Micro Exam

Reflection of practice piece

I feel like my practice piece was successful. It’s given me a better idea of what I need to change and tweak. Firstly, for my background, I created a wash of yellow with acrylic paint because when experimenting I found that watercolour paint showed up better on lighter background colours. I do think however, that I need to tone the yellow colour down as it is too bright. I then stuck down a newspaper clipping to link to my love of writing and how Hoffmann is inspired by writing. For my actual exam piece, I will use a clipping from a book instead as it would relate more to who I am. After this I added brown and white acrylic paint and used the brush in different ways to make more expressive marks. I feel like this process worked pretty well.

I drew a pigeon in the style of Watson; I don’t think a pigeon links to me or reflects who I am so I am going to change what animal I draw. In my actual piece I am going to leave a white space where I draw my animal because I didn’t like the yellow undertone coming through after adding watercolour but I think using Watson’s style worked well; the style of the drawing worked well with the watercolour drips I put around it as it was hard to make the drips perfect and Watson’s style involves loose marks.

After this, I created drips with blue, green and purple watercolour around the bird, the watercolour ran into the watercolour I used on the bird. For my actual piece I will need to make sure all paint is dry before adding more. Some of the watercolour also dripped more than I wanted and didn’t drip in a straight line, to fix this I need to make sure the watercolour drips I have already created are dry before creating another drip.

Finally, I created scribbles in black and white pen to represent my inspiration from writing, these overall worked well but I need to make sure all the paint underneath it is dry before adding pen on top of it. I am happy with how my ideas for the piece turned out and I think the main think I need to change is the animal I use. I think it would be more appropriate to draw my dog or a horse as I do horse riding instead of an animal I have no connection to. I drew a pigeon as it went very well when drawing in my sketchbook so I knew it would work and it had more life to it than my dog and horse drawings. I am also thinking about drawing more than one animal, one in the piece in the style of Watson and one in the style of Cross. Despite this, I liked the composition of my practice piece and don’t think it needs any changing. I would have to change everything around if I were to add in another animal drawing though.

Reflection of Micro-Exam Final piece

Compared to my practice piece, this piece was much more successful. I displayed my work this time on a board instead of on paper because I used spray mount to stick down newspaper for my background and paper would have stretched and not stayed straight. I used spray mount because it dries fast so I didn’t have to wait for it to dry for a long time and it makes it easier to stick down large amounts of newspaper quicker as opposed to using glue which can be messy and is overall a slower process. It also would have made the newspaper wetter which could have made it rip easier. I think using a background made of newspaper looked more aesthetically pleasing than the yellow acrylic background I created in my practice piece. I also used newspaper because I am looking at mark making and newspaper print is a type of making marks. This time I used newspaper for the entire background instead of just using a small clip because I felt like it worked better and made more sense. I didn’t draw scribbles like I did in my practice piece because I didn’t feel like it fit or made sense with the rest of the piece. I didn’t create marks with paint like I did in my practice piece either because I didn’t feel it made sense with the rest of my piece.

I wanted to draw a bird as I drew a pigeon in my practice piece but I wanted to use a more exciting picture so I used a picture of a red kite in flight. In my practice the pigeon was just standing still whereas the bird I used in this piece is flying which is more exciting and interesting. I used the same techniques as I did in my practice piece. I used Watson’s style of mark making with the bird but made it more subtle as I felt it worked more with the piece I was creating. I used watercolour as Watson does also but used the water colour more heavily than Watson does and in a more realistic style. It did this because my own style is more realistic than Watson’s and using the watercolour more heavily meant that the bird stood out against the newspaper background more. I still feel it could stand out more so I would need to experiment with different mediums to see what works best. Using watercolour on the newspaper made it wetter than I would have liked and so I couldn’t truly see how the colours were going to turn out until they had dried because the water darkened the newspaper when wet. The water also made the newspaper more susceptible to ripping and meant it was very easy to overwork. To combat this I could seal the newspaper with something like PVA glue. I didn’t do this because it would have taken too long to dry.

I created blue, purple and green drips around the bird’s wings much like how Cross creates colourful drips of watercolour around his pieces, however I kept my drips confined to the wings so your eyes wouldn’t be drawn away from the overall piece like they were in my practice piece. I think the composition of my piece is much better than my practice as there isn’t as much going on and the only bright colours are the drips instead of the entire piece being bright like my practice.

Finished Piece.

Artist Analysis- Sarah Watson

Sarah Watson was born in Rutland in1972. She graduated from De Montfort University with a First-Class degree in Combined Arts in 1994. After this she worked for 15 years in the music industry and now focuses on her ar

t. Sarah has displayed her art in a number of exhibitions: ‘The Lakes: Landscape and Abstraction’, ‘Landscape, Abstraction, Life’ and ‘Femmes of the Fen’.

‘Wonky dogs’ is a business that Watson created when she noticed a lack of animal portraiture commissions for animal owners and lovers. This is what I’m focusing on for my art work as I am basing my project on animals. She mostly draws dogs which links to me as I have had a strong love for dogs my whole life and currently own a dog. I was drawn to her work as she leans to abstraction and this is a style I’ve never worked in, I feel like working in this style has pushed my art skills.

This is the main piece I am looking at. I feel it is a good example of her work. It doesn’t have a title but is done on a4 sized paper. In this piece and all of her others she uses pen to create a loose outline and then uses watercolour to add colour to the drawing. Watson aims to capture the personality of the animal in her drawings and does this by asking for 3 words that describes the pet e.g. energetic, silly and loving. Watson doesn’t use just black pain here. She uses different tones of grey and browns which allows her to create more shadows and highlights. This gives the overall drawing more contrast. Watson creates more detail in the face of the dog than anywhere else which draws your eyes straight to the dogs face.

