Half Term Work

Over the half term, I was planning on visiting a local zoo to get a lot of photos and leaflets as well as draw some animals. This would have allowed me to get some more research for my project that would have enabled me to delve deeper into my project. Unfortunately, due to money restrictions, I haven't been able to visit yet, so I am going to go when I can. Because of this I have had to draw some experimentations of animals that are near me: A dog and a bird. 

1st drawing - Black pen (35 minutes)

2nd drawing - Black pen and coffee staining in the darker areas (20 minutes)

3rd drawing - white pen on black paper (20 minutes)

4th drawing - black acrylic paint (15 minutes)

Out of these four drawings, I particularly like the 1st drawing as I think it shows a high contrast in tone when compared with all the other drawings. However I do like the 4th drawing as it does also show contrast; in the future, I would only use this technique on a bigger scale as you can't get a lot of detail with brushstrokes of acrylic paint.

Over the past two weeks, I have been trying to decide on what route I am going to go down regarding my art project, "who am I?". With deep consideration, I have decided to focus on the destruction of animals when they are taken out of their natural environment and put into zoos. After having created a mindmap that consists of everything about me, I realised that I am really interested in the work of ROA. I like how expressive his work is and how detailed it is. He focuses on animals and paints large black and white images of them on walls in the area he is in at the time. These are a few examples of his work:

His work is very large scale, high contrasting, slightly stylised and also slightly expressive. All of these concepts allow ROA to create unique, realistic drawings of animals. He manages to combine the idea of life and death in his illistrations and I can use this to show how animals in zoos are distressed and in danger. In my work, i am going to draw a couple of animals in his style with different materials such as: pencil, pen, ink and acrylic paint; this will allow me to see what material is best when working in his style. The following photos are of the drawings that I have completed in class:

drawing of a whale skull

Reflective diary of my art lessons so far

Over the past couple of weeks, we have been attempting to draw an object that is personal to us; I chose a teddy bear that my Dad passed on to me as my family has always been a traditional family where things get passed down through generations. We have been making a variety of small drawings of small sections of our object and trying to get accurate mark making and tone. I focused on the texture of the fur around the eyes and nose. Here is the transition of my work from the start of the observational drawing process to the end of the observational process:

 

I am really happy with the transition of my work and how it has improved. I can see at the start of this, I was not really understanding how to record observations properly, however I can see that as I have progressed, the quality of work has improved. My work has become more expressive and I have begun to understand the importance of making my work look interesting (for instance, using newspaper as the paper that I draw on. After having used both pencil and pen, I now realise that working with pen can be a lot more interesting and is also better for making expressive work.

After visiting Pitt Rivers, the Ashmolean and the Oxford University Museum, I have begun to think about how I can take the theme of "Who Am I?", and make it my own. I am going to try and use some of the ancient elements of the animal kingdom (for example, I could focus on the reasons to why animals become extinct). However, I still like the idea of focusing on how I hate the fact that animals are kept in zoos - a place that they should never be. I realised that the ancient, traditional side of life is one of the most interesting aspects of history, which is why I could involve some aspect of history within my art project. From now on, I think that I am going to try and visit a lot more museums and galleries to get inspiration so that I can develop my art work further.

Todays lesson - 3rd October 16

In todays lesson, I carried on drawing sections of my bear that I had brought into college in different ways. The bear that I had brought in is special to me as it was passed on down from my Dad to me and when I have children, it will most likely be passed on down to them. The following pictures are of what I have done today:

This first step is when I had to stick pieces of newspaper down into my sketchbook. I had to leave one of them untouched and the other, I had to brush some emulsion on to the top of it. After this, I had to draw the same thing on to each of them so that I would understand the difference between them.

The first drawing in this image was a biro drawing onto the blank piece of newspaper. I focused on the nose of the bear and the fur around it. I found out that the pen is a lot darker on the newspaper than it is on the normal paper. On the other hand, when I drew the nose and fur onto the emulsion newspaper, I immediately found out that it stood out a lot more as it was essentially black on white. I think that the fur was quite precise compared to drawings that I have done in the past. The drawing on the bottom is of the same area on the bear as the others, however in this drawing, I have focused on tone and mark making on the fur. As I was using biro, I could not shade as well as I could with a pencil, so I then added graphite to the drawing in order to improve the tone of the fur.

