In the workshop I was interested to learn the technique of painting a cross on the back of a wooden board, corner to corner, to prevent it warping. Cornelius Volker (click for further research) and Wilhelm Sasnal were two of the artists I found most visually engaging and felt could draw close parallels to my own figurative practice. I loved Volker's use of thick paint and brush strokes to give his work a glossy, fluid, even gelatinous quality.
Our first activity in the workshop was to use a viewfinder on one of our images and try to recreate it in only 5 strokes. To me this was not enjoyable at all, as much of my interest is within the craft of my art so to be limited in this way felt very restricting and uncomfortable. I was highly dissatisfied with the outcome as it was impossible to load enough paint onto my brush to ensure it could provide even coverage for the entirety of each mark, and time pressures meant that I was working one wet layer over another. Because of this there were many smudges, I wasn't able to properly build the image, and the result was messy and badly composed. One of the only details I did like was the way the mark on the ear had been applied, giving texture and depth which, although looking dissimilar to the photograph, simulated the overall look of the fur quite well.
Next we worked our images into a collage. When working on this I was considering the work of Steve Locatelli (see left) who overlays repeated imagery to convey movement and distortion with a figurative subject matter. I recreated this with old photography of a horse run cycle, blending old source material with a modern style. I really like how this came out as a landscape image, maintaining a strong constructed, graphic quality even though the medium was traditional.
Next we had to turn this painting into another viewfinder painting. I felt better about this painting than the previous one, however I preferred the collage itself as it was hard for me to capture the crispness of the image on wet layers of paint and at such a magnification. I did like the way that by watering down white paint I could pic out the highlights on the horses body really effectively.
Finally we were sent out to sketch 10 items and 20 words then bring these back and use them to inform a final painting. I found an interesting pattern on a fence, next to an emergency exit, which was decorative but still tipped with spikes, designed to blend into normal life yet still keep people out. Nearby there was an empty straights packet, it's shiny designer packaging glittering amongst some nettles. I thought about the connotations of these two objects, both of which were dressed up to hide their alterior motives and make them more appealing to the public.So I chose to combine both of these concepts into a piece which would highlight the way many people know cigarettes are terrible for health, but still use them as a crutch during stress or when bored, and how the way they are marketed reinforces this. This piece was the most graphic in the workshop so far and was closest to my own practice. I think the main area which could use improvement would be the typography, particularly the 'smoking thrills' on the packet as this looked too much like handwriting instead of printed font and effected the overall finish of the piece.
As further development I decided to employ some of the effects I learnt in this IMAGE workshop when working into my COPY print, as well as my resource photography of the horse running. The triangles and landscape orientation of the paper made me want to turn this piece into a panoramic to maximise the visual benefit at working to this size. I also watered my acrylics down as I had worked on in IMAGE to give the effect of depth from the foreground and trees to the distant mountains. As well as this I maintained the monochrome colourscheme to keep the work from becoming overcomplicated, and helping me create strong contrast between each of the elements in the work.
I recieved feedback from my co-student Colleen that I had really achieved depth in his piece. She stated; "...the longer I look at it the more details I notice. It really draws the eye in." I also like the way the different elements of the background are to different scales, leading from pattern to foreground, small details of the horses and trees then the background mountains and back out to pattern again. I think that the way I painted my own adjustments to my copy of the screen print maximised the printed area and also used features of the print, such as the long white horizon line, instead of masking the original features.
I also worked on the final and largest of my primed boards with a new collage piece drawing on my research into sacred geometry (click here). I used the Logarithmic Spiral of a nautilus shell as a horn esque shape. They are used to create a shell as it allows the nautilus to grow at a steady rate without changing shape, something which I feel mimics my time at uni as I have grown in many ways since moving to Norwch, but feel I have still maintained a deep sense of who I am and who I want to become. Originally I also wanted to paint metatrons cube over top of this image, however I tried both sketching it over the collage and superimposing it onto photoshop and found that this made the image too cluttered and much of the impact was lost.
As I had done with the horse fur in one of my workshop paintings, I watered my acrylics down which helped me represent fur in a better, more natural way than I ever had before. I also enjoyed working on the grey primed board as I think it improved my use of tone, and gave my work a better sense of depth. The black background really helped the work have more impact.
In this week I feel that I really honed some elements of my painting technique. I found some of the methods in the IMAGE workshop very frustrating and constricting however as much of my enjoyment in creation comes from attention to detail and a representative finish. However this broad experimentation allowed me to notice some techniques I hadn't tried before, such as watering down paint to give an authetic, organic look to natural objects. I feel like this is the most resolved painting I have completed thus far partly because of it's tonal depth and visual realism, but also its conceptual meaning which takes inspiration from my current experiences. I am really pleased with my final outcome and also importantly really enjoyed the process of creating it, which has again made me question which SKILLS unit I should take next year, as originally I was considering doing PRINT and SCULPTURE. I would like to speak to a tutor about this and discuss what my options are.
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