got more and more interested the more my eyes worked round the postcard. I was so inspired that i began to make numerous studies of all shapes and sizes, I even went as far as knitting rope and painting and painting on the knitted fabric to see what effect I would get from it. Below is a slide show of my moment of crazed obsession.

Amsterdam Cont.

Following my trip to Amsterdam we were given a brief to create a mind map to best express, or at least summarise my trip to Amsterdam using various mediums and techniques. My end outcome was this….

I tried to ‘Summarise’ my experience on my 1m x 1m mood board. The red fabric on the bottom left represents my experience of the red light district, I found it funny how such a tiny portion of Amsterdam was highly amplified by everyone here in the UK when in actual fact it was pathetically short and uninteresting. My experience was all about the cultural side of Amsterdam, most importantly the Rijks Museum and the Van Gogh; which I must say is a DEFINITE MUST GO when your over there.  To represent this I made the most influential image Vermeer’s ‘The Milk Made’ take centre stage of my mood board as I really loved the Dutch Master’s work. But even more amazing was seeing a Van Gogh so close up, represented by the sun flowers painted on the right. The cropped map on the top right shows the path we took on the bike ride (7 HOURS!!!!!) but still it was amazing. We did visit the sculpture museum which wasn’t impressive for its sculpture garden (well for me anyway) but more so the Kroller Muller gallery (AMAZING) which showcases an impressive collection of art many of which I recognised as there are artists I always referred to in GCSE art. I also got the sence of consumerism as the branded shops we have here in the were everywhere in Amsterdam which corrupted my tourist view of Amsterdam, however i did get a bargain in H&M for two pairs of gloves. Below are some close up images of the mood board 😀

Fine Art :D

It’s been a while since I uploaded my last thoughts; well to update you all on my progress I CHOSE FINE ART!! Like you didn’t see that coming 😛 Anyway, I have enjoyed myself in the fine art pathway, progress was a bit slow to begin with; then I started working which slowed me down even more -_- but now it’s the holidays and I’m starting to get used to my new schedule, GROWING UP SUCKS!!

Our project to kick-start the pathway was Deconstruction Reconstruction and looking at my work previously I noted that I was very keen on portraiture. however I didn’t want to, straight away, paint figures. I wanted to explore different ways of portraying a portrait; I decided to look at myself to begin with, not because of vanity but as a starter to make me think of ways of representing ME. I thought I was going to take an abstract way of looking at things but a discussion with a lecturer made me realise that my art was more of a representation of something rather than an abstract view. With this correction my work took on a whole new twist; looking at Alison Watt’s ‘Phantom’ oil paint series I began to look at fabric again. Alison Watt’s work is described to be many things, but I like to interpret it as portraiture, there’s no doubt that her fabric paintings have a human presence, due to the nature of the distorted fabric shapes within the painting. I then began to look at Christian Boltanski’s work who, in a way, works similarly to Alison Watt. He makes installations, often of objects that have had a past or photographs; displayed in such a way to provoke an emotional (often empathetic) response to the veiwer.
I want my work to reflect both these responses with the use of other references I may get from artists later on; however for now I simply looked at the element of fabric, the following pictures below are the experiments I started with to kick-start this project.

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Nicki Minaj Painting :D

Following a discussion with a friend I’ve always wanted to have Nicki Minaj as a muse for some of my paintings. To start off I decided to do a portrait of her which was difficult as she has various sides to her character; however I decided to paint her in a neutral way with no crazy expressions as that’s how I see her. Through all her crazy characters she can actually come across as normal.

AND This is the final result 😀

Painting

Well I’m currently in transition to further education in the arts which i never thought i would do but yeah it’s HAPPENING. Now I’ve always painted but it’s of late that I’ve noticed a MASSIVE change in my style. I try to have a realistic approach to my composition but it always ends up reminding me of Salvador Dali’s “Mysticism.” ANYWAY my current project is a lion, This is my first attempt at animals but i hope to improve as I progress 😀

Well I started by painting the colour tones corresponding to the lion then painted the fur last as the fur fibres looked translucent in the picture

I’m relying on my phone camera but hopefully that will change soon (MUM) 😀