PRINTMAKING - Käthe Kollwitz

Käthe Kollwitz ( 1867 - 1945) was a German Artist who worked mainly with painting, printmaking and sculpture. Her most famous works depicted the effects of poverty, hunger and war on the working class.

I came across a woodcut self portrait that i liked.

Frontal Self-Portrait (Selbstbildnis von vorn)-1922

I firstly love the black and white contrast of this. I like how it is isolating her face. Her face looks so serious. tired and unhappy. Then i came across a series of woodcuts called Krieg ( war) in 1919. These were response to the aftermath of World War 1. The Woodcuts focus on the mothers, widows and children left behind.

The Sacrifice (Das Opfer) (plate 1) from War (Krieg)

The Volunteers (Die Freiwilligen) (plate 2) from War (Krieg)

The Parents (Die Eltern) (plate 3) from War (Krieg). (1921-22, published 1923)

The Widow I (Die Witwe I) (plate 4) from War (Krieg)

The Widow II (Die Witwe II) (plate 5) from War (Krieg)

(1922, published 1923)

The Mothers (Die Mütter) (plate 6) from War (Krieg)

The People (Das Volk) (plate 7) from War (Krieg)

These prints are haunting and i found really hard to process them. The huge black and white contrast makes me really feel the greif and fear.

This one print stood out to me the most...

Die Freiwilligen (The volunteers)

This print is very different because it shows men being led forward by what i think could be death. It is very symbolic and it gives me mixed emotions about the idea or concept of honor and the true sacrifices of it.

Comments

Art & Design Portfolio - Sam Cornwell (Digital)

I decided to start my research on paper based and digital portfolios by first looking at a digital portfolio. One artist who came into the college to do a talk was a photographer called Sam Cornwell, he took us through his digital portfolio. I wanted to think about why his portfolio was digital and not paper based. One of the biggest advantages of a digital portfolio is the accessibility of it. It is easy to send out to employers or people wishing to view it. It is digital so it can easily be send to someone via email or put on a USB and accessed that way. Another reason is unlike a paper based portfolio there is more than one, it is easy to dispatch without spending money on paper to print. It is also instant, you might have to wait a few days for a paper port folio to be sent by mail or spend money on travel to bring it to the person wishing to view it. With a digital portfolio one click and it is sent! I went onto Sam Cornwell's page and found out his portfolio is on his web...

Starting experimenting with photography

After looking into the work of Henry Weston i decided to try and experiment,first, with negative space. It was something that stood out to me a lot in some of his work, as i spoke about in my report. i started by just taking a few pictures as i noticed it around me. I think these are a very interesting start and have a lot of potential, i decided to play around with the editing a bit by cropping them, changing the contrast and making them black and white. i like this image and i think composition wise it works. i also think it looks good in black and white as it has gotten rid of the chance of clashing colours and sets a different kind of mood. The subject is in focus and it looks quite sharp. I cropped it a little and changed the contrast and exposure. i prefer this image to the top one as i like the spacing between the feet compared to the first one i think it is more visually pleasing, i also rotated this image just as an experiment. ...

Art wolfe - My world, my view.

Another photographer i decided to look at is called Art Wolfe. Wolfe's work is a combination of Art and journalism, he graduated from the University of Washington with Bachelor’s degrees in fine arts and art education in 1975, since then he has worked on every continent, in hundreds of locations, and on a range of different projects. I started by looking into Wolfe's technique, i found a lot of information on the type of camera he uses (Canon’s 5DS R) and the lenses he uses - "Mostly “L” series lenses, Canon’s professional designation, the 16-35 f/2.8 L II and the 70-200 f/4 L IS. He uses extension tubes for macro work with the 70-200 and adds 1.4x extenders. But i wanted to look into his editing techniques not his equipment, although interesting and worth putting on here for future reference. I found out Wolfe uses "Photo manipulation" in some of his photographs. Although his photographs are not heavily edited, he uses techniques like cloning the animal...

ArtMode

Search This Blog