University Campus Suffolk

ljhvl

Where I will go from here

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about how I can move my practice forward and in what direction it is going. After reading over my blog in its entirety for the first time in about a month it is clear that my practice is evolving from looking at how colours fit together to analysing other the effects of other variables , such as size/scale relative to the viewer , composition, surface of work, and paint relative to its absolute surroundings ie the gallery space the art is in.

This is all very well but what impact does this have on my practice and the art that I am producing/ going to make?

After reflecting on my work it all looks quite similar, although I have tried to achieve different things (and have to a certain extent) it is all, aesthetically at least, very similar. From here I tend to explore the effects of scale to a larger extent I have ordered a piece of fibre board that is 3 by 1.5 metres and will produce a painting that size.

I am also going to look at the effects of scale in the opposite sense. I will make a series of paintings 5 by 7.5cm and display on a wall in a mock gallery setting. I think it is important to do this as seeing a work this size in a studio environment has little significance, it is only when you position it on a wall (hopefully a large clear wall) will the significance of it’s size take affect- the surrounds will play as big a part in the experience of the painting as the painting it self.

I also intend to diversify the way I use and apply paint, I’ve been looking at a few artists (Chris Finley, ??? who I haven’t posted about yet) all have very different and interesting ways of applying paint. For example I plan to continue working with Adobe Illustrator to look at the various shape and colour perspectives I can generate.

In addition I plan to continue my work looking at the affects of different gradients. I also plan to start working with the masking tape from my paintings. I’m not sure what I could produce with them but as Jane said they are to interesting to keep throwing them away like I have been. I’ve kept the ones from my latest painting and have arranged them up against the wall of my studio.

Hopefully when all of these works come into fruition I should have enough of a varied body of work that I should have a lot to choose from for the degree show.

Experimenting in Photoshop

After finding out about how Chris Finley distorts images and uses though as reference points for his art I thought I would do the same. However I would be distorting portraits as he did- I would use blocks of colour as my starting point.

So I made a digital ‘canvas’ and filled half orange and half red- my thinking being if I needed more colour I can always add it.

I then began using Photoshop to distort it every way I could and come up with some interesting effects.

I don’t think that I’ll use one particular photo to paint from, as I don’t think any of them work as an overall piece. What I will do however is cherry pick parts from the ones that i think work and then add them to various paintings. For example in Exercise 4 I’ll like how, at the bottom left of the image, the paint looks as if it is melting off the canvas and gives a discerning perspective which I think is exacerbated by one of the lines being so dark and the other two so light.

The only thing i would lie to pint out is the limitions of photoshop (or limitations of my ability to use it.) I fould it impossible to create some of the shapes/ manipulations i was hoping to. I wanted to ajust the persepctive of shapes and attept to sculpt the enviroment using different shapes lines and paterns that hd been manipulated. However i had trouble doing any of hat on photoshop.

My intesion is to take the same starting image and manipulate it using adobe Illustrator- a program i think that wil let me achive those effects.