ArtMode

John Berry came into our class to give a talk about his work. He started by telling us he always viewed the world differently to others, and did not find like minded people until he went to college to study art. Once he finished school he did illustration jobs and a few jobs in graphic design. He also helped work on the animated film "The Snowman". Through out all these jobs collage seemed to keep being a reoccurring art form that kept cropping up in his work.  He also spent time in Istanbul teaching English and doing illustration jobs.  He came back to the UK and did a collage mural for the Margaret Care Unit and another mural St. Mary Mill Library in Selkirk. He used old books that were going to be throw away, There were about 30,000 books  (  he is still using them today ). He told us he is inspired by Picasso and Kurt Schwitters because of there collage works. He spoke about his connection with physical material, old used items, that most people...

Kerry Jones came into our class to do a talk on her work, she is a multi- media artist who works with sound, film, photography ( archived ) and sculptural pieces of work.  She told us she works alone but also dose a lot of collaborations. She seemed to be fascinated with the idea of time travel through archived images.  Before graduating college in Hull she was given an opportunity to travel to Germany, she was asked to create a sculptural piece in an old coal factory. She told us that is fascinated her that the building was covered in nature trying to reclaim it. Next old machines, she placed turf so it would look like the machines were producing them. I liked this idea and thought it was very creative.  Kerry told us she moved to London and lost her connection with her art, she was finding it hard to make money from it and decided to learn carpentry skills, while she was working away with her new skill she came across a community group that made puppets. Ke...

I have been asked to explore Francisco Goya's Disasters of War series of prints. There are over 80 prints produced that were in relation to what he witnessed during the peninsular war against Napoleon Bonaparte. While looking through these prints i could not believe how BRUTAL these were, i genuinely felt quite disturbed looking at these, because i feel they depict the impact war has on common individuals, like soldiers, civilians, men of god and more... i can have very strong amounts of empathy for others and looking at these, it really got to me.... They feel like illustrations of political commentary and are very hard to look at. The first image i came across that really got to me was :   Plate 9:  No quieren  ( They do not want to ) -  1810 -  Etching It looks to me like a young woman being assaulted by a soldier... and an older woman coming to her aid with a knife. The woman is clawing at the soldiers face and is hiding her own face...

We were asked to draw a self portrait for next week, the only specifics were it had to be in pencil, and we had to be wearing a hat.  I started looking into self portraits and how artist can use them to express themselves. I wanted to look at three things, amount of detail, style and expression. I don't really own any hats and i was looking around trying to borrow some, but then i thought, i don't wear hats... thats not really me, and i wanted to express myself... so what could i use? I used a strainer on my head, found an old monocle and made a moustache and goatee out of paper... i thought about who i am, and to be honest i don't completely know. I feel i can be whoever i socially have to be. But one thing i do think i am is funny, and confident. I really wanted to express that in my drawing. I dress up to who i have to be that day, and i thought adding the goatee, moustache and monocle would be a funny way of expressing that thought.  I then moved onto another ...

Continuing our art movement investigations we looked at impressionism. The huge developments in technology effected the Impressionist movement and had a huge impact on how artist depicted paintings. Things changed hugely for artists with the introduction of steam engines, ready made paint tubes and the first portable cameras, for example, The camera made it possible for artist to use photography to capture or freeze a moment in time and then being able to reference back to them for later painting. For example After the Bath (Woman Drying Herself)  Edgar Degas 1896 - Oil painting Because impressionist painters were interested in representing life around them, they looked to people and places for subject matter. This is why they were so effected by the industrial revolution, because their world was one of street lighting, steam trains, factories and the people around them. Montmartre at Night  Camille - Pissarro - 1897 claude monet gare saint lazare...

We have started a new unit, typeface and letterforms. I found this very daunting, because, it is a completely new, huge world to me that i have never explored... We watched a film about Helvetica and it was very interesting but like i said i feel really overwhelmed. I wanted to know what happened before more in depth and really look into it as best i could. I decided to calm my nerves by looking into the history of type face, and to, i guess start at the beginning... for myself. while researching i found out that a lot of people agree that the creator of typography was a German man named Johannes Gutenberg. But before he came along books needed to be scribed, by hand. Obviously this was very time consuming, So Guttenberg created Blackletter. I think this was modeled after the scribe's. It has thick vertical lines, and thin horizontal connectors. This was hard for printing, as it looked very dense and squished together. So then came Roman Type, the first roman type was cr...

Today i went to an Exhibition in Peebles, to look at the works of Ade Adesina. Adesina was born in Nigeria ( 1980 ) and is a full time print maker, he now lives in Aberdeen, Scotland. His work centres around ecology and how the human footprint is affecting the world. He works mostly with linocut and etching. This was a very exciting exhibition to see as i am starting my first printmaking unit at college. His work was very inspiring and really opened my eyes to see what you can create with linocut, we have not tried etching but we have tried lino and i cant believe what you can do with it! Some of his Linocuts: The Last, Great Day ( collab with Barry Mcglashan) Linocut There will be Light. Linocut Wild Awake Linocut. I love the detail in these, i also got to see some of his etchings, but this one really stood out to me Dark Hole - etching  I love the detail in this, and it made me very excited to look more into etching! ...

On Saturday 18th, i went to Edinburgh to the Scottish National Gallery to see an exhibition of works from the Impressionism era. It focused on three key artist, Charles Francois Daubigny , Claude Monet and Vincent Van Gogh and the mutual influence between these three artist. I got to learn a bit of information about all three artists... Charles Francois Daubigny Charles Francois Daubigny was often criticised for his broad and sketch like views of nature, and was dubbed the leader of the school of impression. A writer called Theophile Gautier wrote that Daubigny "contains himself with an impression and so neglects the details. His paintings ... offer only juxtaposed patches of colour". He attracted young impressionist artists in the 1860's with his technique, inspiring artists such as  Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro. His house / studio at Auvers-Sur-Oise became of moral / spiritual significance to  Vincent Van Gogh. The first painting i noticed from Charl...

In class we tried our hand at  MONO PRINTING  . We were told to take 3 photographic images of ourselves and print them on A3 paper, One face on, One profile and one  three quarters facing.  We rolled ink onto a board and put news print on top, then our images on top of that, then, draw over them. First in linear and then to start experimenting.  I found it quite exciting that the images or lines can only be made once, unlike most printmaking, where there are multiple originals.  I found that i really liked this process, and actually found a connection to the image left in the ink itself. I was really excited by this and started experimenting with pressure, tools, line and started thinking about how much detail i needed to express so it would still look like me... I really liked going over the same lines quickly, i did this in the image on the left, putting more pressure on the pen, then, went more loosely with the image on the right...

As part of one of our units, we are looking at Art movements. We started with Romanticism and were looking over some of the characteristics of this movement.  I learned that Romanticism began in the 18 th Century, and was largely centred in Germany. It was  a reaction to the rationalism of the Enlightenment, a dramatic revolution in science, philosophy, society and politics which spread throughout Europe during the 1700s. It seemed to be about the artists imagination and them as an individual, focusing on emotions, irrationality, wonder and awe.  Although no one style of painting prevailed, Nature and bettering the human condition seemed to be where they turned for inspiration. I found this very interesting as nature can be very wild, violent and unpredictable, i can see why it would hold so many artist's fascination.  One artists work i really connected with was Caspar David Friedrich. I particularly liked his painting called " Wanderer above the Sea of...