Photography

I've reached a point in the course about photography. I've always taken loads of snapshots, but its a long time since I've really tried to create a photographic art work. I got out my old SLR and was about to rush off to buy film, when my youngest son pointed out that my digital SLR can actually be used manually. To my shame I'd never tried! After digging out the manual, he's absolutely right! 
I spent yesterday afternoon running around the garden experimenting with exposure and f numbers.


Here are the results on my wisteria buds. Pretty neat eh? Just got to work out what I did.......

Abstract?

This is my latest art work

No not really, it's the bottom of my watertray with 3 curly paperclips, I discovered it today all dried up and desicated, nice though!

More Prints

Well having said I'd given up, guess what happened, yes I made prints that I liked!

Light and dark- tonal exercise

Things have been a bit quiet on the production front this week. 
All my time has been spent making stencils and collagraphs and I have very little to show for it! I have spent a lot of time trying to get ink to do what I tell it and failed miserably...like a naughty child, it does not want to behave!
...so for a little light relief I spent the early hours of this morning doing pastels whilst listening to BBC Radio 4 on the internet.


The programme was "How the Mighty Have Fallen"!- a history of obesity!

The task was to copy an old master, concentrating on tone and shading.

This is a bit of Lucian Freuds "Benefits supervisor resting". 1994

I think I learnt a lot, especially about shadow and shading and highlights. It has pacified (for a while) my bizarre desire to paint a fat person. My teenager says its "disturbing".


On reflection I think she simply isn't fat enough!

Print making

I'd been looking forward to this section and as a wet weekend approached, went out and bought inks and bits and bobs to get started. After several hours I had very little to show for it, a few rather dismal blobs in horrid colours, not deserving of the term "monoprint". As I was clearing up, rather than waste ink I combined a couple of plates and like magic the following suddenly appeared.

I know they don't look much but they're a start!

These are my efforts at collagraphs

I got quite excited with how well the stitching came out, the little bits of cotton tails reminded me of IUCD strings, so I made a uterus for it to go in!

Then I got really over ambitious and thought a baby would look good.....

???twins.....maybe not!

Hands!

I'm struggling a bit at the moment.
Not sure where I'm going. Feel a bit flat. So I've decided to not think too much and just get into the habit of practice. "Practice makes perfect" Right?


Since I like doing figure work, getting all those arms and legs looking like arms and legs regardless of position is a challenge. Foreshortening (the technical term) I actually like! It really is what makes or breaks a picture or image. My mentor has given me some websites to check out. www.princetonol.com
www.posemaniacs.com    www.istockphoto.com
Interesting sites. I wish some of them had some real people though, old, fat, ugly!
I will definitely use posemaniacs, which I have shown my son, who is into manga drawings big time!


I have resorted to what feels comfortable and has that emotional link, which seems to be so important to motivate me. Sorry guys, its my family again!

  

Symbolism and Surrealism

Well this project was a bit of a challenge. I'm not used to having to imagine stuff. I wasn't much grabbed by the exercises suggested, but enjoyed browsing the internet looking at Dali, Picasso and a chap called Hieronymous Bosch (Dutch painter, 1450-1516 approx). What a fantastic name, our next guinea pig will definitely be Hieronymous, or possibly Jerome as apparently that is the English translation (not so much fun, but fine for a GP).

I particularly liked this painting

What amazing faces

I later found out that maybe he didn't paint it at all......possibly a "fake" a few hundred years later, still pretty good.

I decided I'd do a sort of modern parody, I liked the four in the corner and concentrated on them.

This my effort, I'd explain it but that wouldn't be in the true spirit of symbolism would it? I'm not too pleased by it, kind of lost interest a little half way through, but fun to try something different.