My Artist analysis

I was previously using a different artist to the one I am now (Paolo Troilo) but I converted to my current one due to the fact that his work was more similar to what I want to achieve rather than Troilo's, this new artist is Italian and is called Giorgio Arcuri.


The reason I like this artist is because he does more of a variety of work although most oh his pieces are still figurative, although I want to base my work off his work, my main idea is to use my pass skills in order to create an abstract twist on it. The way I have already started to do this is by using my PVA glue and paint mixture to create certain aspects of the drawing but I would like to emphasise this further.


Here are some of my favourite pieces of Arcuri's work;

The reason that I especially like the first two pieces is because they are both a simple background of pencil drawing but with bursts of colour in certain places in order to add emphasis and contrast.

Arcuri has many different collections within his work, the first one is 'Le Parole Non Bastano' ('Words Are Not Enough') which contains a series of different mouth movements which is something
I am specifically focusing on at the minute, especially getting inspiration from the top left piece. Here is one piece I have already done and one I am currently working on, next to Arcuri's piece's.

The second collection is purely a selection of hand movements which I have focused on except with a different artist that I mentioned at the start, despite this my work did turn out to have more features of Arcuri's work rather than Troilo's. This part of Arcuri's work is called Sfumature Di Un Tocco which translates from Italian to English as 'Shades Of A Touch'. Here is an image of one of my similar pieces next to Arcuri's work.

There are also lots more, different collections but my favourite and the one that I think I want to be moving on to soon is simply called 'Drink Collection' involving a selection of alcoholic beverages in a splashing motion almost as if something has been dropped in them or thy have been poured in to the glass very heavily. The reason I think doing something similar to this would be good for me is because the PVA glue and paint solution I create is very good for showing movement and motion.

Georgia Lucas

Review

Recently I have been taking the created of PVA glue and paint from my previous work of my micro-exam and artist research and incorporating it into new backgrounds which I have drawn in pencil rather than a photograph. What I am now drawing is more focus on close up features rather than a full body of a model like in the photographs, the reason I have done this is so I am able to add in more shading and detail to test my skills and find improvements I could make which I have already done and mentioned in my objectives and evaluations.

The background I tried was a hand in squeezing motion, as I seemed to be struggling to add detail and shading I researched an artists called Paolo Troilo who also showed a lot of movement in his work, here's an example of some of the pieces I got ideas from.

Here is some the pieces I created by photocopying my original drawing and applying my layer of PVA glue and paint.

Now I feel like I'm finished with this specific background, I have moved on to drawing another close up body feature, but a facial one this time, a slightly open mouth. Although this drawing doesn't show any movement like the last one, it has a lot darker shading which adds more depth.

 This is the simple I background I have drawn and the piece on the left is an artist I have researched and I am hoping to also create this dripping motion except with the PVA glue and paint layer I created on my last piece of work.

Reflection-

I really enjoyed the work I did last lesson as it was completely different to what I had been doing these past couple weeks in the sense that I drew my back ground rather than using a photograph. I chose to use completely pencil for my drawing, with no colour included, only shading. This piece is no where near finished yet but I think that once I have added more definition to the hand it will hopefully even show some movement of the hand whilst squeezing the fruit.

I have already improved just by getting help with my shading technique during the lesson as before I shaded heavily onto the while back ground in only certain areas then tried to smudge the pencil using my finger which therefore applied oils from my hands on to the paper making it really difficult to rub out later on. To change all this I shaded the entire hand lightly first, using a paper towel to smudge the pencil rather than my finger, then I went in with a rubber to highlight the areas that needed to be emphasised. Here is a picture of my work before the improvements were made.

My Micro Exam analysis

I think that my exam went so well in the idea that I created exactly what I had planned to which was an ironic twist on modern day fashion by using massive inspiration from my artists work (Gerhard Richter). This exam was almost the exact same as my practice exam because to create the actual dress I used the same materials, techniques and applicators although this time I did the entire thing on a bigger scale and also ensured that I considered all the improvements from my previous analysis such as covering the PVA glue with a more generous layer of white paint to ensure no parts were left to dry transparent.

Although working on a bigger scale was definitely a better idea and showed variation of size, I think it was definitely more difficult because the glue and paint didn't stay in the guide lines very easily despite this it created a brand new shape which was much more expressive and unique.

Another factor that I also altered was the depth of tone in the background as in my practice piece it was just a complete wash of a dark grey shade so during my micro exam I improved it by keeping the dark grey/black at the bottom half of the page in order to contrast with the dress and make it stand out. I then faded these dark tones gradually into lighter ones as it reached the top of the page.

There were also some minor improvements which I made such as the tools I used for example when cutting the photograph of my model out I hadn't been very precise therefore this time I used a more defined cutting knife which was extremely helpful when it came to cutting out the thinnest of hairs on the models head. Although it was all worth it because it looked much more realistic especially against the white wash background.

One thing I think I could’ve maybe added was more in the background rather than just a blank wash because even though it went very well, I think it looked quite bland. What I have in mind is various splashes of colour mainly around the edges of the page or something creative which links in with the pattern or colour of the dress on the model.

I think the only thing that I would improve if I was to do this exam again is maybe an even bigger scale as that was one aspect which worked really well, other than that I'm really happy with the end result because I met all my targets from the analysis of my practice.

I took a few photos during this project, one is from the practice piece and the others are during the process and the final result of my micro exam, I found this was the easiest way to document my work and refer to it in analysis.

