ArtMode

I have been asked to look at Morandi still life etchings, and to me these capture the beauty of simple items in  a different way, as an etching.  Giorgio Morandi - Still Life with Drapery to the Left - 1927 - Etching This Etching is stunning, i love the different tones, and use of cross hatching. The cloth on the table is amazing! and he lighting on the bottles look perfect. To me they look so fragile, like you could blow it away its so light and clean, then i found this one... Giorgio Morandi-  Still Life with Seven Objects in a Tondo,- 1945 - etching This blew me away, its almost like a dream or a memory, some of the objects are the same tone as the back ground and the same cross hatching but they pop out so much by almost blending in! It is beautiful. It so simple but complex at the same time. Especially when compared to this one: Still Life with Jugs, 1956, etching This one is very realistic with the highlights and reflections, its very bold compare...

When i was a kid, i got asked to produce a drawing that expressed Autumn, the winner got the work in a calendar for the school. I worked and i worked on this drawing, expressing my feelings of Autumn. I won. I told my Mum and Dad that they could buy the calendar with my work in it, i was so proud. I showed my parents my work, and although they were happy for me told me they that although it was good, my sister's new drawing of a bird was better... more realistic. Through out all of my childhood and teenage years, i was told i was not as good as my sister and to this day i still do. I would constantly compare my work to hers, and eventually i gave up art completely. I had a pang of jealousy when i would see other peoples art work, and suppress the jealous feeling towards my sister and the anger i felt towards my parents. I felt even more guilt and as i grew i built up this wall around myself, i put on a mask of a confident girl, who did not feel jealousy, sadness or frustrat...

Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn was a Dutch draughtsman, painter and printmaker. He was b orn in Leiden in 1606 and  died in 1669. I have been asked to look at his Etchings called ' Descent From The Cross'. So i began searching... In 1633 Rembrandt produced several painted and etched versions of this subject. When i began researching at first i was very confused because i could not find a lot of information about it. The first image i came across was this one: The Descent from the Cross: Second Plate, 1633, B. 81 This is a dry point etching, it is the moment when Christ's body is being released from the cross. I love the strong contrast between light and dark in this! and the light shining down from from the sky onto the cross and his body, illuminating it, it is beautiful. Christ's body look so tiny compared to the figures around him and the way Rembrandt has captured the lifelessness of his body is very powerful and really captures the tragedy of ...

Sarah Taylor came into the class to give a talk about her work. She told us she  started with a strong interest in ceramics until her foundation course where she discovered textiles. She then   graduated from Winchester School of Art specialising in woven textiles (1991). Sarah then found an interested in  exploring light in material and optical fibres woven into textiles. and the 3D appearance of fabrics, which she said came from her love of ceramics.  She spoke about her processes of her work, i really liked her work and i thought it was completely different from what i had seen before. Although i did not find a connection with all of it i did like a project she took part in about female sexuality. There was a fibre glass sculpture of a woman laying down (wrapped in goat fur) face down with her bum in the air, and when you touched it it would light up where your hands went, it also recorded where peopl...

Surrealism was a 20th century avant-garde art movement. Its aim was to release the thoughts of the unconscious mind. Two well known surrealist artist i want to look at in this report are: Salvador Dali And Max Ernst Both men were inspired by  Sigmund   Freud's dream theory,  Freudian theory . Freud used the analogy of an iceberg to describe the three levels of the mind. On the surface is consciousness, which consists of thoughts and actions focused on now (this is seen as the tip of the iceberg)  The preconscious consists of all which can be retrieved from memory. The third is the unconscious. He believed this part of the mind was responsible for most of our behaviour (Like an iceberg, the most important part of the mind is the part you cannot see). He thought this part of the mind acted like a ‘cauldron’ of primitive wishes and impulses kept at bay or where we repressed thoughts, memories or information to painful or frightening for...

Liz Douglas is an artist working in the Scottish Borders and based at WASP studios. She studied drawing and painting at Edinburgh College of Art, and came into our college last week to show us her work. She is a mixed media artist and her work is heavily research based and is inspired by a situation, place or space.  She showed us some of her works, and the processes she uses. She said something that really resented in me, she said "If you take it out of your control, you can do something really different". I liked this because letting things out of my control is something i really struggle with. I really liked a few of her works, but this one i thought was really interesting Ettrick-Series---willowlines-slow-thaw-1.5mx1.5m-mm-on-canvas-large She told us her work reflects the  research she dose. She uses involves collaborating with scientists and environmentalists which give her a better understanding of nature,I also like that she investigates mic...

Picasso began experimenting with linocuts in 1939, creating linocut posters for ceramic exhibitions and bullfighting events. It wasn’t until the mid-1950s that Picasso fully embraced linocuts, during a period spent working in the south of France. I read that he  developed  a new ( at the time) method of creating prints, before , printers would cut a  separate  block for each colour, but Picasso cut from a single block, this is what we are currently doing in college! The technique saved huge amounts of time, but also had its challenges, as it was impossible to reverse any mistakes made during the cutting process. In his early work he would use less colours but his later work could have up to 12 colours in them! This print, I love. It looks so simple but it's not, the colour is great! Look at the mark making for the sun rays! So loose and confident, something I struggle with when doing Lino cuts. You can just visualise the wrist movement he was doing wh...

For one of our units we need to look at worn objects, and use a medium and technique we are not comfortable with / have used before. I decided to use oil painting. I was a bit nervous to use it, because it was new to me, but decided to just go for it. i did a lot of experimentation and really trying to figure out a technique i liked. I went back and forth looking at my object, my fathers Mandolin, and asking the question what dose this object mean other than its worn and i wanted to use it. I like that it is worn because of affection, this was a running theme in my sketch book, along with my great grandmothers teddy and my childhood toy. It also contained personal attachment as these objects are in my family and are generational. The mandolin stood out to me because its not only worn because it was played so much and enjoyed by the person playing but also the people listening and i liked that connection. I found a huge enjoyment out of using a pallet knife and a ro...

Tom Davidson is a print maker located in Earlston. I looked up his web sight and gathered some information about him from it. (  http://www.tomdavidson.co.uk/ ) He graduated in Graphic Design in 1977 but turned to printmaking in 1984. He works with Lino cuts and works from a single block of linoleum, using a reduction process, printing each colour on top of the previous colour, working from light to dark. Once i started looking through his prints, i couldn't believe they were lino cuts! they were so beautiful and photographically correct. The detail was beyond what i thought you could do with a lino cut. I decided to look up the process of this for use later on in my printmaking unit... From what i could find out if i was wanting to do a lino cut with three colours, say i wanted the background white, like the colour of the paper i was printing on, i would carve away all the areas that i would want to remain white, then i would ink the lino with the first colour, the ...