search- Victorian Narrative Painting

Anna Francis gave me a book today about how victorians used painting to create a story.

This is a painting in the book Victorian Narrative paintings. It is called Past and present by Augustus Leopold Egg. This one is about adultery that the mother has cheated on her husband. The open door in the windows reflection symbolizes that she's getting kicked out the house and the falling cards from the children represent how it has broken the piece in the household. This is a fine example of how the artist has uses parts in the painting to convey a message

What I'm currently working on

Today I to start another figurative painting. I had found an old picture of me wearing a phantom of the opera suit. I drew myself and messed around with pastel on it. What I'm thinking of doing next is to see if I could try use Oil paint mixed with candle wax to see what effects I could do. I shall experiment more with colour in my A4 Sketch book to see what colours I can get. What I plan to do tomorrow will be:-

• Continue on with figurative paintings
• Start a evaluation diary to do more reflection on my work and to see if I could do anything more with it to progress
• Use a different paper to see what other results I could get e.g. brown paper
• See if I could use a different medium instead of people to expand e.g. wood

Michael Day said last week that a background to my figurative paintings isn't important e.g. having my figurative paintings standing at a bar. I could see if I could use a different medium effects instead to make an expressive painting. At the moment my experiments maty lead me somewhere but for now I'm gradually getting more ideas to generate futher experimentation.

Ceramics Biennial

On last weeks thursday I went with a group of fellow students to the Ceramics Biennial. Here they had lots of contemporary artists that deals with the ceramics and came here to celebrate ceramics in Stoke On Trent. When I arrived there at around 3:30 pm, we managed to speak to the curater there who discussed the events and histroy of the Biennial. Here are some photographs for the collection that they had there:-

 

I then waited for the performance piece at 7pm. This involved a ceramics artists who gets a woman to pour ceramic slip onto him. He then does the same to her. Once they had both had poured slip on another they started rubbing and slapping each other. They then both walked off going different directions.

The event ended with postcards of both of them being given to us for souverners of the event. The performance piece was very interesting. To me it looked like they used expressionism as part of their work. Possibly building a kind of relationship between man and ceramics.

Grahams seminar and first artist talk.

Today I had a seminar with Graham to discuss where we were at on our project. He told me to question why people portray the human body as grotesque. He also gave me a few things to look at including the Marqx idea of Alienation. We also discussed Francis Bacon which he told me about a conversation with David Svester and Francis Bacon. We also discussed a brief histroy about Goya which could help.

We then had a visiting artist called Ben Cove. He uses mixed media including Video, Paint and sculpture to do his work. His paintings are usually place on wheels which assists him moving around the paintings in the studio. His work from the past involves the superman from the 70s. Christopher Reed was palarysed sometime after the superman film. Ben Cove uses this to mark the end of the American dream. Ben is mainly influenced by his interest in archetecture and makes this well known in his work, sometimes even using archetecture drawings. He has been in many exhibitions which includes a talk on record about the future of archetecture. He makes the record spin the opposite way in the video. One of his recent works involve skulls wrapped around with cotton which are placed on top of spikes. This could represent tribal cultures or making territories. Ben also uses the Bauhuas as a source of influence to generate his drawings. Artistic influence comes from John McCraken, Phillip Guston and Steve Claydon. Bens work comes from Abstract and Expressionists technique for his work.

I found that the whole ideas he had with sculpture mixed with painting to be very interesting. I myself might even try to do this sometime to experiment more between the two. Even if it mixes mediums across to each other.

My next plan of action for tomorrow will be to:

• Start making more drawings of my photographed figures
• Try and use different techniques on the form
• try to create a stage using the expressions the figures give

Ideas on what to do today

Today I shall shall photographs of locations and add to my work. Then I might modify these locations to make it look like its bending reality. I might take more figurative photographs to use in my work.

Camera Technical instructions

Today I had a 6 hour intensive training on how to use the video cameras. We learnt how to use lighting and editing aswell. I am now able to rent the video camera and its extras out to use in my image, movement and sound project.

Michael tutorial, next plan and what I'm doing

Yesterday I had a tutorial with Michael Day. He was confused about my current studio practise. Today my fellow class mates told me what they saw in my work. We discussed what I did last year with this years work. I then came to the conclusion that my works about questioning reality. I then carried on using pastels, charcoal and graphite to make my work. Tomorrow I intend to

• continue to make my paintings
• Plan out a narrative for the next piece

Ceramics

Starting at 9:30 I had an all day lesson learning about moulding, plaster and clay. I managed to make a mould of a potatoe gun. I then brought a bananna in to see how mouldings work. Next week I will need to bring another object to mould from.

Graphite pencil

Today I decided to work more with what Sarah Kay does. I remembered what I did with my new graphite drawings, but when I added paint to them. I will plan to make a few graphite drawings and oil paintings. Today I had a tutorial with Michael Branthwaite about the correspondence project. We discused the stages we went through at them moment such as I would do half the painting and stacey would do the other.
I then showed michael the work I made at the moment. We discused ways which I could do my narrative art. I shall now look at my photographs and do more graphite work with them.

Oil pastels, water colouring and more photographs

Today I brought Linseed oil and used it with my oil pastels to paint my my work. I also used water colours to paint the second drawing. Even though I think that they're could be improvent, at this stage I'm just experimenting with colours. I think that my next piece I should just use Oil pastels without the Linseed oil to create my work. I also took photographs of three fellow class mates for a reference for my drawings.
Tomorrow I shall:

• Draw my class mates
• Use Linseed oil more
• Possibly draw people outside quickly
• I will also look more at the research done on Sarah Key and try to make my paintings more surreal
 

Here are the photographs that I managed to take