Art history with David

last week we were introduced to a man named David who would teach us a little about art history. He gave us an assignment to do that involved the old staircase here in the college. These are two images i came up with using a photograph i took and photoshop. Its been a while since i used shotoshop so i'm still a tad bit rusty. 

i'm pretty happy with they came out, i like the fact i took them from an awkward, slightly askew angle.

Week 4!

I experimented with a lot of materials to create and mimic different textures. The image below is supposed to look like a tree trunk/bark. I achieved this by crunching up brown parer, tearing it and stuck it down on to ridged cardboard. I then sewed black thread into into so look like then lines on the bark. I added white yarn to give a contrast to the dark brown colours. I apologise for the bad camera quality!

I got a very light fabric and painted over it with a ix of pva and water, I then i painted over it to get a light wash. once it was dry i traced over a leaf and used indian ink for it to stand out more. i wanted to create a natural space. 

Since i am investigated the sense of touch, and i want to go into the area of sculpting, i sculpted a hand out of clay, i wanted to make it look as if it was reaching out to touch something.

texture!

So 3 weeks in and i've finally come to grasp the assignment, i don't quiet know what the final outcome will be, and i may change my mind over the next 11 weeks, but i'm really enjoying messing around with different materials. Last week i was a bit confused about the idea i had but the more i played around with it the more ideas came flooding in.



The library has been a great help to me with the brief, 2 books i found particulary helpful are: "stitch, cloth, paper & paint, mixed media ideas & inspiration" by Angie Hughes.
this book gave me step by step ways to produce different textures that i wouldnt of had the brains to come up with myself!


Although i like this idea, i have another one floating around in the back of my head. When we were first given the brief immediately claustraphobia popped into my head, so i starting researching that but couldnt really go any further with it or challenge myself. However I started looking up quotes about space and one that fascinated me was "I know, it must have been my imagination, but it makes me realize how desperately alone the Earth is. Hanging in space like a speck of food floating in the ocean. Sooner or later to be swallowed up by some creature floating by.... Time will tell"   

This made me think about how even though the world is so vast and big, we sometimes cant help but feel so alone. I can somehow relate to this, if i were to go down this route for the brief i can use passed experiences as a resource. I have a picture drawn of a woman screaming, this emphasis the frustration we sometimes feel in our minds during difficult times.

To sense my space

So far i've really been  enjoying college, at first i didnt know what to make of the brief but as the first week went by i really started to get into in. The brief we were given was "to sense my space" this was open to alot of different interputation. I started brain storming all my ideas, i even threw down all the completely stupid ideas i could think of. I was pretty intimidated by the brief but i didnt want to over think about it at the same time, i just wanted to have fun with it and play around with it

I was focusing too much on the word "space" and not enough on "sense". This let me to focus on the relationship the two words have on each other. I looked at all the different senses and one that stood out to me was the sense of touch, and how this effects a persons understanding of a particular space.This then lead me onto the different textures in a particular space. What lead me onto this was that i thought if i didnt have my sense of sight, i'd know what environment or space i'm in from feeling the different textures around me.

So i began to experiment and research other artworks with the use of texture. Many of them have layers of materials that create the texture, adding and taking away.