Watson uses watercolour very loosely, it gives the drawings more life along with how she creates loose pen lines. This drawing in particular is quite simplistic compared to some of her other drawings like the one below. I think the negative white space she has used works well and keeps the drawing from being overcomplicated.

In this second drawing, Watson has used different marks to create the same look as dog fur. She uses quick strokes with the brush to create straight, long fur and creates curls and waves to recreate curly dog fur. She has used darker paint to create shadows and uses negative space to create highlights which gives the drawing a lot of contrast. This drawing is less abstract than her last piece and she uses more colour. As well as the grey tones, she uses a brown colour to create more dimension. Again, Watson doesn’t just use black paint and instead uses different tones to make it more lifelike.

Other than ‘Wonky Dogs’ Watson draws mainly landscapes. She draws them from how she sees them in front of her ‘en plein air’. She creates the same simple but descriptive marks that she uses in her dog caricatures. She uses a mixture of oil sticks and pastels. How she draws them and what colours she uses depends on her mood, which is also something I do in my work. This drawing in particular is from the lake district and is titled ‘Towards Home Illgill Head’.

In my work, I have strayed away from dogs as Watson has done partially. I have started to draw things like zoo animals and birds in Watson’s style. I think other animals in this style have more life and dimension. In this duck drawing, Watson has drawn the entire animal unlike her dog caricatures. To draw your eye to the front of the duck she has used more tone on the face of it. She has also used more lines at the front of the duck. With the duck, underwater she has added more detail on the part of the duck out of the water. She has drawn the head of the duck but it is the last thing your eye is drawn to. Watson has also used blue and pink colours to create the illusion of water. She has also used pen to create lines that look like water.

Artist Analysis- Uno Hoffmann: Final Draft

 Uno Hoffmann was born in Canada in 1955, and raised in Stockholm, Sweden as a child. He studied architecture at the University of Toronto, which I think shows through in his later pieces. He began his painting career before he studied architecture, and had his first major solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (Museu Gulbenkian) when he was 24 years old.

Hoffmann’s first exhibition pieces are very different to his more recent pieces that I have looked at.  This is ‘The Soft Roar of the Earth’ for this piece he used pastels whereas now he mainly uses acrylic and pen. I think it’s very clear that he hadn’t been inspired by architecture yet as the shapes he uses are softer and less geometric.

Poetry and writing seems to be a big influence to Hoffmann. Many of his works are based on a response to different pieces of writing or poetry. I have an interest in writing and reading, I took English Literature and therefore could use some of the books I have read as influence for my Art work.

This is one of the main pieces I am looking at, it’s part of a notebook called ‘war music ‘. This particular piece was inspired by a book called War Music written by British poet Christopher Logue. Hoffman has taken a part of a page in the book and put it into this piece. He has also painted the word ‘War’ multiple times and it makes the piece look quite angry. He has also created a red line across the page which to me looks like blood which could represent the blood spilled by war. I’m looking at it because of its clear inspiration from writing/poetry

The majority his more recent pieces contain straight lines and geometric shapes which possibly is influenced by his studies of architecture. He also creates a lot of words and scribbles which could be influenced by writing.

Hoffmann mainly uses acrylic to create his pieces and generally uses pen over the top. For white marks, he seems to use chalk however, I have found that a white pen creates a crisper mark which I prefer, it also makes the marks look more like words which is the effect that I want. He sometimes includes photos in his work which he paints and draws over the top of. He uses pages from books when influenced by a certain piece of writing. In a large portion of his work there are a lot of brown and red tones along with black and white.

This is another one of the main pieces I am analysing; it’s called “Study for the Sea and The Mirror”. His work contains strong contrasts of colour as shown here. He does this by creating a wash of colour as a background and then uses contrasting colours on top (Mainly red). In this piece Hoffmann has instead left a white background; this creates contrast against the black paint.

The Sea and the Mirror is a poem by W.H. Auden. It’s a commentary on Shakespeare’s the Tempest. This is why I am looking at this piece as it has more influences from writing. I’m looking at it also because it has bold colours  which I like and it has straight lines which are featured in many of his pieces. I’m not sure what the number 11 refers to but it could relate to the different parts of the poem. The Piece is 23x50cm, as with a lot of his work it is Landscape.

 In his newest pieces, he has strayed away from that and now uses many different colours. In his work, he sometimes uses the technique of dry brushing to get less ridged shapes, varies his brush strokes to get different textures and he uses different amounts of water to create more transparent or more opaque marks. This creates more contrast and various different types of marks. He also seems to use different materials and fabric to create texture and different layers.

Uno’s work really interests me because of his continuing references to poetry and literature. Reading is a big influence in my life and I think it really links to who I am. Uno also seems to be influenced  by Greek history and mythology, which I was very interested in as a child.

Coombe Abbey Trip (Adventures with my dog)

I took a trip to Coombe Abbey this weekend to get some pictures to draw from. It turned out to be a very successful trip. I got a lot of pictures of different birds and some good pictures of my dog.

We had to walk through a fancy garden to get the picture of the house and we weren't allowed to walk on the grass which made it very hard to take the picture while trying to keep Archie on the path.

Archie also thought it was great fun to chase all of the birds away which made taking photos even more difficult. 

 The light here has reflected on the water in a really nice way.

(This White bird did not care about Archie's attempts to scare him)

There were a LOT of birds.

(Tea Break)

I had to stop a lot of attempts of Archie jumping into the lake.

In a lot of these photos, the sun had nearly started to set and so the light reflects in an interesting way. There were also some baby swans which got really close and allowed me to take some good pictures of them. They also have more colour than adult swans so might create a more interesting drawing.

I thought the water droplets on this leaf looked really interesting.