New Paintings!

I have been working very hard to get some new paintings done so that I could post the images up here for your viewing pleasure and here they are as promised!!  I have also started making my own canvases (buying them all from The Works was getting far too expensive!).  I'm enjoying making my own canvases because it makes the canvase seem more a part of the painting.

Enough babble, here are my pictures, all comments welcome as always :)

This painting was another experiment with dripping paint.  I was trying to make the paint drips darker, but it wasn't that successful.  Just thought I'd put it up though.

 Another experimetal painting using vivid colours.

I thought I would put this up so that you could all see a painting in progress.  This was the end of step one, when I was using brighter colours.

This is the finished painting.  I was trying to break the image up into areas of bright colours and areas of darker colours to try and reflect the way colours seem to change in a memory. 

 

Blame the artist book..

I know it's been a while since my last post, but I haven't forgotten about my blog, honestly!!  I've been very busy at the moment trying to make my own artist book, so haven't had much time to make anymore practical work.  I am planning on doing some more painting later today though so pictures will be up soon, do not fear!

As for my artist book I'm thoroughly enjoying making it, the book is based on my memory project, so a lot of the images have been posted up here already, but I might put some images up for you to look at, they might be interesting.


I will post some pictures of my new paintings up soon, promise!


 

New Work

Here is an update of my current studio work.  I have been working on trying to make the images look a bit more disorted so that the observer has to look harder in order to work out what the image contains.  Cecily Brown was my main inspiration for this.  Have a look and let me know what you think!

 

 

Cecily Brown

Cecily Brown is an artist that I stumbled across whilst doing some research for my project.  Her work is absolutely amazing, I have never been so inspired by anthing, ever!!  She uses strong, dynamic brush strokes which makes her work seem alive and breathing.  The detail is all there and her paintings are clearly very well planned, but her work still manages to look spontaneous and impulsive.  These are just a few of Brown's fantastic paintings:

 

 

 

 

Update on my work so far!

This post is a simple update of the work that I have been doing since my last post concerning my work.  I have been experimenting with different techniques of applying paint to the canvas resulting in different styles of painting.  Here are some pictures of my work:

In this piece I was experimenting the effect of using dripping paint in my work to give the image a looser feel, as though the paint was acting on it's own accord.

Here I applied the paint quickly resulting in this dappled effect, which I think is really effective.  I also really like the colours of this piece, it's bleak, but not too dark.

The style of this painting was largely inspired by the artist, Cecily Brown, the idea is that the form is not too clearly visible so it intrigue the viewer and make them want to look more closely at the painting.  I think I would like to do more works in the style.

This is the largest painting I have done so far.  All my other pieces have been painted on A5 canvases and this canvas is A3 sized.  The increased scale was great because it gave me so much more room to just play around and experiment with the paint.  I found that I could use the paint brush more freely and create these dynamic brush strokes which work really well.

 

Hughie O'Donoghue - 'The Journey' Exhibition

Today I went to see the Hughie O'Donoghue exhibition at Leeds Art Gallery.  The exhibition was called 'The Journey' and is an exploration of the human figure in relation to history, war and myth.

I have been researching Hughie O'Donoghue's work in relation to my own work, because key elements of his paintings are drawn from imagination, dreams and memories, memories of course being my subject matter for this painting project.

I am really glad that I went to see this exhibit because being able to see the paintings on a life size scale made me appreciate them so much more than when I was just looking at photographs of his work in books and online.  I could really see and admire the complexity and multitude of layers that go into O'Donoghue's work and I definately found it inspiring.  

Here are some images of his work:

 

 

A Little Inspiration

Whilst I was doing some research for my project I came across the artist Franz Marc, and I absolutely fell in love with his work.  His use of bright vibrant colours and distorted, but clear lines has really inspired me for my work.  He painted images that he believed reflected the view of the world as seen through the eyes of animals.  Here are some pieces of his work for you to look at as well.

 

 

 

The painting above of the foxes would have to be my favourite painting of his.  There is a certain softness to it, that has been carefully cut up and disected by Marc's use of geometric shapes and his use of colour is just brilliant!  I am most definately a huge fan of his work and I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

Second Phase of a Work in Progress

I thought I would just give a quick update on how my studio practice work is coming along.  So I have been looking at memory and how I can translate a memory into a solid picture form, and here's some of the pieces I have created so far!  I say pieces, they are more experimental works really, but I thought they were worthy of a blog.

Above is a drawing of a memory I did.  I tried to make the lines very sketchy to reflect the haziness of memories.

I made the image above, by tracing over the original drawing and moving the tracing paper as I was drawing.  It gives the image a cubist effect and a distortion that I am really trying to create in my work.

My Work!

So here are the promised pictures of my work!  The idea behind these pieces was looking at children's illustration and the very innocent way in which characters are portrayed.  I was trying to capture some of this almost blinding innocence, whilst also thinking carefully about the lines which I used to construct the figures.. okay artist spiel over, just enjoy the images!

I've been rather neglectful

Hello again!  So what can I say.. Well, it seems I have been rather neglectful of my new blog and have not uploaded the pictures of my work that I said I would, so I am going to do it now!  Please just take a few minutes to look at them and leave me any comments telling me what you think, I would really appreciate them, thank you!