Category: Assignment 1

Response to tutor assessment I and how it has influenced my work in unit 2.

I fully concur with my tutor’s comments and feel excited to move on as the feedback has hi lighted areas for me to work on.

We had a discussion about treating paint layers as a kind of sculptural process to build up colour without it becoming muddy. This visual image was really helpful to me as I tend to approach art making in a tactile way. This has encouraged me to look at painting in a new way. I am always concerned that I mess up work when I paint it because I have little training in technical ability making painting rather a chore than a joy. Turning it into a sculptural process makes sense and frees me up to try new things. This also has a positive effect on my mark making allowing me to try using different tools. ( again a suggestion from my tutor) . In turn using my fish tail brush in certain sweeping areas allowed me to express my love of curves and addressed another goal from assessment 1 – to work on shape and form.

I feel that I have begun to address depth and simplicity in my work ( see assessment 2 last paragraph) which were the other recommendations from Assessment 1. I am pleased that I have a developing awareness to address these problems which will help me to continue improving in these areas.

Oil study- sunset at the stone circle

Sunset photos which inspired my thoughts:

The colours aware a sunset pallet: yellow to orange/ yellow to pink; then blue graduating to grey and black. The foreground is in almost complete shadow giving a large tonal contrast to the lights of the sunset sky behind. The stones themselves are black and without much feature. This is a little bit of a challenge as I had hoped to use them as a feature to emphasise depth. Therefore I will have to work on building up tonal difference in the mid ground and a the ‘front’ of the sky to give perspective.

This is my second attempt at an oil sunset. This time instead of adding thick layers and overworking ( see coursework 1) I used a light yellow/white background and thin transparent layers of yellow, orange , rose , mauve and blue. This worked better. The foreground was lighter than intended to add detail to the stones. However I felt that I would like to try darkening the foreground and sacrificing detail to add more to the chiaroscuro contrasting light effect.

Here is my next study in acrylic which I believe works better. The painting is roughly worked so there are still white areas in the foreground. It allowed me to explore tones for the land .

My final piece

Assignment idea 2

Assignment idea 1 shows the technical ideas that I want to include in my work. I thought about a sunny blue sky with could sand water showing reflections using glazed layering. To create some interest and a story in the piece I thought about showing some rubbish in the water to represent the paradox between man and nature.However it strikes me that to include a narrative idea into this setting I would have to make the scene quite complex.

While on holiday on Shetland and Orkney I began to wonder if I could use the sky itself to create my story. The drama of the setting sun against a stone circle would be simpler and would allow me to demonstrate an aspect of chiaroscuro- the darkness around a glorious sunset.