Museums and artists have been working together for a long time, artists can create museums but they can also take ideas and inspiration from them to create wonderful pieces of work. I like to take inspiration from natural history museums such as the Oxford Museum of natural history and there collection of taxidermy animals is great they have a range of animals from hedgehogs to a black bear. I’ve also been too the little museum in my hometown which has a great collection of birds and a few other animals such as a woolly mammoth. There are loads of museums in the UK that inspire my art work, I find museums fascinating. There are a few artists as well as museums that inspire my work, artists that are called naive and artist that use museums to inspire their art. The process i take to get to the finished piece is important as it helps me understand how it will look and where each thing will go but it also helps with other work that i want to create.
This is the plan I am going to take,
- I am going to do more drawings of the animals from the museums
- I am going to figure out where the animals are going to go on my painting
- once I know the plan for the animals I will add them to my painting
- I can then start to draw out my A2 drawing as i know the positions of the animals
- I will keep painting and drawing until they are finished
- I also need to put all my research together as at the moment it is all over the place.
once I have done all these things my degree show will be done and university course will be finished. I hope that I’ve done enough to get a good grade. So far I am proud of what I have done and i hope to be proud of the final outcome of my work.
There is a quote that I found by Henry David Thoreau;
The world is but a canvas to our imagination
even though this quote is about life, it inspires my work, my art is the world in this sense. I don’t have to think about doing something someone else wants me to do, my imagination and ideas are what create my work and without my imagination I wouldn’t be able to progress and create the work I’m doing right now. I original was looking for a quote art related for a tattoo I wanted, as art is apart of me, when I came across that quote I didn’t realise it would then inspire my art work, I liked it because of the way it made me feel on a personal level.
I have been working on more drawings for my painting, I am still not sure where all the animals are going to go but i have a few ideas on where to put some. The parrot and the peacock I’ve drawn will go in the trees and the penguin I am drawing right now will be in the snow. I have still got a few things to think about such as
- Will I put the animals in sceanry that they aren’t from.
- Will I add multiples of the same animal
- the positions of each animal
I need to figure out these things before I can add them to the painting as I don’t want to draw say the parrot and then I change my mind and want it in a different place or I want more next to it but I have already added another animal in that place. Because I have to think about these things I haven’t gotten any further with my painting yet, but I want to have these things figured out soon so I can get back to painting and to be able to start my A2 drawing.
I thought I would make a post about the materials I use within my work and why.
DRAWINGS: I use coloured pencils on A4 paper. The coloured pencils I use are by Faber Castell as they blend well together and I can get a wide range of colours with them, they are quite expensive but I feel that is worth the price as they are very good pencils and I can create good drawings from them. The paper is normal paper from a sketch book, I use sketching paper because of how the coloured pencils appear on the paper. With my final drawing I plan to use a good quality A2 cartridge paper as with the content I want to add I feel that A4 would be too small, you wouldn’t be able to see all the elements which I don’t want to happen
PAINTINGS: I use canvas and acrylic paint when I create my paintings. The canvas I use is raw canvas, that means it hasn’t been primed and the paint soaks into it more. You have to use a bit more paint when painting but I like the way it looks once the painting is done, I feel that it gives it a more natural look and as I am working with nature it’s what I want. I use acrylic paint because of the type of canvas I use, but also because I prefer working with it. I’m not much of a fan of watercolour, I do like what watercolour paint can create but I can’t get my head around it and create something as beautiful as some people. I have never used oil paint before and I don’t know how to use it so I thought it would be best not to try in case it didn’t work out the way I would want it to. I mainly use Reeves acrylic paint as it is cheaper but it still gives the same outcome as the more expensive paints.
When I was talking with my tutor, we discussed doing a coloured pencil drawing of my final idea as I have already drawn the animals in coloured pencil, she said it was worth thinking about, which I did and have decided to go ahead with the drawing, I haven’t started it yet, but I’ve chosen to do it on A2 cartridge paper, I will have to go about doing the drawing different to the painting as I’ll need to know where the animals will go before I start. I feel that the painting can help with this as once I know where the animals will go I can then add them to the painting and from the painting I will be able to start the drawing.