My evaluation of micro-exam practice




My initial plan for my exam was to use PVA glue with ready mixed paint and acrylic paint, then left to dry on a plastic wallet in order to be able to peel it off when it's dry.
Once this was complete I planned to cut it out so that it fit perfectly on the photograph of the my model that I had taken myself. I think that for the short period of time that I had, I did very well and the work I completed was very successful although I need think more about preparing myself for the exam, for example, doing pieces of work that involve wet mediums before hand because when I used the paint and PVA glue it wasn't dry before the end of the exam so I wasn't able to complete my piece of work that involve wet mediums beforehand because when I used the paint and PVA glue it wasn't dry before the end of the exam so I wasn't able to complete my piece of work which if it happened in the real exam I would have be marked down massively.


Another thing I need to do much better I gather a lot more pictures of my model rather than just having one because during this practice I only had one and it went wrong due to me being too eager and trying to stick it on to a paint wash background that was still wet. As well as this I have also decided that when I print the pictures off of my model again that they are going to be black and white rather than colour because I think it will make the sheet of colour that I’m putting over the top stand out a lot more. To add this as well I’m also going to do a really light grey wash on the background. It’s really important that the colour sheet I am placing over the top of the image stands out because it is the part of my work that is most relevant to my artist as I have used his techniques to create it, like I have used a knife and sponge instead of just a paint brush. Another way that I used reference of my artists work was also by using a photograph similar to how he does in his photo-paintings which are some of his most famous pieces. The only way I could do my work anymore like my own artist is by using oil paint rather than ready-mixed and acrylic with water, although I don’t feel the need to because I think these materials work well enough for what I am trying to create.


Although I liked the grey wash on the back ground, I think I should try and use a different tool to apply it rather than a sponge because the texture wasn’t right and I need a smoother background so that it doesn’t look too crowded.

I found that my practice piece worked extremely well and I was very impressed with the way it turned out because it was very similar to one of my artist pieces that I was attempting to replicate, like shown in the research in my sketch book.

The colours in the piece were perfect and the contrast was exactly what I had in mind, although a large amount of it was only PVA glue, therefore it dried transparent when it should've either been colour or white. To improve this I'm going to ensure all areas of PVA and covered in a later of white paint. Also I realised my cutting skills weren't very delicate so I am going to ensure I use a cutting knife in my real micro exam so that I can cut out each individual hair in attempt to make it look realistic as well as using a lighter coloured back ground towards the top of the black hair to make it stand out more.

Artist Analysis – Molly Zuckerman Hartung

Molly Zuckerman Hartung was born in 1975 in Los Gatos but now lives and creates her art work in Chicago.

For many of Molly Zuckerman Hartung’s work, she used a variety of mediums such as latex, house paint (emulsion), enamel and stray paint and most of the time she used a drop-cloth to apply these materials. On other pieces she also used more three dimensional materials in order to create a more textured look whilst still using her normal mediums in the background. As her work breaks away from 2D it is almost classed as sculptural.

Techniques-

Zuckerman Hartung doesn’t just apply her mediums she first does mark making with her materials such as cutting, pulling, twisting and dying them. Her paintings are sewn together from pieces of drop cloth which is a material that is commonly used to protect floors in houses from dripping paint when decorating.

Reflection to my work-

From Zuckerman Hartung’s work I gathered her use of mark making was very interesting and included it in my own work by using lots of different materials such as newspaper, coffee and graphite to simply create an imagine of how I feel or interpret an object.

Gerhard Richter

Exhibitions, personal life, influences & inspirations-

Gerhard Richter started his exhibitions right back from 1960 up until 2016. He started painting a lot more in 1961 and varied his work massively using several different artists as inspiration like Dubuffet, Giacometti and Tàpies who themselves are very different from each other. This implies he was trying to add variation in to his own work, whilst doing this he told interviewers “I tried out everything I could”. Richter hated the majority of the paintings he created during this process but it all worked towards some of his most famous pieces of today. This point proves that experimenting is important which is why I have done it a lot in my own work like I have tested in my early sketches for example I studied an object and drew it in different ways like without looking, using different mediums such as graphite, biro and emulsion as well as drawing them at different angles and scales sizes.

Materials and techniques-

Lots of his art work is photo-paintings which are completed by a series of steps, each one being very important. He begins with a simple photograph, which he has either found or taken himself, he then projects the photograph on to his canvas, where he then traces it. Taking his colour palette from the photograph, he paints to replicate the look of the original picture. His hallmark "blur" is created sometimes by using a light touch of a soft brush but sometimes with a hard smear by using a squeegee. He would also usually use oil paints, especially on his photograph paintings.

My personal references to his work-

I mainly focused on his photo-painting because I feel like it was the best way for me to add in my own personal touch which I did by first studying two main pieces of his and trying to recreate it using a fashion collage as the background which is not only added personal input but also experimented on colours. After this I did excessive amounts of research and found that I best liked the work that he created between 2003 and 2007 due to the colour schemes he used as well as the fact that he used more photograph based backgrounds.

After finding these images I drew one similar as a tester and once I was happy with it I went out and took my own photographs just like Gerhard took his own, I then did the same sort of thing as on my tester piece but this time I used lots of different materials and started experimenting on my mediums just like Gerhard in the 1960’s. from this I realised that the colours where much too busy so I focused on creating a limited pallet and started only using one simple material to cover the entire dress and now I’m going to start adding highlights in to the important areas with a bright contrasting yellow.