Experiment

I had done a few experiments on top of my collagraph which had no let the image show through very well at all, i used a mixture of mediums: watercolour pencils and watercolour paints, to get the effect I was looking for.

More primary sources

These pictures had been taken in previous family vacations, which took place a few years ago as well as last year within the Philippines.

Primary sources (Photography)

Third artist research/colour study

For my third and final artist analysis and colour study for this unit I had chosen Julia Manning. She as an artist with a passion for wildlife and nature, one who likes to create pieces surrounding different aspects of the natural world, We were required to chose a print making artist for our last chosen artist, which is what I had done. 

She tends to work with Somerset Printmaking papers and is starting to go into using Japanese papers as well for her prints.

She often uses an extremely large press for her collagraphs, collagraphing is a printmaking technique she often uses, this press creates pieces which are 150 cm by 100 cm. She can use this for thick wood cuts all the way to copper etching plates.

Her plates tend to go in and out of ferric chloride, as this helps her to reach the effect she is after.

                          

For the colour study of our printmaking artist, we had a choice of using different mediums instead of printing. I had decided to go with watercolour, as i find it to be the best medium for blending colours along with printing being slightly difficult as I do not necessarily have all equipment required but I do always have paints on hand.

Print making

We had done quite a few lessons on print making. We had never done collagraph printmaking before, however we had worked with styrofoam/foam printing before. Collagraph printing is a very unique printmaking technique, where you create a collagraph plate first using various materials such as cardboard, then move onto applying oil or water based ink paints using cloth. Finally using damp paper to press the plate onto the paper using a press. Styrofoam stamping/printmaking is a bit of an easier process, where you draw a design onto a piece of styrofoam then apply ink paints on top with a roller and firmly, using a clean roller, roll/press the design onto a piece of paper.

On the left is an example of a styrofoam print of a feather turning into birds flying, symbolising that nature is all connected and a single feather can have a whole story behind it.

We had collected quite a few primary sources pictures during the lessons to use for our collagraph plate:

The above pictures were ones taken of seafood, these were the ones that I had found most interesting which led me to use the shrimp, crab and fish to create my plate. I had used black inks as well as coloured ones to creates these prints. I used more blue colours as I found this to represent the sea creatures best as it is the colour of water/ocean/sea.

As well as the plates, I had also gone in and created a simple styrofoam print of a rose, and used slight gold and red inks to stamp this.

                           

Along with all of these images taken, we had also the option of using fruits and vegetables. I had not chosen to include these as I personally love seafood and water, as well as I am an Aquarius. So, I find that it is important to have a piece of yourself represented within your work, resulting in my want to use the seafood instead of the fruits and vegetables. Despite this, I had taken a few shots of them:

              

With all of these pictures/photographs I had played around with composition, positioning the pieces around trying to find the perfect arrangement. As well as I had taken some images with flash and other without, playing around with different light intensities.

I found that the images taken in the dark (where lights within the art room were off) using flash were the prettiest.

Second Artist research/colour study

For my second artist analysis/colour study I had chosen Georgia O' Keefe, she was an extremely inspirational and admirable artist, who had made large contribution to American modernized art. She had created various floral, city landscape along with skull paintings.

For the colour study I had decided to chose a floral/flower painting of hers. So I had gone on a search to find the prefect piece for me do my colour study on. I had found the above three pieces quite spectacular, however I was most captivated by 'Jimson Weed' (on the right).

Design of textiles

We had briefly taken a look at design of textiles. There are 5 major textile design which exist, they are: diagonal, horizontal, vertical, half drop and finally all over.

• Diagonal: this design is done diagonally across the textile.
• Horizontal: this one is horizontally made.
• Vertical: this is a vertically design textile.
• Half-drop: a half-drop is when there is a design then no design then design the no design and so on.
• All over: randomly placed design.

I had created a slight diagonal design using inspiration of tree bark.

10 Nature Inspired Drawings

As part of this unit, we had gone outside to the sandy/residential area right outside of our football field gates and taken picture of the area to help us create drawings inspired by the natural world. It was a slight challenge at first to find the pieces we had wanted to use, as there was a lot to chose from along with wanting to find the perfect pieces to express our creativity. 

These were a few of the pictures I had taken on that day to help me create the little drawings shown in the picture above:

            

First Artist Research/Colour Study

For my first artist research I decided to do some research on Marty Husted, who creates beautiful pieces of art using perspective of nature. She expresses herself and funnels almost all of her emotions and thoughts out into her pieces:

Along with this piece of research I had also done a colour study of her work. I was not too sure of which piece to chose from, however I did find it interesting how she has a clear style with the use of her mediums. I found the three pieces which I had printed and stuck into my book (shown in the above picture) quite intriguing and was thinking about chosing one of these, I especially liked the mix of cold as well as warm colours displayed in the piece with the waves. But I had eventually chosen 'Moo', which is a piece portraying a cow with a darker, colder coloured background. I had decided to use mixed mediums for this colour study, as with my other ones I did not intend to used mixed mediums. I had chosen to do half of the painting using oil pastels and the otehr half using water colour paints. Doing it half/half allows the clear differences of the mediums to show through the colour study.

One-Point perspective drawings

As part of this unit we need to include a few one-point perspective drawings. These drawings require a single point to be made on a straight line and drawings to be drawn using various lines from that single point of choice. We had started with simple shapes, my choice of shape being a cube, then moved on to letters; I had written 'views'. And finally scenery, one was of the hallway outside the art room and another of a living room.

Mind Map

In my mind map I mainly just included words to do with nature and perspective; words which will be able to relate to my second unit "perspectives of nature". I decided to draw a big tree with visible roots as I found that the simplest yet most common symbol of nature would have to be a tree.

Title page for my second unit

For my second unit title page I wrote some letters using more nature inspired designs rather than focusing on one-point perspective, however other letters are drawn using one-point perspective. I also drew a feather which turned into birds near the end as I thought that was a good representation of nature and how everything changes and is related to each other; depending on each other. I drew this drawing using water colours. As well as, with every title page it is important to add a few pieces of text, which are: the key concept, global context, along with the inquiry questions.

Final outcome reflection

My final outcome had been a challenge to put together, the final one shown in the picture below is actually my second attempt. My first attempt wasn't really much of an attempt more like an experiment whilst my second took quite a bit of work along with thought surrounding the idea behind the piece of work. I intitially used photoshop by combining an image of myself together with an image of a howling wolf, as I feel a wolf is my spirit animal and since this supposed to be representing myself and the u it being perception of self I thought it would be a perfect fit. It took me quite a while to figure out what I wanted to do for the background of my final outcome, I enjoy using and working with watercolours a lot so I ended up with a decision on using watercolours for my background. Also, I had chosen to use paint splatters as it allowed me to use a large vary of colours representing all different parts of me as well as I liked the look of it and the way it was able to compliment the other parts of the piece as they were a lot less colourful and quite dark and dull.

Final outcome plans

In these plans I just included a few simple experiment involving water colours as well as oil pastels. I mainly did these plans to just have something as a base to my final piece. I completed one in my book and the other on a canvas. the one on the canvas includes a self portrait of myself whilst the other has a designed wolf on it. I also played around with some tribal tattoo inspired animals on my canvas using black acrylic paint.

Animals that represent me

I wanted to do some drawing/inspirations of animals which I think could possibly represent myself (reasons why are next to the animal). I'm a huge animal lover and wanted to include this within my final piece as well.