Next, I drew on top of a strip of newspaper and also on to the blank sketchbook paper. I used biro again and then painted some white emulsion on top of it and then worked into that a little bit. I did not like this method as it hides some of the detail that was previously put into it. After this, I then went on to combining all of the previous techniques to make a final drawing. I first stuck a piece of newspaper down and then started drawing in biro onto it. After this I stuck down a smaller piece of newspaper on top of this layer and then used graphite on top of it. Next I painted on some white emulsion around the edges of the drawing to make it stand out; to add to the drawing, I stuck down individual letters from the newspaper to spell out, 'USED'. I used this word to get the message across that sometimes used toys/objects can often be the best, most special things in life.

Oxford Visit - Including; The Pitt Rivers Museum, The Oxford University of Natural History and The Ashmolean Museum

On Thursday 29th September, I visited Oxford with the rest of my art class to observe all of the different pieces of art in a variety of different museums. Whilst looking at the art/artefacts, we were given the task of thinking about the different types of textures, colours and/or patterns on the objects. From that, we had to think about how it or the trip as a whole could help us with the future development of the task, 'Who am I?'.

The first Museum that I visited was the Oxford University of Natural History. The majority of objects that were presented in this museum were stuffed animals, skeletons of extinct animals and the kind of rocks that have been unearthed from the ground. Here are a few examples of the types of art that were exhibited:

 This is a stuffed bird that has been preserved for years. When I saw it, at first I thought that it wasn't nice at all as it used to be a living thing, however I looked past that and focused on the textures of the feathers. Each feather was fairly rough and each had its own size and shape. Also, I noticed that the colours on this bird were all earthy tones (for example, different shades of brown). I noticed that the feet on the bird were very thin however, it was clear that by the stance of the bird, they were very strong.

 This is a life size black bear that was about 4 1/2 foot tall. After touching the fur of this bear, I got the idea that the fur was very soft despite the fact that in some places, the fur looks a little rough. The problem with the colour of this bear is that it is all black, so if I was going to draw it, I would not be able to demonstrate my ability to show tone.

Additionally, this skeleton remains was of a t-rex and was the biggest artefact on show at this museum. The bones appeared quite rough as I imagine they have been worn away by rock movement when it was in the ground. Due to the fact that the scale of this skeleton is so big, if I was going to draw it, I would choose a specific feature on it and focus on that. The tone was only good on this because of the light that was above it. There was a variety of greys on the skeleton which is why it would be useful to either use charcoal or graphite when drawing it.




After having around an hour in this museum, we then went across to the Pitt Rivers Museum and took a look at all of the ancestral artefacts. My favourite aspects in this area was the aboriginal artworks. Here are a few images of some of the artefacts that were displayed:

This is the clothing that some of the warriors wore centuries ago in the aboriginal culture. The texture of this clothing/armour is very rough and close together whilst the pattern on it is very specific. The colours are earthy colours once again, for example: browns, yellows and other pale colours. This is because in these times, they were the only kinds of colours that could be used when making clothing and armour. This is similar to the aboriginal art that was produced back then.

This picture contains the kind of art that women used to produce in this specific era. Although it is very basic, it captivated me and made me want to know more about why these colours, patterns and shapes were used. Very earthy colours were used because the only things that they could use for paints were different types of mud. I like how they only used dots to create their paintings, yet they could still result in captivating and interesting pieces of art.

This is an axe that the huntsmen used to use when trying to catch their own food. The textures on the metal were very smooth, however the textures on the wood handle were actually quite rough. If this was going to be drawn, I would maybe use pencil or even oil pastel. I could use oil pastel for the wood as I can use the edge of something to scratch in the rough textures.




Finally, we then went to the Ashmolean Museum which contained a lot more paintings in comparison to the other two museums. The following picture contains the painting that I like the best:

This painting is one of my favourites in the whole museum. I really like how the artist managed to capture the realism of the horses and people, without having to provide it with a lot of detail. I really like how it is similar to a cartoon piece of work, as despite the fact that it is very simplistic, I understand the painting as a whole.





Overall, the trip has allowed me to get a better idea of how to describe a piece of artwork and how to better appreciate a certain piece. After having viewed all of the ancient pieces and artefacts, I believe that when it comes to developing my work, I may go into the whole idea of how I think it is wrong to hunt and kill animals or I may go down the route of how barbaric taxidermy is and how it affects the ecosystem and the existence of specific species.